One of 2010's bestBy John DeSando, "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
Black Swan
Erica (Barbara Hershey): What happened to my sweet girl?
Nina (Natalie Portman): She's gone!
In auteur Darron Aronofsky's Black Swan, the Swan Queen (Portman) is "gone" even before she's pegged for the lead in Swan Lake. In the best Method Acting spirit, she becomes like the Black Swan because the White Swan is too easy.
This is the most melodramatic film of 2010. This is the best actress (Portman) of 2010. This is the best director of 2010. But this may not be the best film of 2010 because of the ease with which it depresses with the over-the-top dramatic conflict between the two poles of innocence and experience, good and evil. It doesn't have the wit and relative subtlety of All about Eve, a film also about female ambition, nor does it have the relative grace of The Red Shoes (1948), a ballet film to which this one must be compared.
Aronofsky's camera twirls like a ballerina and tracks the star with back shots that become too obvious not to notice. The close-ups of Nina are as constant as in any film with Angelina Jolie, and after a while, enough already. Yet the director catches the frenetic pace of rehearsal with that movement; he also captures the doppelganger of Nina's duality by framing multiple shots through mirrors and reflecting water. After awhile, enough already.
There can never be enough of good acting, and this film has a surfeit. Besides Portman's Oscar-worthy performance, Vincent Cassell plays artistic director Thomas Leroy with a genial malevolence that takes the classic impresario in Red Shoes, Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), to a new level of Machiavelli, or Pygmalion, if you will. Barbara Hershey as Nina's creepily smothering, former ballerina mother effectively keeps Freud at the forefront. Mila Kunis as Nina's rival has an earthiness that contrasts vividly with the other uptight ballerinas.
Black Swan can also be easily seen as a metaphor for the obsession necessary for any great performer. Nina's descent into madness can be nothing less than the natural outcome of greatness achieved at the sacrifice of one's personal freedom and sanity. Despite the flourishes of this hyper drama, Aronofsky has achieved the greatness also in his film: It's not the rude world of his Wrestler with Mickey Rourke also picking at his flesh, but the close up and personal view of an achieving, troubled performer is the same.
Nina: I had the craziest dream last night about a girl who has turned into a swan, but her prince falls for the wrong girl and she kills herself.
John DeSando co-hosts It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee for WCBE 90.5. The shows can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com