Movie Review: Black Swan

Black Swan  (Directed by Darren Aronofsky; 2010)


Heading in, I was worried that this movie was going to be too artsy-fartsy to generate a real sense of the heebie-jeebies.  But that wasn't the case at all.  The film--with its chiaroscuro settings, ominous mirror images, and doppelganger characters--features some truly unsettling scenes.  In both creating brief startle moments and lingering dread, Black Swan works more effectively than most traditional horror movies.  There are moments here, too, that will have audience members absolutely cringing in their seats, as the film illustrates the physical rigors a ballerina must endure (I never thought that a mere split toenail could be so horrifying!).

So the film establishes plenty of creepiness, but therein also lies the problem.  The same note of weirdness is struck throughout most of the 110-minute runtime.  All those dark, surreal scenes (as the protagonist loses her grip on sanity) soon grow wearisome.  There's no ultimate plot twist here, and the ending is extensively foreshadowed and thus lacks real impact.  The events of Black Swan parallel the story told within Swan Lake--a story summarized early on in the film, leaving little doubt as to where matters are leading.

The beautiful and admirable Natalie Portman does give a strong, double-sided performance as Nina, a dancer who at last catches her big break when she is cast as the lead in a production of Swan Lake staged by a prestigious New York City ballet company.  Nina's drive for utter perfection, though, puts her on a collision course with disaster.  As she caves under the physical and emotional strain, she elicits both sympathy and terror (she lashes out with some jaw-dropping violence, particularly against mommy dearest Barbara Hershey).  All that being said, though, I have to admit that I was not blown away by Portman's role; I didn't exit the theater thinking that she is the overwhelming, no-brainer choice for a Best Actress Oscar that critics and precursor awards shows have made her out to be.

Let me be clear: by no stretch of the imagination is Black Swan a bad movie.  It's just nowhere near as good as all the buzz surrounding it led me to believe.  Much like its flawed heroine, the film fails to achieve perfection--or to even approach it before the final curtain falls.