Black Swan Review

Can it be that only 19 days into 2011, I've already seen the best film I'm going to see all year? Black Swan is an astonishing film, frightening, tense, unsettling and disturbing and it catapults itself into my top 5 cinema experiences of all time. It just means eleven and a half months of films that simply don't measure up...

Natalie Portman plays Nina, a ballerina desperate to ascend in the company she dances for. Aging Prima Ballerina Beth (Winona Ryder) is about to leave the company and company director Thomas (Vincent Cassel) seeks his new Swan Queen who, to perform Swan Lake, must be able to dance both sides of the role, the pure, innocent White Swan and the evil doppelganger, the Black Swan. Nina is all technique but is controlled and tightly wound. She excels at the White Swan but cannot tap into those darker aspects of herself in order to convince as the Black Swan. That is how the film starts and over the next couple of hours we experience Nina's psychological and physical breakdown and transformation into the eponymous Black Swan.

From minute one, Black Swan unsettles you and it retains a tone and atmosphere throughout its entire running time that pins you to your seat and simply won't let you move. What's absolutely fascinating about the film is that it's covering very similar territory to writer/director Darren Aronofsky's last film, The Wrestler. Both films examine a very specific, very niche world. Both films examine, sometimes in eye watering detail, exactly what the participants of that world suffer for their sport/art and we see how uncompromising both can be in the way the wrestlers/dancers end up destroyed by their respective vocations. Just as we watched Randy "The Ram" Robinson cut himself with a concealed razor blade to make the audience think he is genuinely hurt in the ring, so we watch Nina tape up her bleeding, battered feet and squeeze them into what on the outside are dainty ballet shoes, as well as watching her physio "pop" limbs back into place. Much of Black Swan occurs in grimy corridors, train carriages, tiny rooms, intimate in exactly the same way The Wrestler was. What's incredible though is that, rather than examining thse things in the form of a character drama, he now examines them in the form of a psychological horror film; a body horror in the tradition of early David Cronenberg and a descent into madness as compelling as The Innocents, Psycho or any of the greats of that subgenre of horror.

I really can't overstate how well this combination of genres works. The natural horror of what a ballet dancer puts herself through morphing into the body horror of her mental descent is utterly compelling. It walks that fine line of actually being comical but never loses its grip on what it's doing. So much of the film can be read in multiple ways and it's to the film's credit that you are as engrossed in Nina's situation as you are. 80% of the film is shot in either over the shoulder shots or big close ups, and the whole film feels like it's invading Nina's psychological as well as physical space as a result. The net effect is to completely unsettle, as well as leave us in no doubt that we are experiencing this film purely from her point of view. Regular Aronofsky collaborators Matthew Libatique and Clint Mansell contribute enormously, as they always do, their photography and music respectively adding massively to the overall tone and atmosphere of the piece.

In terms of performances, there really isn't a weak link. The film rests on Natalie Portman's delicate shoulders and her performance is utterly fearless. Her slow breakdown is completely believable and, as "big" as this film goes, her performance never felt overwrought or hysterical. The most interesting character after Nina for me was her Mother, played brilliantly by Barbara Hershey. This relationship throws back to Carrie as Piper Laurie's religious fanatic sought to closit and undermine her telekinetic daughter. But this character is way more interesting because of the way her motives are so ambiguous. She was a ballerina who, she tells us, gave it all up to raise her daughter. But we have no way of knowing how true that is. Maybe she's as over protective as she is because she knows the psychological toll the role of the Swan Queen takes. Maybe she suffered the same and its left her unhinged, crying to herself, painting those strange pictures in her room. Or maybe she's just a Mother and it's experiencing her through Nina's eyes that warps our view of her. Barbara Hershey plays it such that most interpretations of her are valid. Vincent Cassel is suitably sleazy as the company director, opening Nina up to her raw sexuality, possibly to get the best show he can, possibly for his own gratification, but, strangely, also finding moments of compassion in the small looks and glances he gives his "little princess." Mila Kunis also has a difficult job as Lily the company dancer and understudy to Nina who may be trying to steal the role away from Nina, or who may not even exist at all. As Nina seeks to find her black swan, it's possible that she externalises her own inner darkness into an imagined persona. Again, Kunis plays it such that a case can be made for either interpretation.

Black Swan is an incredible mix of horror film, art film and thriller. It is unlike anything I've seen in a very long time and, true I only saw it last night, but I can't stop thinking about it and I know it's going to stay with me for a very long time. It's a film that will mostly be overlooked by the awards season and that's absolutely to its credit. This is a dark, strange, compulsive and, let me say it again, unsettling film that demands to be seen in the cinema. Not for everyone perhaps but it was certainly for me.

19 days in and 2011 has peaked... It was good while it lasted.

9.5/10