Director Darren Aronofsky takes a subject such as ballet and turns it in to a twisted, bizarre, and suspenseful psychological thriller. Black Swan takes you to dark places and causes a sense of anguish and anxiety to sweep over you. Aronofsky makes the audience go through an experience that is unusual and unrecognizable in films today.
Natalie Portman plays Nina Sayers, a great ballerina who is looking for her breakout role she has desperately been wanting for years. Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), an artistic director for a New York City ballet company, decides to shake things up for their upcoming season and picks Nina to play the White and Black Swan in Swan Lake. And Nina has what it takes to be the White Swan. She is innocent, elegant, and full of grace. The tough part is her becoming the Black Swan, who is sensual and deceitful.
Lily (Mila Kunis), a new dancer, who seems perfect for the part of the Black Swan, begins to capture the interest of Leroy. Nina begins to feel the pressure from her rival, but somehow the two end up having a weird, fantasized friendship. The more Nina prepares for Swan Lake and gets closer to Lily, the more she begins to lose her mind while embracing the Black Swan and becoming less and less of the White Swan, on and off the stage.
Portman’s performance is almost unexplainable. The woman she is at the beginning of the film is not the same woman at the end. Portman is able to grasp the attitude and dedication it takes to be a ballerina. Nina is always searching for perfection. She wants to be a perfect performer and it does not matter what she has to do or the pain she has to endure to accomplish it.
Ballet is her passion, and it consumes her. Some of that comes from her very protective, overbearing mother (Barbara Hershey). She was a ballerina but gave up her career when she had Nina and now she seems to be trying to live through her daughter. And Nina begins to fold under all the pressure from her mother, Leroy, and the fear of being replaced by Lily.
Portman goes from never raising her voice and being sweet and innocent to a dark, haunting, almost terrifying woman who is slowly becoming more and more paranoid and losing her mind in the process, and it is amazing to watch. Never has Portman been so bold and daring like this and seeing her go through such a transformation on-screen is stunning yet startlingly jaw-dropping at the same time. Witnessing her destruction from the inside out is astounding. This role is Portman’s best and most impressive in her career by far.
Kunis does an excellent job at portraying Lily. She shows great potential and serves as a great supporting partner for Portman. She is just as beautiful and talented as Portman which makes her character replacing Nina seem believable. But, she is the exact opposite of Nina – care-free with a life outside of ballet. She is wild on and off the stage, but more importantly, she is free and Leroy can see that in her dancing. The role of Lily plays a significant part in Nina losing her mind because she thinks Lily is there to steal her spot. And so begins the recklessness and downhill spiral of Nina.
Black Swan will blow your mind while making you cringe. It is unnerving and suspenseful while always staying exhilarating and exciting. It is a story about trying to be perfect even when it does not exist. And, it is about the fear of losing one’s spot in the world and being replaced by someone prettier or better. Or simply trying to deal with pressure until it becomes too much to handle.
Aronofsky throws all of these things in to a premise full of emotion that deals with reality but with a dose of madness. It is the case of an artist becoming their role and it taking over control. So get lost in Black Swan because losing control has never looked or felt so first-rate and masterful.
“Nature Boy” Brandon Vick is the resident film critic of the SoBros Network, and star of Brandon’s Box Office In Your Mouth. Follow him on Twitter@SirBrandonV and be sure to search #VicksFlicks for all of his latest movie reviews.
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