Finding an audience for a film like Black Swan is difficult for two reasons. First, it’s about the ballet, which is enjoyed and understood by a relatively small portion of the population. Second, it’s about the ballet, which men tend to avoid completely.
Director Darren Aronofsky has created a film that conquers both problems – Black Swan makes the ballet accessible, interesting, and for the male (and female) audience, downright sexy.
Nina (Natalie Portman) is a technically brilliant but emotionally underdeveloped young dancer. Her director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel), has reservations about her ability to dance the lead in his production of Swan Lake. The role calls for her to play the Swan Queen, an innocent girl trapped in the body of a swan, and also her evil twin, the Black Swan, who seduces the girl’s true love, eventually driving her to suicide. Thomas thinks Nina’s Swan Queen is excellent, but she is perhaps too repressed to portray the seductive, sensual Black Swan. To play the Black Swan, he says, “you have to lose yourself.”
That’s just what happens, but not in the way he means. From the moment she awakes in her bedroom – painted pink and filled with stuffed animals – it’s clear that Nina is not prepared for Thomas’s insistence that she confront her sexuality. Adding to the pressure is competition from a less-talented but more seductive rival, Lily (Mila Kunis), who Thomas sees as the perfect example of the Black Swan, and Nina’s claustrophobic relationship with her domineering mother (Barbara Hershey), who has failed artistic dreams of her own.
But she dives into the part, striving for perfection, and as she becomes obsessed with it, she begins to see dark reflections of herself following her everywhere. Soon, Nina is not only unsure about her performance, she’s not entirely sure of reality.
The parallels to the story of Swan Lake are clear. Nina carries a torch for Thomas, and her feelings grow as he encourages her to seduce him through her performance. But offstage, he seems more drawn to Lily, fuelling Nina’s visions. Lily even has two black wings tattooed on her back. Nina fears she will be replaced, discarded as easily as Thomas turns his back on his former protege, Beth (Winona Ryder), in an early scene.
It’s a dramatic thriller, to be sure, but in many ways, Black Swan also plays like a sports film. Ballet dancers are incredible athletes, and significant moments are spent watching them rehearse, prepare their equipment, and suffer injuries both athletic and self-inflicted. (The film has an unexpected amount of gore.) But even as Nina becomes more unhinged, her hallucinations more violent, we know that in the end she will face the audience. And knowing the story of Swan Lake, we can only fear the worst.
Black Swan is riveting and creepy in the best possible way, with excellent performances from the entire cast. Ballet is an art of extreme emotion, effectively captured here for everyone, not just the regular Swan Lake crowd.