"BLACK SWAN" Interesting but Overwrought Gothic Thriller

[Carl M. Zapffe]

http://www.catsmeowmoviecritic.com/id354.html

"BLACK SWAN" (2010)...B ...  Oscar buzz has been swirling around this movie, but my take on it is that it is little more than an overwrought contemporary Gothic horror piece in spite of its strong performances, especially by Natalie Portman. A young ballerina, Nina Sayers (Portman), descends into madness, sunk by her own personal ambition to be the perfect swan, both white and dark, in Tchaikovsky's famous ballet, "Swan Lake." Driving her on is her equally ambitious mother, Erica Sayers (Barbara Hershey), and her Svengali-like ballet director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), in a role said to be modeled after George Balanchine. 

While ambitious and talented, the very naive Nina is no match for the worldly wise adults in her orbit pushing her on to achieve her dream. She is perfect for the role of the virginal White Swan, but her limited life experiences do not allow her to express the nature of a seductive temptress inherent in the Black Swan. As a self-protective but ultimately a self-destructive measure, her innocent persona becomes subsumed by a self-created doppelgänger who has the necessary sophistication to bring to life her inner, unrealized Black Swan.

This movie is ambitious, interesting, challenging, but often a confusing study of Nina Sayers as she descends into madness. It ends up being problematic due to plot holes and some rather confusing scenes. It is anybody's guess as to whether they are real or imaginary. Unfortunately, the intellectual stimulation comes not during the movie, but afterwards in discussions with friends who have also seen it.

Part of this may be excused by the incredibly difficult task of filming the onset of madness from the inside rather than observing it from the outside. Many of these scenes come off as just being strange and disorienting. Sometimes they work, but more often they don't and we are left in the lurch trying to sort out the construct of the story in a mostly failing effort to understand when Nina's alternate universe begins. It takes a while, perhaps days, to sort this out in our own minds, and the confusion about it all detracts from our general enjoyment of the movie.

This movie is the cup of tea for many (as evidenced by its high Rotten Tomatoes rating of 88% and the suggestion that it will be up for several Oscar nominations, but it didn't work for me and for those who joined me at the theater to see it. I will grant that the movie is beautifully acted and filmed, and it was also been beautifully staged and directed by Darren Aronofsky from a screenplay written by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, and John J. McLaughlin. As I have said, the term "overwrought" kept buzzing through my mind as I sat in the theater, although I will admit that it does improve in my esteem with the passage of time.  

Two critical pieces of the story were either neglected or cut from the film. A small scene between Nina and her mother is desperately needed to explain their relationship when she is not obsessing over Nina's career. There are a blanks that need to be filled, such as what Erica does for a living. More importantly, how does she really feel about her daughter? Does she love Nina unreservedly, or only when she will achieve the ballet stardom that had eluded her when she was a ballet dancer?

Erica is not the monster that some critics have made her out to be, for this kind of parental ambition for a child's success is rife in our present day society and is neither to be condemned nor applauded. Suffice it to say that every child prodigy would have to have one or more parents like Erica. That point being made, I would have liked this film to have had a scene showing their normal mother-daughter relationship during the off season.

Secondly, and far more importantly, the competition between Nina as the perfect White Swan and Lily (Mila Kunis) as the perfect Black Swan is not properly introduced nor thereafter displayed. There can only be one swan who dances both roles, and Nina has already landed the part when Lily shows up after the fact. In my opinion they should have been shown competing against each other for this plum role. That is what I had thought this movie would be about instead of watching Nina become the recipient of catty comments from some of the other jealous dancers just after the start of the film. 

In a story that shows that perfection has its price, Nina Sayers is a childlike innocent who surrounds her bedroom with the stuffed animals that she had loved as a young girl. Her mother, Erica, had once been a promising ballet dancer, but she had to leave the troupe when she became pregnant with Nina at the young age of 28. Now they live in the spartan, colorless surroundings of their modest apartment and she lives vicariously through the looming success of her daughter. 

The life of a ballet dancer is difficult, perhaps the most physically challenging of any profession, and we see the pain that dancers endure in this movie. The human body is not built to dance "en pointe," so these dance routines are incredibly punishing. In spite of the difficulty, there are those who rise to this challenge, for the rewards are also great in seeing performances that are just resplendent and transcendent in their awesome beauty. 

In scenes that take place at the Lincoln Center, Director Thomas

Leroy (Vincent Cassel), informs the dancers that he has decided to stage "Swan Lake," an old ballet standby, in a new way. He also abruptly announces that the former lead dancer, Beth Mcintyre (Winona Ryder), will be not be the star of this new production, thus effectively ending her career. Beth storms off the stage after an emotional outburst. She later walks into an oncoming car and ends up in the hospital with severe injuries, especially to her leg. 

This opens up the entire troupe to compete for this plum role, and Nina quickly moves into the lead. Petty little jealousies are exposed, and even the innocent Nina expropriates for her own use some of Beth's makeup articles left behind in her dressing room.

Nina is shown to capture the role of the White Swan perfectly, but she lacks the range of emotion and the power of seduction in her dance as the Black Swan. Leroy challenges her to reach into her feminine being to find her inner seductress, but it isn't there. He asks Nina if she is a virgin,

asks her if she enjoys sex, and then he challenges her to "touch herself" when she goes home, all to arouse her dormant sexuality. After all, the Black Swan has to be so sexually appealing as to make her partner want to seduce her. 

Unfortunately, Nina doesn't have this sexuality in her, and she might never have it like the darkly beautiful Lily who exudes sensuality. The ambitious Nina realizes in her childlike mind that she will never be the perfect dancer unless she can become the Black Swan. 108 minutes and rated R for strong sexual content, disturbing, violent images, language, and some drug use.

Carl M. Zapffe,

The Cat's Meow Movie Critic

http://www.catsmeowmoviecritic.com