Black Swan Movie Review
Black Swan Movie Review
Black Swan movie review. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Winona Ryder, and Barbara Hershey. By Staci Layne Wilson.
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Black Swan is a dark, psychosexual thriller from the fertile mind and hand of director Darren Aronofsky… but it's not necessarily 'fresh'. And that's a good thing… this way, it's more 'ripe'.
As I watched Black Swan last night, I thought of all the similarities between it and his 2008 Oscar-circler, The Wrestler. Then I read the press notes and sure enough, the auteur is quoted thusly: "Some people call wrestling the lowest of art forms, and some call ballet the highest of art forms, yet there is something elementally the same. Mickey Rourke as a wrestler was going through something very similar to Natalie Portman as a ballerina. They're both artists who use their bodies to express themselves and they're both threatened by physical injury, because their bodies are the only tool they have for expression. What was interesting for me was to find these two connected stories in what might appear to be unconnected worlds." But that's really where the parallels end.
Think of Black Swan as a macabre ballet chiller along the lines of Powell's legendary dark fantasy The Red Shoes combined with a dash Argento's spooky Suspiria, add just a touch of Chaney's frantic turn in Phantom of the Opera when it comes to Portman's performance… and then step it up.
Ageing gracefully, but ageing nonetheless, a woman-child of a ballerina, Nina (Portman) is becoming more and more desperate as time marches on and she still isn't prima. She couldn't bear to wind up like her smotherer stage-mother, forlorn former dancer turned tortured artist, Erica (Barbara Hershey). Alone, dreams unfulfilled. On edge forever. That's a fate worse than death.
In fact, Nina isn't entirely opposed to dying — especially if she can do so in character as The Swan Queen. As her body screams and bleeds in protest of ballet's ruthless rigors, Nina determinedly tries out for a plum role and auditions for the most notoriously demanding and womanizing director in New York City, Thomas (Vincent Cassel). Thomas doubts, but he gives her the chance… kind of. As a backup, Thomas has lethal Lilly (Mila Kunis) ready to step into Nina's pointes. Left behind in this jagged triangle is Beth (Winona Ryder), former queen, has-been. A strange stew of simmering sexuality boils over into this… well… potboiler (albeit a highfalutin one), which is augmented nicely by Tchaikovsky's mad music and Matthew Libatique's careering cinematography.
A lurid melodrama along the lines of All About Eve, Aronofsky's pedigree adds cachet and class to an otherwise tired tale. He shows us that there are indeed new ways to tell old stories and what's more, he shows us what CGI is really for. Employing subtly-enhanced moments to convey flickers of madness, Black Swan is delightfully a modern-day successor to films like Hitchcock's Spellbound or Marnie. There are even some touches of the more operatic, erotic works of Polanski, De Palma, and Cronenberg in Aronofsky's take on paranoia, hysteria, obsession, and the manifesting symptoms of a sickly subconscious.
The finale is a true triumph — even, I daresay, perfection.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson
Latest User Comments:
| Incredible comparsion... | |
| Your comparison between the Wrestler and the Black Swan was quite fitting. After reading your review I will definitely see this film. Anything starring Natalie Portman has to fantastic. | |
| 11-17-2010 by good vs evil | discuss |
| Thank you SLW! Consider this a "must see" for me now! Great review. | |
| 11-12-2010 by Sparky | discuss |