Black Swan: disturbing, beautiful and creative

By Emily Nichol     1/13/11 6:00pm

Swan Lake is an obvious ballet to use as a foundation for a psychological horror film; rife with supernatural occurrences, identity thieves and mistaken personalities, it seems unlikely that the ballerinas participating in the performance could not be emotionally affected. Darren Aronofsky, known for his other dark, cerebral dramas like Pi and Requiem for a Dream, creatively emulates a young ballerina's artistic struggle with her first big part and her resulting mental breakdown in his new film Black Swan.Black Swan's plot very loosely follows the plot of the ballet: Nina Sayers (V for Vendetta's Natalie Portman) is trapped, not in a swan's body, but in an overly competitive dance company, held captive by her bizarre and constraining mother (The Portrait of a Lady's Barbara Hershey). Nina becomes increasingly self-destructive as the pressure from her role, her competition with new company member Lily (Forgetting Sarah Marshall's Mila Kunis) and her developing sexual curiosity escalate. As Nina is pushed both emotionally and physically, her imagination consumes her, culminating in a dramatic opening night.

Portman's talked-about performance is worthy of the hype. For a long stretch of the film her expression is petrified in a gaze of pathetic fear, but Portman does a fantastic job overall, portraying a combination of vulnerability, paranoia, grace and raw ambition with a subtle intensity rare to her generation of actresses. Hershey is especially fantastic as Erica Sayers, Nina's enormously overbearing mother, who poorly handles her daughter's (and her own) descent into self-destruction. Also notable is Kunis' Lily, who offers a sexy, languid counterpoint to Nina's perfectionism.

Although the movie does feature some cliché horror film effects intended only to make you jump out of your seat, the film's strongest feature is easily its editing. During Nina's audition for Swan Lake, the cinematography was exquisite; close-ups of contorted ballet slippers and movements that mirror the ballerina's capture the beauty and violence of dance. Characters see themselves walking down the street and actors' faces blend into one another, making the audience feel as if they are experiencing a schizophrenic stress breakdown along with Nina. The film's short, disjointed cuts alternate reality with Nina's delusions, which confuses and excites the viewer as he or she attempts to separate the two worlds.

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Despite great performances and creative editing, the film was hard to watch. The first half of the movie didn't have a lot of action and strange special effects distracts from Nina's final performance and the movie's ultimate plot, but the most negative aspect of the film was how stressful it was to watch. The film absorbs the audience into its plot too well, leaving the viewer feeling uncomfortable and disoriented at the movie's end. While Black Swan is an edgy departure from recent suspense films, its lagging beginning and unceasing tension detracts from its ?beautiful acting and cinematography.

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