Black Swan

“As filmmakers, we can show where a person’s mind goes, as opposed to theater,
which is more to sit back and watch it.” – Darren Aronofsky

Black Swan does what all of my favorite films do: it makes the most of its medium to express what could scarcely be communicated. It is excellent, a psychological thriller en pointe. It’s about art, ballet, acting, performance, competition, jealousy, suffering, perfection, transcendence, and invention. As professional ballerina Nina Sayers, Natalie Portman channels Audrey Hepburn. When the director of the ballet company decides to replace his prima ballerina for the new season, Nina is the very embodiment of the devastatingly delicate Princess in Swan Lake. But can she dance the seductive Black Swan as well?

Every artist knows the struggle of being true to one’s self while responding to the demands of the art. For Nina, her determination to inhabit both swans is also a struggle for her own identity – her ambitions, independence from her possessive mother, her sexuality. As the pressure to be perfect compounds and Nina sheds her former self, she breaks with reality, becoming increasingly paranoid, possibly schizophrenic, and dangerous. A woman passes Nina on the street; is it Lily? Or Nina’s double? Part of Aronofsky’s genius lies in his ability to show that life and art are intertwined, the one influencing the other and changing it. In The Fountain, he explored the interplay between our present and our history. The careful placement of images to craft a perception rather than a reality is extraordinary, like a dream in which our subconscious plays tricks on us. We may be more certain than Nina of what has been seen, but we are unsettled all the same.

The background elements are equally well crafted, enhancing the story, and turning Portman’s Sayers into a rat in a maze. At work and at home, Nina is surrounded by reflections and repeated patterns. Mirrors line the studios in which she dances, they decorate the walls of her home, she sees herself in her mother, in new company member Lily, and in the former prima ballerina Beth. She is haunted by echoes, the reflection of sound. There’s something deliciously creepy in Aronofsky’s representation of New York City as labyrinthine, unknowable, dirty, and suspect. No matter how well we may know these things to be true, setting our fragile ballerina against this rough-and-tumble backdrop is immensely effective. If some of the costume or make-up choices seem a little obvious, it’s because the symbolism behind them works. It is the lesson of the Swan Princess – why struggle against the inevitable? Regardless, the film is beautiful and it already has my (uncounted) support for Best Sound Design.