First Hit: Natalie Portman captures the character and is mesmerizing although the film is a bit excessive in its representation.
I really left the theater with two main thoughts: Portman was outstanding as Nina Sayers (Swan Queen) and is my pick for Best Actress for this year. Secondly, why did the director (Darren Aronofsky) over do the visualizations. Why did he feel he needed an overtly hammer the audience in expressing the internal pain of an obsessed ballerina?
Portman brought everything that was needed to this part. An example of this overt visualization was when Nina was getting ready to dance she removes one shoe. Her toes are stuck together because she spends so much time in her tight ballet slippers. With some pain she pulls her toes apart. Then she takes off the other shoe and Aronofsky shows us a fully webbed foot.
I didn’t need that overkill because I got the point with the first foot. This is the downside of the film; overkilling points. The amount of blood (real and perceived) in this film along with an Exorcist kind of leg breaking in one bedroom scene was also excessive. However I’m clear that the journey we take with Nina from living the life of an obsessed ballerina trying to please everyone but herself, was extraordinary.
I’ve enjoyed ballet as a season ticket holder to both the American Ballet Theater and the San Francisco Ballet. I’ve seen all forms of dance from Joe Goode to Baryshnikov’s White Oak Project. The practice it takes to perform at these levels borders on being fanatically possessed at times. The result when a performer lets the feeling and the art of the story come through them with their technical abilities can be phenomenal.
Portman captures all this but to her overall demise. She is living with her fanatical mother Erica Sayers (played by Barbara Hershey – The Queen) who wants and doesn’t want her daughter to succeed. Erica was also a dancer and at age 28 got pregnant with Nina which ended her dancing career.
Resentful yet supportive, Erica is living through, for and against her daughter’s success. She has created such an insulated world for Nina that this 20 year old girl lives in a room full of stuff animals and ballet musical boxes. But because of her relentless devotion, Artistic Director Thomas Leroy (played by Vincent Cassel – The Gentleman) selects Nina to dance his new version of Swan Lake.
The Swan Queen will dance both the white swan and black swan parts. Thomas sees Nina as the perfect white swan but says she must let go of everything inside that she uses to control her life so that she can also become the Black Swan.
Lily (played by Mila Kunis – Black Swan) a young dancer from San Francisco joins this company is the prime competition for the part because she dances the Black Swan part perfectly. She is an intuitive dancer who seduces and is not seduced.
With all the players in place we have the ballet being danced in real life as real characters while also in the performance of Swan Lake.
Portman is the best woman actress on the screen this year. The brief moments that she breaks out of her afraid obsessed filled life and gives us the Black Swan within her is perfect. It is believable, powerful and the type of range one rarely sees in a single part for an actress in a single film. There are just a few glimpses of this extraordinary movement, but sitting in the audience, I felt it. That is the mark of this performance – I felt her fully. Hershey was equally great to watch as the mother who wanted her daughter to both fail and succeed where she herself didn’t. Kunis is wonderful to watch as the free spirited Lily. Cassel was perfect Artistic Director pushing things to the limit with his cast. Mark Heyman and Andres Heinz wrote a very good screen play. Director Darren Aronofsky over did his job in some aspects of the film as previously explained, however he was masterful at getting strong performances from his cast and the mood of the film, dark, not slick, and glaring at times was very good.
Overall: I cannot forget Portman’s performance and that makes it worthwhile.