Review - Black Swan

Let me start by saying that I liked Black Swan. As a straight up thriller I thought it worked on every level. You have suspense, creepiness, and a few jolt moments thrown in for good measure. However, that being said, I wouldn't put it in my Top Ten of the Year. Maybe it's because the film deals with ballet, a subject I care nothing about, or because every other critic in the world is heaping loads of praise upon it, therefore I went in with high expectations and was simply underwhelmed...but that wasn't exactly the case though. It's difficult for me to put into words, especially since there isn't much I can say about the film that I disliked, it's just...ballet.

Anyway, enough of that, let's get on with what made this film good: layers. There's a lot going on in this flick, and I'm sure that if you were to watch it a second time you'd pick up on stuff that went completely over your head. For example, the relationship between Natalie Portman and her mother is just plain fuckin' weird. You've got tension of all kinds going on here; creepiness, anger, jealousy...and sexual tension?

This has been a source of much debate on the Internet as to whether the characters have some sort of weird sexual relationship, and it'd be difficult for me to tell you a precise moment in the film where this is touched upon without seeing it again, but it was just a feeling I had when watching the movie that something else was going on besides simple jealousy between a daughter succeeding where her mother failed. Hell, you could probably write a whole essay - a whole book- on the bizarre relationship between these two characters, but I don't want to reveal too much and risk spoiling some of the best and most unsettling parts of the film, so let's move on to what everyone's talking about, Natalie Portman's performance.

It's true, she does a helluva job. She begins as a sheltered, somewhat naive young woman who desperately wants to get the lead role in "The Swan Princess". She eventually does, but the difficulty of playing a role that requires her to unleash her dark side begins to take its toll as she struggles against self doubt, the harsh realities of the ballet business, and the growing monster inside that is slowly taking control of her. It's a hard role to pull off, but Portman manages it splendidly. I think I can speak for almost everyone else when I say she's definitely a lock for the Best Actress Oscar.

While there may not be a whole lot going on visually speaking (most of the film takes place in dance rooms or apartment buildings) the direction of the film is superb. The movie takes a little bit to get going, but when it does things get really interesting. "Slow burner" is the phrase I would use to describe Black Swan. The film gets progressivly darker as Portman's character sinks further and further into insanity, finally leading up to the night of her big performance where the audience is treated to a spectacle of lights, bizarre hallucinations, and a great twist that will leave you going "ah wahhhh".  There are a lot of things being juggled here, and I wouldn't be surprised if Darren Aronofsky gets a surprise win for Best Director over David Fincher.

You know...as I finish this review, I think I've finally realized what my problem with the film was. It wasn't the fact that the main back drop of the story was a ballet, and it wasn't over-hype from the critics; it's that the film is genuinely unsettling and it simply made me feel weird, disturbed, and feeling as if my mind had been slightly molested - a "mind fuck" if you will.

So, if you were to ask me to describe the movie in one sentence, I would say that Black Swan is a slow burning "mind fuck" of a film.

My Rating - 8.5/10