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Black Swan - Movie Review
GRADE: C+
Coming from a successful award circuit with The Wrestler - which consequently restarted Mickey Rourke’s acting career - director Darren Aronofsky returns with the ballet-based psychological thriller Black Swan. Following in the footsteps of Aronofsky’s previous films (Pi, Requiem For A Dream), Black Swan is a dark psychological nightmare with disturbing cinematography that freely crawls underneath the skin of its audience. In his newest venture, it seems as if Aronofsky took stylistic notes from Jean-Luc Godard and at the same time attempted to make a vague statement. Essentially, Black Swan is a film that has too much style and pretentiousness rather than its implied substance.
Like The Wrestler, Black Swan converges most of its attention onto a single character. Natalie Portman strays from her archetypal roles and impeccably plays the innocent character of Nina; an aspiring ballerina who receives the star role of the “Swan Queen” in an upcoming rendition of Swan Lake. The production of Swan Lake requires the queen to play the innocent White Swan and the provocative Black Swan. Primarily, the film focuses on Portman’s conservative character, who must under pressure, contrastingly channel her inner malevolence to “perfectly” perform her role. Portman IS the highlight of this film. Like with Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, Portman defines herself as an actress in this film. Although it takes an excessive amount of time to buildup to Nina’s breakdown, the final half of Portman’s performance is flawless. The spectrum of emotion and insanity she displays is so real, she has truly locked the “best actress” category for the upcoming award season.
While Portman’s performance is flawless, this brings to question the real point of the film. Aronofsky places symbolism in the film that is vague and at the same time obvious. With different scenes of shocking imagery such as the sensual scene between Kunis and Portman, it is really difficult to grasp why the film possesses such figurative scenes. There are various points of blatant symbolism, giving the impression that the film attempts to be deep. An exemplification of this complaint is the non-stop sensuality seen in the film. I acknowledge that it is to bring out Portman’s immorality and show the effects of a disturbed artist, but there is just so much that it overshadows the brilliance of the film. There are too many figurative aspects in Black Swan. That is where the film loses substance, it tries to be cerebrally abstract even when it is not. The film really should have focused on Portman’s mental breakdown rather than employing figurative imagery.
Even though the film’s “figurative” impression refrains itself from being a masterpiece, Black Swan is one of the better technical films that 2010 offers. Set aside the excessive focus on deepness, Aronofsky’s film is visually gorgeous and its intensity immense. The visual imagery is the disturbing essence that you expect from the director. It digs into your emotions, and it stays there throughout the movie. Black Swan is gritty and raw, and the usage of handheld filming is subtle yet effective (unlike movies like Hancock, which uses it in an irrelevant fashion).
Overall, Black Swan is a visually striking film and a unique one at that. Black Swan disturbs, but that sadly is solely what drives the film as a whole. Arronofsky attempts to place an nonexistent underlining meaning that tries to intertwine itself with an arthouse feel. It can essentially be seen as a pretentious failure in an attempt at that genre, but hopefully audiences will just ignore the film’s senseless statement. Grade: C+
