BLACK SWAN (2010)

How far will you take an obsession? How perfect is perfect? Can you handle the darker side of your personality? Darren Aronofsky’s BLACK SWAN is a stunner of a film, a magnificent, visceral, painful and grand evocation of obsession and the brutal path to perfection. This is cinema at its most thrilling, an enchanting, swooning, terrifying sojourn into the depths of the human mind.

The film depicts a young ballerina Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) who is starting to attract attention from the director of her ballet company. The previous star, Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder), the director’s former lover, is getting too old, and has lost much of her star power. The company is on the brink of bankruptcy. It needs a new face. Nina is chosen to star as the Swan Queen in a new performance of SWAN LAKE by Tchaikovsky, an incredibly difficult role as it involves embodying two different personalities-the pure and sweet White Queen and her darker and more dangerous twin the Black Queen. Nina is perfect for the first. She does not quite fit the part of the second.

The film then takes us on a twisted ride as Nina sheds her inhibitions, trying to break free of the iron-clad ministrations of her obsessed, emotionally manipulative mother (Barbara Hershey, in stunning form), as she tries to bring out the Black Queen in herself, with the help of a new dancer at their company, Lily (Mila Kunis), an aggressive, seductive girl who is everything Nina is not, and seems an equally suitable candidate for the role, according to the director Tomas (Vincent Cassel).

The premise lends itself easily to operatic grandeur, and Aronofsky (who is no stranger to big emotions) utilizes every chance he gets with the ease of a maestro. The film is visually astonishing, a fever-dream of blinding spotlights on black backdrops. The ballet scenes are wonderfully shot, the camera so agile it seems to be gliding on wings, capturing the dynamism of every single graceful movement. Aronofsky is not shy to subject his viewers to the almost-unwatchable self-mutilating horrors of Nina’s transformation, or the macabre visions of her schizophrenic episodes. When Nina strips the skin from her finger, it is so gruesomely fascinating that it is impossible to look away.

And at the center of it all, the force of nature that is Natalie Portman. She was born to play Nina Sayers. This role would have exhausted her to the limits of her endurance, and not just to achieve perfection in her dance. It is incredibly tiring to hold an emotion for long, and when you have to carry a complex demented character like Nina Sayers inside you for weeks of shooting, it can damn near kill you. Her transformation from sheltered momma’s girl to femme fatale is glorious, a supreme wonder to watch. No one deserved that Oscar more than she did.

The music by Clint Mansell is gorgeous and thrilling, imbuing each scene with weight and heft, a perfect accompaniment to the visual and emotional rollercoaster that the film is. The DOP Matthew Libatique and the production designer Therese DePrez also cannot be praised enough. Nor can the stunningly beautiful choreography by Benjamin Millepied, which constitutes a large part of the film.

A mesmerizing film in all respects with a tortured heroine at its centre, this is an absolute must-watch for all film buffs. A grand 9/10 for me.