Black Swan (Old)

Black Swan

So, will Natalie Portman win her Oscar?

If so, “Black Swan” might very well go down as the greatest heist in cinema history.

Darren Aronosfky’s latest film, hot on the heels of his indie-inspired “The Wrestler,” draws from the director’s usual influences but adds a newer, schlockier air to create a dark psychodrama about the competitive world of a New York City ballet company.

“Black Swan” is campy horror produced with the quality of high art. That’s not a complaint — it actually gives the film the chance to shock, scare, and leave nothing unsaid. It’s all out there on the movie screen. If you have to think about it too much, it’s probably not there.

The film revolves around Portman’s character, the fragile ballerina Nina Sayers, as she takes on the role of Odette the swan princess in Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” Aronofsky states his intents early and often — not a single scene leaves Portman’s perspective, locking the audience into her shrill, overborne world immediately through a dream sequence. Though Nina wakes up, the dream never truly ends, as visions of sideways whispers and glances attack her with viciousness as the stress from the role piles up.

The movie bluntly references itself, drawing obvious parallels between the world of the ballet and the more abstract world of Hollywood ingénue. Portman may only be 29, but like Nina, she is quickly aging out of the world she has been a part of since her childhood. It has been 16 years since Portman’s first onscreen performance, and since then she has yet to truly make an impact. She has worked steadily, of course, and her name is big enough to hang this movie on. But her skills have always tended more to the precise; her roles have a practiced, rehearsed air — in the movie’s diction, they are white swans. This, this film, this performance, is her black swan. In the film’s final moments, Nina stares confidently into the camera, declaring “I was perfect. Perfect.” She might as well be addressing the Academy voters.

The rest of the film is cast accordingly — Aronofsky has always possessed a shrewd eye. Mila Kunis, a star on the rise, oozes effortless charm but lacks Portman’s discipline. Barbara Hershey had similar potential but never delivered a “black swan” performance. Her icy frustrations make her perfect as Portman’s unrelenting stage mother determined to keep her daughter a child forever. Vincent Cassel is the perfect choice for the exotic, foreign ballet director. The material he is given is somewhat repetitive, but each time he locks eyes with Portman, the whole theater shivers. But the smartest and sharpest decision was to cast Winona Ryder as Beth, the fallen prima ballerina. The character is hardly nuanced, but her fall from grace is given instant depth as Ryder’s drunken, deluded sobbing calls to mind her own, real-life collapse.

The film falters in a few places. The sound design can sometimes be overbearing — a lighter touch could have the audience jumping at every crack of a knuckle without cranking the dial up to eleven. And while watching the film unfold in two layers (the plot and the real life metaphor) was a delight, Portman’s performance may not have been as perfect as it needed to be.

Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction—those were films about female sexuality that presented it as equally fun, unstable, and dangerous. “Black Swan” takes a similar path, showing off in Kunis’ character what Nina might have been were she not infantilized and tortured by her overprotective mother. The sex scenes in the film are cheap wish-fulfillment, an embodiment of all the virginal Nina knows to expect from it. And with a less canny director, the Kunis character wouldn’t have such a smart and confident sexuality of her own. It ensures that the film is a character study, not a comment on women in general.

The technical aspects hold up beautifully as expected. Aronofsky uses the cinematography and score to play on horror conventions like the cliché mirror-shadow scare to lead the audience deeper into Nina’s paranoid world. The CGI is sparse and well-used, mostly to blur faces or clean up the dancing.

The only fatal misstep comes in the abbreviated performance of “Swan Lake,” where Anonosfky lets the audience see the ballet. Nina’s performance there is as crucial as Portman’s is to the film. But she falls onstage, and badly, something that is clearly her fault. It makes sense in context of the scene — her fear and upset at that mistake propel her back into her fantasy world and ultimately cause her to take control of her inner black swan. In fact, that transformation is probably Portman’s best moment. It is as though she has been set free from the histrionics of the first two hours and can finally be comfortable in her skin, even as it shifts and changes visually. But that makes the final moment land with a bit of a thud. If Nina feels satisfied with her performance, feels as though it was “perfect,” than what about that first act? Regardless, “Black Swan” is enjoyable femme-horror that does its best to stay away from getting too self-consciously arty, delivering solid entertainment along the way.