Black Swan Review

• 17th Jan 2011

A night at the ballet will never be the same again after this chilling behind-the-scenes look at the life of a Prima Ballerina from the creative mastermind himself, Darren Aronofsky. The premise of this cinematic beauty is nothing particularly original, since film began there have been countless artists going insane in the pursuit of perfection, but Aronofsky’s unique vision and directing style give Black Swan real edge and individuality, particularly given that it is set in modern day New York City.

Natalie Portman (who kept her absolutely stunning dance ability on the quiet until now!) is Nina, ballerina extraordinaire and smothered mummy’s girl desperate to forge her own career in the high-pressure, high-demand world of professional ballet. It looks like she’s getting everything she wants when she lands the role of the Swan Queen in the ‘done to death’ but with a twist Swan Lake, but the pure, innocent Nina is having some trouble dancing the sensual, tempting, seductive black swan. Still, practise makes perfect and under the watchful guidance of choreographer Thomas (Vincent Cassel) and with the support and love of her new friend Lily (Mila Kunis, absolutely beautiful in her black sheep role) she looks set to take the dancing world by storm.

But the further she gets into rehearsals, the more she realizes that playing the black swan is about more than simply dancing and that’s where my problem with the film kicks in. The story suggests that it is her obsession with perfectly embodying the black swan which starts her off down the spiral of madness but, practically speaking this is not how it happens in the film. In fact, the first sign foreboding Nina’s insanity appears in the first scene of the film, before she knows anything about Swan Lake or her role in the ballet.

The symptoms of her madness certainly do manifest themselves through her desperation to get the part right as the film progresses, but they are not specific to her as a dancer trying to play a role. As far as my woefully inadequate knowledge of basic psychology is concerned, Nina is suffering from some kind of paranoid schizophrenia and as such she would be experiencing exactly the same symptoms were she to be vying for employee of the month in Halifax. Except instead of being related to ballet, they’d be about APRs.

As much as this shouldn’t impact the power of the story, it does mean that I thought of Nina less as a desperate artist and more as a mental patient who happened to be a phenomenal dancer – so it becomes more of a ‘madness’ film than it is a ballet film, which somehow doesn’t quite suit the premise and the film adopts a distinct sense of being disjointed and not quite fully formed.

This incompletion does not turn Black Swan into a bad film by any means, but it’s ‘almost-there’ status is incredibly frustrating as it is millimetres away from being a truly great film for so many reasons; unfortunately, it’s perfections are what make its flaws all the more noticeable and what people will no doubt remember about this film more than anything are its bountiful perfections.

Dani Singer