Black Swan

I would pay good money to see Barbara Hershey and Natalie Portman as mother/daughter in a dysfunctional relationship again. They are chilling in this interesting psychological thriller by the unpredictable Darren Aronofsky.

The story is based on the premise of Swan Lake, but kicked up a notch with lesbianism, drug use, self-mutilation, and eerily transcendent character portrayals. Natalie Portman is spot on with her meek, passive, and submissive Nina. Nina is a simple girl living in New York with her mother, isolated from the rest of the world by her obsession with perfecting the art of ballet. Her mother does her no favors as a washed up ballerina herself, encouraging her daughter to forgo the pleasures of life in favor of the emotional and physical pain associated with the art.

Nina is hiding a secret that soon emerges, and ultimately leads her spiraling down a surreal blend of visual, auditory, and emotional hallucinations. The film is dark and basal. Aronofsky pulls no punches with his work, this is much more Requiem for a Dream than it is the Wrestler.

The transformation from the proverbial "White Swan" to the "Black Swan" is the whole purpose of the film, and to set it amidst the beauty of art, dance, music, and the graceful movements in spotlight and stage brings a sincerely watchable element to the film.

It is the little unpredictable moments that sneak up on you and dig under your skin in these films. Deliberate shocking moments or jolts in the middle of a peaceful scene. It is particularly effective when the protagonist (I use this term loosely) is so fragile and manipulable.

Vincent Cassel plays the creepy ballet instructor with a predatory agenda nicely. There is an authenticity to his French, aggressive demeanor. Mila Kunis on the other hand seemed a little out of place to me. A carefree flirt whose freedom causes the envy and jealousy of Portman to emerge. I don't see the award rationale on that one, but can see the polarity of the characters charging the film.

Overall it is a strange movie that has absolutely no appeal to the masses, but it does cause the viewer to scratch his head after viewing, and even a week later, I find myself thinking about certain plot points, trying to decipher if it was part of some sort of fantastical dream, or if it is the brutally pathetic life of a lonely young woman with emotional scars so deep that she can never recover.

I liked this movie, but I like dark, and I like original. Portman gives the performance of her career, and I would be surprised if her paradoxical dark and light personae don't earn her the first Oscar of her career. 8/10.