This news is particularly saddening, since Black Swan is one of his best works to date, the product of a confident, skilled artist who is in total control of his talents. Here, young dancer Nina (Natalie Portman), is cast in the production’s lead role, and is tasked with performing as both the virginal White Swan, and the antagonistic, seductive Black Swan. Although, while she is perfectly capable of executing the poise and grace of the former character, she is lacking a certain something when it comes to the darker side of the performance, something beyond technique, which director Thomas (Vincent Cassel) pushes her to attain. On its most simple narrative level, Black Swan covers the strain of performance and the myriad issues that come from a yearning for the spotlight. However, whereas Randy ‘The Ram’ was a seasoned pro desiring one last fling, Nina is a newcomer, and her problems are all related to the anxiety of making a lasting first impression. To that end, paranoia reigns, with threats coming from her predecessor, Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder), and her major rival, the free-spirited Californian, Lily (Mila Kunis). They both hold something Nina lacks, one, experience, the other, a sense of unbridled sexuality, and it is this latter quality that Thomas, through candid manipulation, hopes to see on stage. And this is to say nothing of its daring genre flourishes. To relate in detail would be to spoil its power, especially as we’re months away from Black Swan‘s UK theatrical release, but Aronofsky’s pursuit of a Polanski-ish blend of realism and expressionistic flair places the film on a whole other level. Safe to say, the pursuit of perfection gets the better of Nina, who is of a temperament unsuited to weathering the stress of such a role. That seems to suggest an eventual breaking point, but Black Swan does not rely on a grand reveal, or a cheap twist. Instead, Aronofsky peppers the film with unnerving, creepy, ambiguous moments, keeping the audience on edge as the tension mounts. These sequences are shot with a compelling, hyper-real immediacy, with Matthew Libatique’s cinematography unafraid to follow the film’s more theatrical moments of expressionism, yet still maintaining a real-world foundation. Portman’s performance is also key, not only as she is providing the majority of the dancing herself, but because she so closely mirrors her character’s duality, looking gaunt and under-nourished, ribs showing, body broken by the ordeal of ballet, yet transforming before our eyes into the twisted titular persona. Both Kunis and Cassel function perfectly as dramatic foils, but are also delightful as they dissipate the atmosphere, bringing with them a welcome amount of humour in response to Nina’s sociopathic behaviour. Throughout, we can spot thematic threads from Aronofsky’s body of emotionally raw, character-based studies of obsession and tragedy. Indeed, at times Black Swan feels like a culmination of his last 12 years of distinctive, astounding filmmaking. Between now and its release in February, we should find out for certain what lies for him next. And even if the next chapter of his career is in a more franchise-shaped context, let’s hope that he is allowed to continue this streak.
title: “Black Swan Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-08-24” author: “Adrian Vitullo”
I imagine most people are aware of the premise behind Black Swan. Natalie Portman is Nina, a talented but reserved ballerina, who is chosen as the lead in a new production of Swan Lake. Black Swan is an intense experience, and one which stays with you long afterwards. From the relatively simple setup explained above, it explores complex territory of obsession, psychosis, replacement anxiety and unchecked ambition, all filtered through a combination of what seems, at first, to be a ballet movie, but ultimately reveals itself to be a horror film. Obsession is an overriding thematic concern of Aronofsky. Pi deals with a brilliant young mathematician, who becomes unhinged after discovering and then losing a 216 digit number which unlocks the stock market. Requiem For A Dream is about addiction, whether to drugs or TV, or to each other. Quite clearly, Aronofsky is a director with a need to explore this theme, and always show the brutal and often lonely consequences of addiction and singular purpose. Here he showcases this again, but with paradoxically subtler and broader brushstrokes. How far will someone go to achieve their ambitions? How can you create a new star? These are the questions that Black Swan poses, and Nina is at the centre of this, and is the fulcrum of every conscious and unconscious desire expressed throughout the film. Portman is the key to this believable transformation, and is worth every single line of praise written about her. She is incredible in the role and inhabits Nina in a way that I have rarely seen from a well-known actor or actress in a long time. At no time did I think I was watching Portman ‘act’ her way through a scene. She instead breathes Nina with every fibre of her being. The physical pain she puts herself through in pursuit of perfection is incredibly viscera. Every cracked joint and stretched sinew is testament to the preparation she reportedly put herself through, yet is nothing compared to the depths of psychological pain she begins to experience. And no matter how accomplished you are physically are as an actor, it takes something very special to create a breakdown that real. However, every character is after their personal grail, not just Nina. While hers is the story we follow, and whose immersion into the psyche of the Black Swan character becomes all consuming, time is set aside to delve into the inner workings of her mother, Erica, played by the excellent Barbara Hershey, ex-prima ballerina, Beth (Winona Ryder), and ballet director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel). Lily, too, has her own ambitions, but they are tied in closely to those of Nina, as the lines between the two characters become intentionally blurred. Erica and Beth have a similar role and similar obsessions, like much of this film. They can be seen to represent two sides of the same coin. They are the voice of supposed experience, and show a corrupted maternal nature. Erica wants what she views as best for her daughter, Nina, and hopes she can achieve the success that eluded her, and which she partly blames her daughter for. However, her love for her has turned into a need for control over every aspect of Nina, and a desire to own her which is absolute. Both women display an effective madness inherent in their characters. Ryder is tasked with providing a far more theatrical nature to hers, while Hershey manages to combine a mother’s protective instinct, together with an unhealthy interest in her daughter which borders on the extreme. Then there is Cassel. Almost floating above the fray, he is a simmering and powerful presence, and one which you may come away from the film believing is responsible for everything. He is the catalyst for unleashing Nina’s dark side, with a seemingly clichéd attempt to take advantage of her sexually, which ,upon further reflection, is all part of his ambition and obsession to create a production of Swan Lake which is genuinely new, passionate and compelling to the audience. The film craft exhibited by Aronofsky and his crew is also exquisite and integral to the action. The increasingly dreamlike and fragmentary aesthetic perfectly captures Nina’s descent and keeps the audience constantly guessing as to what is real and what is illusionary, often within the same frame. The film retains the same loose one camera setup of The Wrestler, giving the action a naturalistic, semi-documentary feel at times. But, unlike his previous film, Aronofsky has welded this technique with occasional flashes of the hyper-reality evidenced in Requiem, but instead of the preparation of a heroin shot, it is instead the preparation of ballet shoes for practice. For a director noted for powerful endings, this is possibly his best, combing both the power of Requiem and the cathartic release of The Fountain, as well elements of The Wrestler which are best left unsaid for fear of going too much into spoiler territory. Suffice it to say, Black Swan will be a contender for film of the year, and is one of the finest I have seen in a long time. It is a concise, multi-faceted, and compelling insight into the breakdown of a woman striving to become the ultimate embodiment of her art, and serves equally well as a psychological study, a thriller, and a good old fashioned body horror.
