Director Darren Aronofsky is one of the most exciting directors working today, making bold and unexpected films, shaking up conventions and branding it all with a style of his own. However, after his initial strong lineup of films with Pi, Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain, Aronofsky quit writing his own films and followed it up with the solid, but pedantic The Wrestler, something that felt like Oscar fodder ala Million Dollar Baby.
Black Swan is a return to the exciting Aronofsky, the director who isn’t afraid to take his films out there, to shock, repulse and disgust, to shake things up, literally. At the same time, he takes the sense of realism and grounded filmmaking he adapted for The Wrestler to create a jarring dramatic thriller, seeped as much in the neurotic psychosis of its protagonist and her drive for professional success.
For Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), this demands precision, power and control. The beginning of another ballet season has her in strong contention to dance the lead of a production of Swan Lake, but with one little hitch: the lead dancer must play both the white and the black swan. Nina can embody the white swan perfectly, her own life mimics the innocence of the white swan so well, but it’s the black swan that evades her talent.
Therefore, the production of the play becomes a not so subtle parallel to the play itself as Nina must struggle with the duality of her roles. How can she both embody the innocence and embrace the darkness? It manifests in her personal life as a fellow dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis), introduces her to the dark pleasures of the world and her boss, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Casell), becomes sexually aggressive towards her.
But after these days of evading evil, she returns home to her plus toys, laced bed and pink sheets. It’s the room of a girl perpetually stuck in a Disney fantasy, naïve and innocent. How can such a person even become the black swan? Where would such a drive come from? At times, the juxtaposition can seem a bit too heavy-handed and silly, but as the film begins to climax and the psychological degradation of Nina grows into amazingly bizarre hallucinations, the desired effect is achieved.
Outside the truly bizarre and uncanny elements, the film is already a dark tell of obsession as Nina stresses herself physically and psychologically to keep up whit the rigorous demands of being a ballet dancer. It’s a vicious, competitive and tiring world where weakness will be exploited. It’s why Nina becomes such a fascinating character, her softness makes the play of actions all the more dramatic.
But is this the film for Darren Aronofsky? There’s no question he does a fantastic job with the material, but he never achieves seamless transition between the surreal and subtle. He’s better suited to the spats of insane visual madness, leaving sequences of subtle drama and elegant dance are left more in the able hands of cinematographer Matthew Libatique to mold into something subtle and graceful.
The horrific, scary elements often clash against the more subtly dramatic. It’s still a strong film, one of the year’s best, but in the hands of a director more suited for the work, it could have been a masterpiece. The film is reminiscent of a Roman Polanski film, but without the ability to seamlessly transfer between the dramatic and frightening. In other words, Aronofsky lacks the grace of the subjects which he tries to desperately to capture but that still doesn’t stop his subject from shining.
© 2010 James Blake Ewing
