Nina (Natalie Portman), a talented but disturbed ballerina, finds herself in a bittersweet position when her director retires the company’s star (Winona Rider) and puts her in the leading role of a revised version of Swan Lake.  The taxing requirements of the role—the technical differences a dancer must master in order to play both the innocent white swan and her evil alter ego, the black swan—immediately begin to affect Nina’s already fragile character.  When new dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis), begins to sabotage Nina, intent on stealing her role, Nina begins to lose her grip on reality, and the results are both horrific and profound.

Black Swan is an artful visual work, the direction (Pi’s Darren Aronofsky) both beautiful and stylistic.  The dance scenes are amazing, particularly those in the opening night performance, the camera taking one out of oneself for the moment and into the dancer.  Aronofsky’s portrayal of Nina’s descent into madness is well done, the visual portrayal of her slow self-destruction both disturbing and absorbing.  With that said, the tension that goes along with her torment does not build so much as it does remain unsettlingly constant until nearly the final moments of the film.
Picture
hematically, Black Swan is brilliant.  Aronofsky show’s Nina’s transformation from innocent and anxious “white swan” into the confident and sexy “black swan” with phenomenal use of black and white imagery.  Nina begins in white: her clothing is white, the cinematography is mostly white, and her character is naïve and innocent.  The scene in which she stands on the white marble staircase, wearing all white, with white marble predominantly in the background, the show’s director (Thomas Leroy) in a black suit, is a remarkable shot.  As the film progresses and Nina slowly gives up more of herself to her art to perfect the “black swan,” she begins to wear grey with her white.  As she loses her innocence—both as the result of her director’s sexual advances and Lily’s destructive rivalry—Nina’s clothing, as well as the cinematography, increasingly include more predominance of black imagery.

Even more beautiful, however, is the depiction of the artist’s symbolic giving up oneself for one’s art.  Nina’s sacrifice reflects the sacrifice all artists experience in refining their creative endeavors—and also how all-consuming one’s art can become if taken to too dark of a place.  Her mother (Barbara Hershey), who had given up dancing due to her pregnancy with Nina, is key to understanding Nina’s character, as her mental illness and need to continue expressing herself artistically (both clearly depicted by her childlike paintings) reflect Nina’s own journey as the troubled artist.  Nina’s final scene is both beautiful and profound, and her performance is amazing.

My only two complaints are the pacing of Nina’s anxiety, which I already noted, and the erotic scene between Nina and Lily.  While I appreciate the symbolism of Lily’s character, and the concept of her character thematically making love to herself is sound, the actual character motivation seemed a little lacking to me.  The fact that Lily had dosed Nina’s drink with ecstasy only makes the scene partially forgiving, but without any prior indication that Nina might have homoerotic fantasies, the scene, as beautifully executed as it is, just didn’t work for me.

Finally, I must applaud the filmmakers and producers involved with this film for such a provocative ending.  Black Swan offers hope that there still exists a market beyond the high demand for the happily-ever-after, and I give huge kudos to the people responsible for that.  Because of such artistic choices, like so many of Aronofsky’s films, Black Swan is like fine literature on screen and I highly recommend it to fans of art house and alternative film.
 


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