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“I just want to be perfect.”    

- Natalie Portman as ‘Nina Sayers’.

Obsession, determination, passion and above all perfection, but at what cost?

Nominated for more than twenty film awards (including several Oscars) and winner of the Best Actress in a Drama Award (Natalie Portman), Black Swan is a psychological thriller complete with twists and turns that would throw even the most savvy film viewers and critics from their moorings.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky (director of Academy Award and Oscar nominated films such as The Wrestler), Black Swan tells the story of Nina Sayers, an atypical ballerina who vies for the double lead role of the Swan/Black Swan in the classic ballet Swan Lake. Actress Natalie Portman introduces the audience to aspiring ballerina Nina Sayers as the film opens in the heart of New York City. A beautiful young woman afflicted with apprehension and feelings of doubt with her dancing career, Nina still lives with her controlling, disillusioned mother who lost her own dancing career when she became pregnant with Nina. As we later discover, Nina has an obsessive-compulsive disorder that starts out with relatively harmless scratching but ultimately sets up the rest of the events that follow.

As the film progresses, we explore Nina's fragile psyche and her eventual downward spiral into an obsessive personality. Competing for a role she feels she must defend against another talented ballerina, Lily (Mila Kunis), who unlike Nina, is an off-kilter and daring San Francisco native. She is a girl who parties and sleeps with nameless men in her spare time away from the stage.

With the new competition for the important and life-changing role, Nina soon finds herself up against much more than her own self-doubt: She must prove herself to the snooty French director of the play. Thomas Leroy (played by Vincent Cassel) is a man who has more interest in sleeping with his talent than in their skills and soon becomes interested in the enigmatic dancer, Lily. Through trickery of camera angles and a protagonist in Portman that doesn’t see things quite as they are, the film throws the audience directly into the world of the mentally unstable Nina. She begins to hallucinate and finds herself in the realm of the paranoid and unsure, seeing countless images of darker versions of herself in a clever show of foreshadowing.

A symbolic nature

Symbolism also plays a large and important role in this Aronofsky film. Images of dark and hidden shadows show the carnal human need to let go and indulge while the themes of sex (woven into the film in both upfront and concealed ways) suggest both confinement and freedom. However, the most striking motif through the film was the struggle to fight the darkness that ultimately resides in all of us. The film also shows the audience the trouble of simply giving into the pull of this darkness in the character of former and now washed-up ballerina Beth Macintyre (played by a toned-down Winona Ryder). After playing the role of the Swan for years and watching as she is replaced by the young Nina, Beth suffers a mental breakdown and attempts to take her own life—another example of foreshadowing that sneaks up on the audience as the film comes to a close. 

Since the film focuses on the play and the idea that the ballerina chosen for the role must represent two parts (light and dark, good and evil) it is almost too appropriate that Nina, vying for the role, is mentally unhinged and psychologically divided. Aronofsky takes this story, and with his award-winning talent, conjures a brilliant picture that easily and smoothly draws the audience into the feelings of the volatile Nina.

With a star-studded cast and visionary director at the helm, Black Swan gives this reviewer the biggest plot twisting surprise since Bruce Willis’ final reveal in the last moments of M. Night Shyamalan’s 1999 hit, The Sixth Sense. Natalie Portman, arguably one of the film’s strongest talents, delivers an emotional and flawless performance that would unsettle the most hard-hearted and leaves many wanting more. In doing so, Portman proves once again why she is among the top in the acting game. Aronofsky twists the audience around so skillfully, effectively and subtly that by the ‘sharp’ ending of the film, when the curtains of Swan Lake draw to close, viewers simply don’t know which way is up. They are ultimately left staring, slack-jawed and contemplative, as the credits roll. While this film is certainly not for the faint hearted (or the young, with its R rating), it easily provides material for the kind of chatter that attracts people to the theatres; the same chatter that wins awards and critical acclaim.    

Rating: 4/5