Haunting Film is Major Hit

In his fifth production, Darren Aronofsky, acclaimed director of The Wrestler and Requiem for a Dream, presents a dark, Kafkaesque study of how far one will go to achieve perfection.

Black Swan centers on Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), a young up-and-coming ballerina in a New York City ballet company. Her heart is set on winning the lead role in Swan Lake, playing the dichotomy of both the White and Black Swans. In order to truly perform the part, she has to do more than impress her seductive French director, Thomas (Vincent Cassell); she has to transform herself – quite literally.

In terms of roles, Portman carries twice the weight as Nina on her not-so-fragile shoulders; where the waiflike Nina must find her inner darkness as the Black Swan, Portman must embody the duality of the swans while also portraying Nina’s downward spiral on her quest for perfection. Where Nina struggles, Portman succeeds with theatrical gusto and melodrama.

Lips trembling and brow knotting, the naïve Nina begins as a reclusive girl. She lives under the thumb of her smothering mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), a failed artist who lives vicariously through her “sweet girl” and the career she never had. Slowly, with insistent prodding from Thomas and a budding friendship-turned-rivalry with fellow dancer Lily (Mila Kunis), Nina transforms into the alluring, determined Black Swan.

While at times Portman’s emotions appear overwrought, they add to the staged quality of Nina’s life as she struggles to internalize her role. The striking image of a red-eyed, terrified Portman pulling a black feather burrowed beneath her skin illustrates Aronofsky’s and writer Andres Heinz’s eerie, grandiose physical
manifestations of Nina’s transformation. Though the film is far from a horror flick, Nina’s psychological trauma and its effects on her and others are not for the faint of heart – or stomach: Matthew Libatique’s whirlwind cinematography is enough to make your head spin. But as is usually the case, Aronofsky shoots nothing without purpose, and the twirling perfectly captures Nina’s loss of control.

Composer Clint Mansell, who has contributed darkly brooding and intense scores to every Aronofsky film to date, adds a haunting, urgent quality to Tchaikovsky’s already majestic original Swan Lake theme. As Nina’s final transformation takes place on the ballet’s opening night, the tension rises and reality merges with fantasy, creating a chaotic and nightmarish crescendo.

Where Portman’s passion works well in a theatrical context, the overt sexuality exemplified in Thomas’ brutal advances becomes tiring after a while. On the other hand, Nina’s uptight reservations about discussing intimacy, which slowly morph into a salacious and violent hunger for self-satisfaction, act once more as a physical representation of the all-consuming Black Swan.

Rife with deliciously dark melodrama – which brings the film to a resonant yet succinct conclusion – Black Swan is a haunting and heartbreaking tale of sheer determination. Had Nina Sayers found perfection? That’s for you to decide. As for Portman, that decision is still up to the Academy.