Without a doubt, Black Swan is not only the best film of the 2010 London Film Festival, but possibly the best film I have seen at any LFF since my first in 1993.Black Swan is a psychological chiller directed with control and panache by Darren Aronofsky. It features a career-best performance from Natalie Portman that demands an Oscar, arresting visuals, precise editing, exacting sound, and a stirring score (both adapted and original by Aronofsky’s soundtrack artist of choice, Clint Mansell). It is the very essence of cinema; all the crucial elements of film are shown off to their maximum effect, creating a piece that is never less than utterly compelling – you forget you are watching a film in a cinema; it is a transformative, immersive experience.
The film charts the progress of a young ballerina, Nina (Portman), as she strives to attain perfection – in order to satisfy herself and her domineering mother (a really rather scary Barbara Hershey). Picked for the part of the White Queen in Swan Lake, she and her artistic director Vincent Cassel have concerns about her ability to unleash her dark side in order to convincingly play the Black Swan.
Under pressure from herself, her mother, her artistic director and the other ballerinas, Nina’s psyche begins to disintegrate. Both she and we the audience struggle to discern her dreams and nightmares from reality. But as her psyche collapses, so her dark side emerges, apparently egged on in an ever decreasing circle by her confused relationship with fellow ballerina, possible rival and lover Lily (Mila Kunis).
Lily is all that Nina isn’t: confident, avowedly sexual, a risk-taker, possessed of greater freedom of artistic expression while dancing. Lily is the polar opposite of Nina: black to white. Is Lily the Black Swan? Is Lily just a projection of Nina’s desire, Fight Club-style?
Just as the film’s plot structure explicitly mirrors the plot of Swan Lake, so mirrors are a key feature of the film’s visual style, Nina gazing at her own reflection as a swan would at its own image in the water.
As with his previous effort, The Wrestler, Aronofsky focuses on the damage the art of ballet inflicts on both body and soul. Portman, naturally petite and slim, has perfected the ballerina’s ridiculous physique: slimmer still, but all muscle. Aronofsky then details unsparingly the corruption of her body: broken toe nails (that need to be removed – all too graphically, you have been warned), cracked bones, strained muscles, etc. In this unrelenting examination of her body and the associated body horror (I can’t recall a film that has caused me to look away from the screen so many times), Aronofsky’s approach strongly evokes the psycho-sexual analyses of dark cinemas three greatest artists: Cronenberg, Polanski and Lynch.
Indeed, the way in which Aronofsky and Portman conjure eroticism and horror within frames of each other is pure Cronenberg and Lynch. The masturbation scene ends unexpectedly with a primal shock, while the Nina/Lily seduction scene (who’s seducing who?) is possessed of a charge that knocks Atom Egoyan’s lesbian stalker drama Chloe into a cocked hat.
As much as all the supporting cast are excellent, this is Portman’s movie. I cannot think of any other actress that could have summoned the performance that Portman does. In a sense, what she does with Nina is what Heath Ledger did with The Joker in The Dark Knight.
You don’t have to like ballet to enjoy Black Swan, but you’ll need a strong stomach to watch it. It will scare you (you’re never more than 60 seconds away from a shock), but it will move you too.
Don’t wait for the DVD: Black Swan demands to be seen on the best cinema screen you can find.
Score: 10/10
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