If there is one thing that is a guarantee when sitting down to watch a Darren Aronofsky film, it is that it will be disturbing. The man has made a career of highly stylized, yet very dark and brutal films. Often, they are thought-provoking and cryptic, and they are most definitely not for everyone, but there is always something of merit to discuss afterwards, even if his lesser efforts. Black Swan is not one of his lesser efforts, though. In fact, Black Swan is his most commercial and critically acclaimed film to date and scored him a nomination for Best Picture at the 2011 Academy Awards. It also proved to skeptical audiences that Natalie Portman was better than the bland performances she was giving George Lucas just a few years prior. Given the right material, she can make it sing.
But we already knew that going all the way back to her early roles. She was impressive in her debut performance opposite Jean Reno in Léon: The Professional, a role far more mature than the then twelve-year-old actress herself was. It got her noticed, but then studios didn’t really know what to do with her, and she bounced around a little, appearing in smaller films and one notorious bomb, Mars Attacks! Her role in the Star Wars Prequels basically lifted her back up again, but those films were notoriously filmed heavily in green screen rooms, and the young actress felt frustrated with the process and didn’t have her heart in them. It shows on screen, too, as it is clear she is checked out most of the time. Occasionally, she would make an appearance in an interesting project, such as her saucy performance in Closer or her daring portrayal of the unnamed girlfriend in Hotel Chevalier. These projects got her attention, but it wasn’t until Black Swan that she really broke out of her mold and got people discussing her again.
Going into the 2011 Academy Awards, there was really one name being bandied around for Lead Actress. The other four nominees were no pushovers themselves—Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right; Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole; Jennifer Lawrence for Winter’s Bone; and Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine—but it was a foregone conclusion that Natalie Portman had it in the bag with Black Swan. That would prove to be the case, too. This is a hard-to-watch performance, and there are many aspects to it that require you to be paying attention in order to suss out what is really happening. Natalie latches onto the insanity of this character, the manic drive that encompasses her, the desperation to be perfect, and the insecurity of believing she will never be so. All of this encompasses this character, smothers her even, and slowly causes her to have a break from reality that we see unfold not only on screen but in her every expression. It’s a brilliant bit of acting and was the clear winner for that year’s Oscar.
The acting is in service of the plot, though, which, when done right, both are elevated. Natalie is playing Nina Sayers, a young dancer with the New York City Ballet. She lives with her overbearing mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), a former ballerina who blames her daughter for having to retire from dance. The company is planning on opening the season with Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, a performance that director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) sees as overdone and plans on revitalizing through his own artistic interpretation. He is looking for a new dancer for the dual roles of the innocent and fragile White Swan, Odette, and the dark and sensual Black Swan, Odile. Nina is able to perfectly embody the White Swan but cannot embrace the more loose and less perfect style that Leroy wants for the Black Swan, so he dismisses her.
The following day, Nina asks Leroy to reconsider. He forcibly kisses her, catching her off guard, and she bites him and runs out of his office. Later, she is shocked to see that she has been given the lead role in the ballet. At a gala celebrating the new season, Beth (Winona Ryder), an older dancer and Leroy’s former star, intoxicated and upset, accuses Nina of sleeping her way into the lead role, taking it away from her. Beth has just been announced as retiring, a decision she is clearly not happy with. Not long afterward, news comes out that Beth has been hit by a car and is in the hospital, apparently from a suicide attempt. The injuries sustained in the accident are severe enough that Beth will never dance again.
During rehearsals, Nina is struggling with the part of the Black Swan, unable to be less inhibited and loose in her dancing the way Leroy wants. She is so focused on perfection that she comes across stiff and passionless. A new dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis), arrives and, on top of a passing resemblance to Nina, has inhibitions that Nina lacks. After a night on the town, where Lily convinces Nina to drink and may have intentionally drugged her, Nina oversleeps and is late for the following day’s rehearsal. But Lily is there, on time and training as Odile, the Black Swan. A combination of stress, her own self-doubt, and what appears to be a gradual break from reality leads to hallucinations, acts of violence, and self-destruction. All of this leads to her finally taking the stage for the opening night’s show, a performance to die for.
This is not the kind of film where you can take what you are seeing at face value. Stuff happens, and we are often unsure if what we are seeing is reality or the hallucinations of a woman who is having a breakdown. Nina is a woman driven by perfection, and she has driven herself mad with her determination to be the best. But because she is so driven for perfection, she loses sight of the joy that comes from just letting yourself go and dance. This drive of hers is exacerbated by Leroy, who pushes her repeatedly and often cruelly to conform to his vision of the Black Swan. Her mother also contributes to this by heaping guilt and pressure on her to be the best.
Ballet is a brutal discipline, and I will never fully understand why people abuse their bodies, particularly their toes, in order to be good at it. Darren Aronofsky shows it in a way that further sells my feelings on the subject. He doesn’t shy away from showing mutilated toes and broken toenails, bruised and bleeding, gnarled feet from years of the discipline. We see the beauty and the grace of the dance itself, but we also see the physical consequences of it. I’m not generally squeamish when watching body horror, but there were moments that made me more uncomfortable than anything I’ve ever seen in the Saw franchise. It’s graphic and very often unsettling.
What’s even more unsettling, though, is witnessing the gradual unraveling of Nina’s fragile mind. There are moments where it is obvious what we are seeing isn’t reality, such as the feathers threatening to burst out through Nina’s shoulder blades. Other times, we are not quite sure, like her sexual encounter with Lily that Lily later calls out as nothing more than a lesbian fantasy dream that never happened. There are moments where Lily literally transforms into Nina, and one moment late in the game when Nina literally stabs Lily only to discover that she has, in fact, stabbed herself.
This is an emotionally raw and disturbing descent into madness driven on by Nina’s push for perfection, a goal that she will never be able to achieve. It’s visceral to the point that it is often hard to watch. But that is to be expected from the director of Requiem for a Dream and Mother! He is an acquired taste that I usually cannot stomach, but something about this one works for me on a level that the others haven’t. Black Swan tackles themes that we can all relate to while at the same time taking them to extremes that will leave you unsettled. That is its strength. That is also why some people will be bothered enough by it to not want to ever return to this film again.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Mike Medavoy, Brian Oliver, and Scott Franklin
Best Director: Darren Aronofsky
Best Actress: Natalie Portman (won)
Best Cinematography: Matthew Libatique
Best Film Editing: Andrew Weisblum
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Release Date: December 17, 2010
Running Time: 108 minutes
Rated R
Starring: Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, and Winona Ryder
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
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