It makes sense that Black Swan has provoked such a divisive response in viewers; the film itself seems to be a contradiction, a melodramatic mix of art-house ideas and psychosexual thrills. The influence of several predecessors looms shadow-like over Black Swan, from Alfred Hitchcock and Roman Polanski, to David Cronenberg and David Lynch—all filmmakers who have balanced "genre" elements with higher philosophical pursuits. Comparatively, Aronofsky's film is shifted more toward the commercial end of that particular scale—it tends to be obvious where a better film would be ambiguous—but Black Swan is still a brazen, daring piece of work, the kind that doesn't often make its way to the multiplex.
At the film's heart is Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake: "We all know the story," says Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), the swaggering director of the New York City Ballet. "Virginal girl, pure and sweet, trapped in the body of a swan. She desires freedom but only true love can break the spell. Her wish is nearly granted in the form of a prince, but before he can declare his love, her lustful twin, the black swan, tricks and seduces him. Devastated, the white swan leaps off a cliff, killing herself and, in death, finds freedom." Thomas intends to start his new season with a "visceral" and "real" reinterpretation of the tale, but he needs a star ballerina capable of embodying both the White Swan's innocence and her dark twin's wanton abandon.
Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) desperately wants the role—in the opening scene, we see her dreaming about it—and as Thomas puts it, "If I was only casting the White Swan, she would be yours. But I'm not." Nina is too wholesome by half, a sexually-stunted dancer who has devoted her life to her craft, practicing perfect technique but never losing herself in the movements. She still lives with her overbearing stage mother (Barbara Hershey)—a resentful former ballerina who lives vicariously through her daughter—and she sleeps in a doll- infested, powder-pink bedroom. It's the room of a girl, not a woman, and it says everything about her. Nina claims she's not a virgin, but we have a hard time buying that. Still, Thomas sees some "bite" in Nina and gives her the part, convinced he can coax out her dark side. Known for having stormy intimate relations with his lead dancers, Thomas is a master manipulator, using seduction and withholding to get the results he desires on the stage. His first direction to Nina is grounds for a sexual harassment suit: "I have a little homework assignment for you. Go home and touch yourself. Live a little."
By casting Nina in the lead role of Odette, the swan princess, Thomas displaces the dance troupe's former star, Beth (Winona Ryder), an aging prima-donna who refuses to go gently into retirement. He also nurtures a strategic rivalry between Nina and her understudy, Lily (Mila Kunis), a dark-haired nymphet who personifies the Black Swan's animal-like lust. She likes her meat bloody, she's a shameless flirt, and she even has a set of black wings tattooed across her shoulders. (Yes, Kunis and Portman do share a sex scene that's simultaneously hot and terrifying, bringing new meaning to the phrase "it'll scare you stiff.") At first, this may seem like just another backstage dance drama with all the conventional elements— competition and ambition, jealousy and backstabbing—but Nina's real conflict is progressively with her own ever-fracturing psyche.
The film is told exclusively from her perspective—she's in every scene—and we quickly suspect that she may not be a completely reliable narrator. The hints start small. Nina picks compulsively at her hangnail-ravaged fingers and scratches a nasty rash on her back; one second she's bleeding from these wounds, but when she looks again, there's no blood, no torn skin. It escalates. Nina begins to see flashes of her own dark doppelganger, a mysterious, highly sensual version of herself. Like the similarly sexually infant woman played by Catherine Deneuve in Polanski's Repulsion—the film that most influences Black Swan—Nina grows paranoid and unhinged, troubled by grim, anxiety-induced hallucinations. Her delusion becomes clear: she's turning into the Black Swan. Mentally. Physically. Entirely.
It's here that the film grows a little too literal minded. And this speaks to a larger problem that holds Black Swan back from greatness—for every evocative, emotionally nuanced scene, there's another with a cheap jump scare or some other trapping of the horror/thriller genre. (A few are genuinely scary —and necessary—but others seem like overkill.) Aronofsky uses the old "reflection that moves on its own in the mirror" trick no less than three times here, to diminishing effect. And this also dulls the film's symbolic use of mirrors, which work as a feedback loop of narcissism and self-loathing for unhealthily body-conscious ballerinas.
Nonetheless, Black Swan is a haunting fable that has the power to hang over viewers like a shroud. It's Gothic and lacy, decadently surging on urges so repressed they've morphed into neuroses. It explores female sexuality and ambition in uncommon ways, and it terrifies with a feathery variation on David Cronenberg's "The Fly". This is just the story; I haven't even touched on the lush production design, the impressive dance numbers, or the convincing performances. Natalie Portman deserves her Oscar win for Best Actress; as Nina she's beautifully frail and panicked, a not-quite-woman who gives into the darkness and pays the cost of artistic perfection. Mila Kunis is sex-charged and smoky, Barbara Hershey makes an unsettlingly perfect bitter-but-loving parent, and Vincent Cassel gets a break from his usual violent villain roles to play a masculine, eel-like impresario. This is Darren Aronofsky's best film since 2000's manic Requiem for a Dream, and while he's yet to make a masterpiece, Black Swan certainly comes closest.
At the film's heart is Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake: "We all know the story," says Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), the swaggering director of the New York City Ballet. "Virginal girl, pure and sweet, trapped in the body of a swan. She desires freedom but only true love can break the spell. Her wish is nearly granted in the form of a prince, but before he can declare his love, her lustful twin, the black swan, tricks and seduces him. Devastated, the white swan leaps off a cliff, killing herself and, in death, finds freedom." Thomas intends to start his new season with a "visceral" and "real" reinterpretation of the tale, but he needs a star ballerina capable of embodying both the White Swan's innocence and her dark twin's wanton abandon.
Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) desperately wants the role—in the opening scene, we see her dreaming about it—and as Thomas puts it, "If I was only casting the White Swan, she would be yours. But I'm not." Nina is too wholesome by half, a sexually-stunted dancer who has devoted her life to her craft, practicing perfect technique but never losing herself in the movements. She still lives with her overbearing stage mother (Barbara Hershey)—a resentful former ballerina who lives vicariously through her daughter—and she sleeps in a doll- infested, powder-pink bedroom. It's the room of a girl, not a woman, and it says everything about her. Nina claims she's not a virgin, but we have a hard time buying that. Still, Thomas sees some "bite" in Nina and gives her the part, convinced he can coax out her dark side. Known for having stormy intimate relations with his lead dancers, Thomas is a master manipulator, using seduction and withholding to get the results he desires on the stage. His first direction to Nina is grounds for a sexual harassment suit: "I have a little homework assignment for you. Go home and touch yourself. Live a little."
By casting Nina in the lead role of Odette, the swan princess, Thomas displaces the dance troupe's former star, Beth (Winona Ryder), an aging prima-donna who refuses to go gently into retirement. He also nurtures a strategic rivalry between Nina and her understudy, Lily (Mila Kunis), a dark-haired nymphet who personifies the Black Swan's animal-like lust. She likes her meat bloody, she's a shameless flirt, and she even has a set of black wings tattooed across her shoulders. (Yes, Kunis and Portman do share a sex scene that's simultaneously hot and terrifying, bringing new meaning to the phrase "it'll scare you stiff.") At first, this may seem like just another backstage dance drama with all the conventional elements— competition and ambition, jealousy and backstabbing—but Nina's real conflict is progressively with her own ever-fracturing psyche.
The film is told exclusively from her perspective—she's in every scene—and we quickly suspect that she may not be a completely reliable narrator. The hints start small. Nina picks compulsively at her hangnail-ravaged fingers and scratches a nasty rash on her back; one second she's bleeding from these wounds, but when she looks again, there's no blood, no torn skin. It escalates. Nina begins to see flashes of her own dark doppelganger, a mysterious, highly sensual version of herself. Like the similarly sexually infant woman played by Catherine Deneuve in Polanski's Repulsion—the film that most influences Black Swan—Nina grows paranoid and unhinged, troubled by grim, anxiety-induced hallucinations. Her delusion becomes clear: she's turning into the Black Swan. Mentally. Physically. Entirely.
It's here that the film grows a little too literal minded. And this speaks to a larger problem that holds Black Swan back from greatness—for every evocative, emotionally nuanced scene, there's another with a cheap jump scare or some other trapping of the horror/thriller genre. (A few are genuinely scary —and necessary—but others seem like overkill.) Aronofsky uses the old "reflection that moves on its own in the mirror" trick no less than three times here, to diminishing effect. And this also dulls the film's symbolic use of mirrors, which work as a feedback loop of narcissism and self-loathing for unhealthily body-conscious ballerinas.
Nonetheless, Black Swan is a haunting fable that has the power to hang over viewers like a shroud. It's Gothic and lacy, decadently surging on urges so repressed they've morphed into neuroses. It explores female sexuality and ambition in uncommon ways, and it terrifies with a feathery variation on David Cronenberg's "The Fly". This is just the story; I haven't even touched on the lush production design, the impressive dance numbers, or the convincing performances. Natalie Portman deserves her Oscar win for Best Actress; as Nina she's beautifully frail and panicked, a not-quite-woman who gives into the darkness and pays the cost of artistic perfection. Mila Kunis is sex-charged and smoky, Barbara Hershey makes an unsettlingly perfect bitter-but-loving parent, and Vincent Cassel gets a break from his usual violent villain roles to play a masculine, eel-like impresario. This is Darren Aronofsky's best film since 2000's manic Requiem for a Dream, and while he's yet to make a masterpiece, Black Swan certainly comes closest.