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Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Here we go again with a psychological horror film directed by Darren Aronofsky. If you know anything about Aronofsky, then you know when you watch one of his films, your mind will become warped or even confused. Pi was cool with the whole stock market and everything revolving around Pi. The Fountain was one that dealt with immortality and some type of time travel with moving around. A complete and utter mind trip. The Wrestler was one about the fall of an aging wrestler. The one film that terrifies me from Aronofsky is Requiem for a Dream. The movie is excellent, but the music and subject matter will make you feel awful. I have only watched it twice and still can’t watch it. This time around, Aronofsky takes your mind on a ride with an ambitious ballet dancer who wants the role of a lifetime in a production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake ballet.
In the grand world of New York City ballet, genius and strict artistic director, Thomas Leroy (Cassel) is presenting Swan Lake as the company’s next production. This time around, he wants a new type of Swan Lake by stripping down the dance to make it more authentic and visceral. This time around, he will pick one ballerina to play both the graceful and innocent white swan along with the raw and seductive black swan. Many of the ballerinas in the company see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that could change their life forever. Before her forced retirement, the lead would have originally gone to the company’s former principal dancer Beth Macintyre (Ryder). Nina Sayers (Portman) is one of the ballerinas whose only life revolves around dancing and will do anything to become the next Beth and lead the play. Nina lives with her overbearing mother, Erica Sayers (Hershey), a former ballerina who now lives vicariously through her daughter as she never made it as a ballerina herself. Nina spends almost all her free time practicing and is known as a proficient and hard-working dancer who believes in perfection. She is the perfect person to play the innocent white swan, but Thomas doesn’t believe she has what it takes and the raw, seductive passion for portraying and embodying the black swan. Nina takes the risk and convinces Thomas that she has what it takes to be the lead. In an unexpected move, Thomas gives her the role. As Nina practices, she soon feels threatened by a new ballerina named Lily (Kunis), who would be the perfect black swan with her raw and passionate dancing. As Nina pushes herself more and more to become the perfect black swan, her mind and reality soon descend into madness.
The story is pretty simple, I must say, with a highly over ambitious ballet dancer in Nina who wants the opportunity to show her craft and be a well-known dancer. I found this intriguing because of how many films revolve around ballet. Now what I was expecting was the mind-f**k that was about to happen. One of the things I heard while doing sports is having that alter ego to get the job done and be competitive. What I also know is that you should never turn into your alter ego in real life. Aronofsky seems to show that Nina slowly descends into not only her alter ego but that her mental state is truly f**ked up with trying to display and be the role she wants.
I am not going to sit here and say I know what Swan Lake is about. I can get the jests of it, but overall, I have about enough idea of the play than a 3-year-old. From this film, I know there is a white swan who is innocent and graceful and a black swan who is straight seductive, and raw character. Nina can do the White Swan role perfectly, but her uptight bringing makes her a shitty choice for the Black Swan. When she gets this role, homegirl starts to hallucinate like no other. Aronofsky holds nothing back with blurring the line between reality and fantasy in Nina’s mind while trying to be the “perfect” black swan.
First, when Nina walks to the train, she walks past a woman who she thinks looks exactly like her but is far darker and more intense than her. It’s a split second but sows the seeds of Nina slowly losing it. At the Gala, Nina starts hallucinating by pulling her skin off her finger. In another scene, when Nina is watching Lily dance, Thomas suddenly appears and talks about Lily and her as a black swan; this scene shows that Nina thought this scene up in her mind. During the final rehearsal, Nina is straight-up losing it as her mind seems so far broken, she can’t hold onto reality. She looks in the mirror and looks like a twig. In this scene, the mirror looks at her, looking directly with a sadistic smirk on her face. When she is practicing alone, she moves, but her reflection doesn’t. During that night, she hallucinates Lilly and Thomas banging each other. Nina goes to Beth and returns her stuff that she took when Beth stabs her face, and Nina sees her face on Beth. When she finally returns home, the paintings in her mom’s room say sweet girl over and over again. When homegirl runs into her room, her eyes turn red, and the place she was scratching starts to transform into a creature.
Even with her mind going, Nina manages to transform into the Black Swan, and Aronofsky pulls this off beautifully in the final dance of Nina. After “stabbing” Lily, Nina seems to fully embrace her wild side as the Black Swan. When Nina comes out as the Black Swan, a role that she struggled to obtain through the movie, her eyes look evil as she comes close to the camera. We soon realize that the scratches on her back become feathers and that her arms transform into wings until she is entirely the Black Swan.
Now I want to talk about the sex talk and assaults in this film. I really don’t know if it was all in Nina’s head, but damn is the sexual assault high. When Nina asks for the role, Thomas forces himself on her and kisses her. If he wanted a surprise, she should’ve kneed him in the dick, but she only bit him. Then after the Gala, Thomas asks her about sex and says to touch herself. The following day, Nina begins to masturbate, and just as she comes closer, she looks and sees her mother sleeping in her room. Straight-up creepy. Nina has trouble being the black swan role during practice as she is stiff and can’t lose control. Thomas straight-up asks the dancer if he would f**k Nina, and Thomas says no because she is cold. While practicing alone with Thomas, dude kisses her and gropes her. Then he stops and says that him seducing her, and he needs it to be the other way around. The whole train scene when that old man makes sexual advances at her. She should’ve kicked that old man in the dick. Also, the entire Nina and Lily “sex” scene was okay.
Let’s give a quick shoutout to the cinematography of this film. Showing the deterioration of Nina’s mental state as she comes closer and closer to losing reality is a sight to see, but certain scenes stand out that really show how this movie will go. In the first scene, when Nina is dancing around, and the camera is right on her. When dude spins around and changes into a demon with feathers. Even if it’s a dream, it sets the tone. Another scene is when Thomas talks about what he is looking for and who has what it takes to play both the white and black swan, the camera shoots a mirror that shows two of Thomas. When Nina is sitting in the bathtub, and she goes underwater. The camera shows her thinking, but when it shows Nina’s view. She sees a maniacal version of herself. Finally, the final dance when the camera moves with Nina. Makes you feel like you’re her actual dance partner.
As far as performances go, Natalie Portman as Nina Sayers was top-notch. She played the role with passion, and I don’t know if she did her dances or not, but homegirl really brought it with this role. First, the whole idea of her being perfect showed how Nina repeatedly struggled with being perfect and always practicing and having a particular body image. Portman really showed that Nina was freakin’ losing her absolute mind with peeling off skin and constantly clipping her nails.
What added to Portman’s greatness is the supporting cast. Even with a minor role, Barbara Hershey as Erica Sayers was the overbearing mother. She always worried about her daughter and seemed to add to her unstable mental state. How are you going to get mad about a cake? That is a perfectly good cake, and you going to throw it away. What’s wrong with you? Then we have the beautiful Mila Kunis as Lily. Kunis played Lily as one who just wanted to have fun, but her dancing was raw yet in absolute control. In Nina’s mind, she was the enemy trying to take her role but wasn’t in truth. Vincent Cassel as Thomas Leroy was also strong as the strict director who wanted his play to be grand but also a pain in the ass.
Black Swan is another one of those Darren Aronofsky’s films that will make you have another mind trip. It shows how someone really wants to be perfect in their craft and loses all sense of reality to obtain that perfection. Is it on the level of Requiem for a Dream? Naw, but it is still a good movie to watch. The tone of the film is dark, like in most of Darren Aronofsky’s films. Portman is fantastic in her award-winning role. Maybe it’s best to actually watch Swan Lake before this film but have fun watching.
