Black Swan

Dir: Darren Aronofsky

2010

*****

Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 psychological horror Black Swan is astonishing. It had been a while since a film had taken my breath away quite like it did, although I don't know why I was surprised, I've been a huge fan of Darren Aronofsky since Pi, the man is a genius. His depiction of the world of Ballet is spot on. I've actually lived with a couple of Ballerinas and their discipline, focus and obsession was quite frightening at times, indeed one of them utterly ruined herself in the process. I haven't liked Natalie Portman as much since I first saw Leon and Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey and Winona Ryder are all perfect in their supporting performances. Black Swan is a metaphor for achieving artistic perfection, with all the psychological and physical challenges one might encounter, incorporating one of the greatest ballets of all time. Aronofsky conceived the premise by connecting his viewings of a production of Swan Lake with an unrealized screenplay about understudies and the notion of being haunted by a double, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Double being a key inspiration. Natalie Portman plays Nina Sayers, a 28-year-old dancer in a ballet company in New York, which is preparing to open its new season with Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. With prima ballerina Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder) being forced into retirement, artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) announces he is looking for a new dancer to portray the dual role of the innocent White Swan and the sensual Black Swan. Nina auditions for the role and gives a flawless performance as the White Swan, but fails to embody the Black Swan. The following day, Nina asks Thomas to reconsider choosing her to play the role. When he forcibly kisses her, she bites him before running out of his office. Later that day, Nina sees the cast list and discovers, much to her surprise and that of her overprotective mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), she will be portraying the lead. At a gala celebrating the new season, an intoxicated Beth confronts Nina, accusing her of sleeping with Thomas to get the role. The following day, Nina discovers that Beth was hit by a car while walking in the street and Thomas believes she did it on purpose. During rehearsals, Thomas tells Nina to observe new dancer Lily (Mila Kunis), whom he describes as possessing an uninhibited quality that Nina lacks. Nina also falls victim to several hallucinations of a doppelgänger following her wherever she goes and finds unexplained scratch marks on her back. This is where the obsession and the horror element of the film begins. One night, Nina accepts Lily's invitation to dinner despite Erica's objections. Over dinner, Lily offers Nina an ecstasy capsule to help her relax. Nina turns it down, but later accepts a drink laced with ecstasy powder. The two dance at a nightclub and return to Nina's apartment late. After fighting with her mother, Nina barricades herself in her room and has sex with Lily. The following morning, Nina wakes up alone and realizes she is late for the dress rehearsal. Upon arriving at Lincoln Center, she finds Lily dancing as the Black Swan and confronts her about their night together. When Lily doesn’t recall, Nina realizes that their encounter never took place. After learning that Thomas has made Lily her alternate, Nina's hallucinations grow increasingly stronger to the point where Erica tries to prevent her from performing on opening night. Nina forces her way out of the apartment and arrives at Lincoln Center only to discover that Lily is set to take over. She confronts Thomas, who becomes so impressed by her confidence that he allows her to perform. During the end of the play’s second act, Nina becomes distracted by a hallucination, causing her partner to drop her. She returns to her dressing room and finds Lily preparing to play the Black Swan. When Lily transforms into Nina's doppelgänger, the two engage in a fight that ends with Nina stabbing the doppelgänger with a shard of glass. She hides the corpse and returns to the stage, where she loses herself and gives a flawless performance as the Black Swan. Nina receives a standing ovation from the audience and, after surprising Thomas with a passionate kiss, returns to her dressing room. While changing, Nina hears a knock at the door and opens it to find Lily alive and congratulating her. Realizing the fight never occurred, and yet the mirror is still broken, and that she stabbed herself, Nina quietly continues changing. After dancing the final act, in which the White Swan commits suicide by throwing herself off a cliff, Nina falls onto a hidden mattress. As the theater erupts in thunderous applause, Thomas, Lily and the cast gather to congratulate Nina, only to discover that she is bleeding profusely. Nina loses consciousness, but not before telling Thomas that her performance was perfect. Aronofsky considered Black Swan a companion piece to his 2008 film The Wrestler, as both films involve demanding performances for different kinds of art with alter-egos of sorts. I agree, I found both films brilliant, Black Swan the visually stunning horror/thriller and The Wrestler the heartfelt drama. He knew he would make a film about both a wrestler and a ballerina at some point and in the beginning one of his early projects was about a love affair between a wrestler and a ballerina. He eventually separated the wrestling and the ballet worlds as he felt it would be "too much for one movie". He compared the two films: "Wrestling some consider the lowest art - if they would even call it art - and ballet some people consider the highest art. But what was amazing to me was how similar the performers in both of these worlds are. They both make incredible use of their bodies to express themselves.” The screenplay The Understudy was written by Andres Heinz; Aronofsky first heard about it while editing his second film Requiem for a Dream and described it as "All About Eve with a double, set in the off-Broadway world." After making The Fountain in 2006, Aronofsky and producer Mike Medavoy had screenwriter John McLaughlin rewrite The Understudy; Aronofsky said McLaughlin "took my idea of Swan Lake and the ballet and put the story into the ballet world and changed the title to Black Swan." When Aronofsky proposed a detailed outline of Black Swan to Universal Pictures, the studio decided to fast-track development of the project in January 2007. The project "sort of died, again" according to Aronofsky, until after the making of The Wrestler in 2008, when he had Mark Heyman, director of development of Aronofsky's production company Protozoa Pictures, write for Black Swan " and made it something that was workable." With Heyman’s ideas and Aronofsky's vision, Black Swan wasn’t just workable, it proved itself a masterpiece and the first great film of a decade.