Black Swan

It might be a stretch to say that all of Darren Aronofsky's films are about some form of paranoia. I have not seen The Fountain, and I was only able to start The Wrestler before I fell asleep, which wasn't the movie's fault at all. But Pi and Requiem for a Dream certainly draw on the paranoia theme: did that really just happen? Did she ever get that call saying she would be on television? Is he really being chased by dangerous people? In Pi, the main character installs multiple locks on his door to make sure no one gets into his wild, computered-out apartment. In Requiem, everyone does drugs in the cover of New York City buildings, locked away from the outside world, trying to catch a dream that won't ever, ever come.

So it's no surprise that Black Swan follows suit into the realm of endless, seemingly unprovoked paranoia. The story is simple: Nina (Natalie Portman), a twenty-something ballerina in New York City, gets cast as the Swan Queen in her company's performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake after the company's prima ballerina (Wynona Ryder) proves to be getting too old. She is a natural fit for the shy, virginal White Swan, but she has trouble adapting to the seductive twin role of the Black Swan. Her director (Vincent Cassel) constantly tries to bring it out but each attempt comes up short. Her overbearing, clingy mother (Barbara Hershey) doesn't do much to help her stress either, vicariously living through her daughter's dream while never allowing Nina any room to breathe. A new ballerina, Lily (Mila Kunis), shows promise and a certain devil-may-care attitude that the director notices early on, threatening Nina's security as the Swan Queen. Their rivalry swings in and out of friendly and passive aggressive confrontations, until everything boils over and goes wild. As Nina becomes the Black Swan, things become increasingly uncertain, until no one is sure what's reality and what's all inside her head.

I was able to see it the first time for free, thanks to my friend Clio Brown, who knows everyone who works at the Ritz theaters in Philadelphia, and is my golden ticket in these dark, desperate college times. We walked out in a daze, both of us already obsessed with talking about this movie. When we went out later that night we were still talking about it, trying to pick around all of the surreal images that Aronofsky dishes out in this film. After another day of thinking about it, the film left my mind until my brother came home from college, which means we're gonna spend a lot of money at the movies. We followed True Grit at Midnight on Tuesday with a 10:30 PM screening of Black Swan at Neshaminy's AMC theater. The audience was mostly teenagers on Christmas break from high school, and it didn't seem like they liked it very much. My brother and our friend Dave enjoyed it very much however, and I was pleased to be there with them for their first viewing.

There is so much to say about this movie, but I'll start with my general consensus. I think that this movie might be the best of the year, but it's a hard and diverse crop to pick from. My other favorites from this year include The Social Network and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, two movies that are very different from one another and even more different from Black Swan. I can assure you that I will see Scott Pilgrim more than I will ever see the other two, but that doesn't mean it's the best necessarily. Aronofsky has been around for a while, and though he's always been respected, he hasn't gotten the wins he needs from those dumb, dumb Academy voters. But I think this might be his year. It wouldn't surprise me if this stole Best Picture from The Social Network, which is really the only other true contender in that race at this point, and the nominees haven't even been announced yet. True Grit is still too fresh in my mind to add to that list, but something tells me the Academy won't give the Coen Brothers another Best Picture statue for another western, even if it was really fucking good.

Visually this film was remarkable. Regardless of your opinion on handheld filming, this film certainly needed this aesthetic. It's not for a pseudo-documentary thing or anything silly like that. It was for a point-of-view experience which allows the audience to remain in the dark about what's happening around Nina, who is in every single scene in the movie. The dance scenes, from the remarkable opening inside Nina's dream all the way to Opening Night, seem much smoother than the rest of the film, like the choreography was made for the camera movements. These allow you to feel the rhythm of the dance, the way the dancers know it and breathe it every day. Everything outside the studio is unsure to Nina. Things are becoming more and more foreign, and more and more the audience falls into her paranoia, walking fast behind her through the city streets wondering what crazy shit is going to happen next. All of the special effects in this film are seamless, dreamlike, and completely breathtaking. It's refreshing that they're not there to show off how great CG is, but how wonderful it can be in digging right into the viewer, forcing them some sort of catharsis, and confusing them as to whether or not any of it is really happening.

I keep mentioning that unsure, not-quite-right feeling you get while you watch this movie. The movie starts off pretty normal. Exposition, exposition, blah blah. She has a small, seemingly innocent rash on her shoulder that her mother points out, but nothing serious. When she's on the subway for the company's first rehearsal, she thinks she sees someone familiar through another car window, but she shakes it off. After she wins the role, things get weirder. She is getting strange cuts around her cuticles that seem to come and go when they please, she keeps seeing doppelgangers of herself that turn out to be nothing, fleeting glimpses that we all have from time to time. Moments where we go, "Huh?? What?" on the street when we are so sure we see someone who we know it can't be, only these things are happening to Nina constantly. Aronofsky twists and turns her world, almost to the point where you're never quite sure when she's awake or in some sort of waking dream. The only place things seem sane is the studio, but even that falls victim to the horrific, dreamlike qualities of Nina's developing madness. At the end, nowhere and no one is safe or untouched by Aronofsky. Nothing can be known for sure, something which I'm sure frustrates many viewers, but kept me glued to my seat.

The performances are usually the first thing people talk about, and Natalie Portman really, really deserves some credit for this movie. Some might argue that Nina is a one trick pony until the end, a constant neurotic prude who tries to experiment but always falls back into her naivety. But I don't see it that way at all. From very early on there are flickers of madness, frustration, and completely unfiltered emotion in Portman's performance, but she quickly shoos them back under the carpet until we fully realize Nina's potential. By the end of this film, Portman is completely locked in. I mentioned already that she's in every scene in this movie, but she's in almost every single frame, so it's easy to gush about her. Vincent Cassel delivers a truly sleasy performance as Thomas Leroy, but he does it with such charm that when Nina calls him a genius you feel like you should defend her. He seduces Nina constantly to try and bring out her wild side, but refrains from fully satisfying her. Barbara Hershey also gives one of those great crazy mom performances, up one second and down another, constantly making the viewer want to rip her throat out. I hesitate to talk about Mila Kunis, but that's not because she didn't act the part well. In fact, this role is different from anything I've ever seen her do, which is refreshing. But I feel like I'm more impressed with how Aronofsky used the character, not necessarily how Kunis portrayed her. Lily is a tool, a villain that might not be, and just when you think she might be evil it's clear that she isn't--but is she? Aronofsky and Kunis play with the character a lot, but maybe it's just because she's the least melodramatic character in the film that I hesitate to call her performance "brilliant." All that being said, if Natalie Portman doesn't win Best Actress for what was surely an emotionally and physically tolling role, I'll eat my head.

I'm a sound guy, but I don't want to talk much about it. I will say this: absolutly see it in a theater with surround sound. Most theaters these days do, like your Regal Cinemas or AMC stuff. But smaller theaters that only have front projection should be avoided. Darren Aronofsky allowed the sound engineers to really go all out on this movie, constantly panning effects so that they glide across the theater like they're moving with the characters. Laughter can be heard all around, and Nina's name or the constantly repeated phrase "sweet girl" swells in and out, back and forth. The transitions with sound are exceptional and sometimes disturbing, such as when an old man on the subway mimics the sound of a wet vagina in Nina's direction until the next scene begins with Nina lighting a lighter to her ballet shoes, two sounds that sound more alike than I ever realized. This is simply another movie that shows how much further sound can take a movie past the mise-en-scene and straight into our brains. For more on this stuff, check out this great video that my friend Dan Santelli sent me. Seriously, follow that guy on twitter, he posts the best stuff.

This script won't win any awards, I'm almost certain of that. It's not because it isn't good, but nothing really stands out in terms of dialogue. The story itself is what really makes this film special. It's a movie all about a performer, and how the passion to be the best can drive someone to the brink of madness, and how it can be worth it. Dancers put themselves through more strain that almost any other performer, because as Black Swan constantly restates, you can not achieve greatness with technique alone. You need to lose yourself, to "surprise yourself so that the audience can be surprised." I think dancers will appreciate this film very much, as it holds a pretty accurate mirror up to the incredibly competitive, heartbreaking careers of the ultimate dreamers. It's performance anxiety that's driving this paranoia in Nina, but more than that it's the anxiety that she is getting older and beyond the dreaded 30's there isn't much left for her. Like the White Swan, she gets a chance to taste her glory, her moment in the sun. If she can keep it, that's another question.

By Brad Moore