The rigors of performing are surprisingly underrepresented in film. Then again, maybe not; I suspect that people don’t become actors and dancers and comedians just so they can dwell inside themselves all day. They crave attention and approval, sure, but it’s their job to take the stage. Art is subjugated in the interest of self, not the other way around.
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Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” inhabits the mind of such a performer, one whose psyche has at some point suffered a crippling blow. Its heroine seeks perfection of ballet, her craft, but proves ill-suited to the character creation process. Performers have all sorts of methods and philosophies on the subject, but most seem to say that any performance is in some way grounded to the self. But what about one who has very little self to ground their performance to?
Natalie Portman stars as Nina, the aforementioned ballerina. It’s her best screen performance, one that conveys the distress of a tortured soul coupled with roiling psychological repression. That’s apart from the physicality of portraying a top-tier ballerina, for which she reportedly trained for 10 months. Those only accustomed to her popular image as either, a) the Effervescent Love Interest, or b) the Deeply Concerned Love Interest, are in for a surprise.
Nina lives with her mother (Barbara Hershey), one of those stage mothers who lives vicariously through their child’s talent under the guise of paternal love and concern. There’s a uneasiness in their rapport. Nina’s room is decorated like a child’s, she walks on eggshells, and Mom meticulously tracks her movements lest a moment of the day go unaccounted.
If Nina’s home life is ruled by her mother, work falls under the authority of Thomas (Vincent Cassel), the director of the New York ballet company. He decides that they will “re-imagine” the great ballet “Swan Lake,” with Nina in the lead thanks to her violent rebuttal to one of his sexual advances. Thomas knows she’s perfect for the virginal, flawless White Swan, but wants to see her seductive and electrifying side as the Black Swan. Since Nina appears to have never even had a romantic or even sexual experience in her life, this presents a great challenge, one poised to shatter a psyche already teetering on the brink of madness. Lily (Mila Kunis), a dancer from San Francisco, has the provocative edge perfect for the Black Swan, making her the obvious competition, though her friendly overtures tear a hole in Nina’s fragile reality.
Aronofsky unfolds the rapid degradation of Nina’s world as a horror film, very reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion” and with flavors of David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive.” If the setting for a horror picture is one’s mind, then the menace comes from the torments of the imagination and the brutality inflicted on the body. “Black Swan” might not be the first film with moments that emphasize the excruciating physical toll professional dancing can take on the body, though I suspect it might reach the most audience members.
In a sense,”Black Swan” represents a stylistic advance from Aronofsky’s previous film, “The Wrestler,” though it also loses that picture’s heart. Portman’s character is never afforded the pathos that allowed Mickey Rourke to give such an enthralling, heartbreaking turn as another performer, a washed up pro-wrestler whose life knows no bottom. Nina’s collapse thrills but simultaneously retains a cool detachment from our sympathies, her naiveté effectively stripping away much of the humanity that allows an audience to become truly invested in a character’s fate. We don’t really know her, because there’s not much to know.
Aronofsky also directed 2000’s “Requiem for a Dream,” a film about drug addiction so hyper-actively nightmarish in tone and style that it should be screened to high school students in lieu of near worthless anti-drug lectures. With “The Wrestler,” he demonstrated a capacity for character studies. This falls somewhere between the two, impressive in its ways, though not nearly as good as either.
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