I’m trying to catch up on movies, as I’ve been a little busy making my own (After, in theaters fall 2011, tell everyone you know). Last night I finally got around to seeing Black Swan.

I’ve been an avid Aronofsky fan since his debut film Pi back in 1998. With its gritty, surreal black and white cinematography, it blew my fifteen year old mind wide open. It certainly made me appreciate math in a new way, and I even convinced my algebra teacher to show it in class. I considered this something of an achievement. 

With each subsequent film, Aronofsky has grown as an artist, and his subject matter, though often disturbing, is consistently engaging and thought-provoking. The Fountain, a film that was a failure both critically and commercially, was one of my favorite films of 2006. It was ambitious in a way that turned some people off. I thought it was bold. Visually, it’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen.  

Following The Fountain, Aronofsky turned to the more character-driven piece The Wrestler. The film was not very interesting visually (intentionally so), but the performances (specifically Mickey Rourke’s) were extraordinary. 

Black Swan finds a middle-ground between the meticulously crafted visuals of Aronofsky’s earlier work and the cinema verité style of The Wrestler. I’m not sure there is a shot in Black Swan that isn’t handheld, but there is a virtuosity to the camerawork that wasn’t present in The Wrestler. 

The film follows (often very literally) Nina (Natalie Portman), a ballerina in New York who finds herself cast as the lead role in a new production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), encourages the reserved Nina to embrace the darker side of her character.

Swan Lake is, of course, a retelling of the swan princess myth. The story goes something like this: 

The time has come for prince Siegried to choose a wife. One night, he sees a flock of swans land upon a glassy lake. One of them is revealed to be a woman, princess Odette. Cursed by the evil von Rothbart, she lives as a swan by day and a woman by night. 

At the royal ball, von Rothbart arrives with his daughter Odile, who is dressed to look like Odette, only wearing black. Mistaking Odile for Odette, Siegried announces their marriage. When he realizes his error, it is too late. Because he has already pledged himself to Odile, Odette’s curse cannot be broken. 

The tale ends with Siegfried and Odette jumping to their deaths in the lake. 

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW

Leroy is intent on Nina embracing her darker side because she must play both parts - the white and the black swan. Nina lives with her mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), a former dancer whose entire existence revolves around her daughter. Nina’s room functions as an ode to childhood - butterfly wallpaper, pink everywhere, a pile of stuffed animals in the corner. To say her emotional development has been stunted by her mother would be something of an understatement.

As a result, Nina isn’t very social. She sticks to herself and is intent on perfecting her craft. Leroy becomes quickly frustrated with her. He insists that she has to “feel it”. It can’t just be about the technicalities of her dancing; she must lose herself in it. It’s as if Aronofsky is making a statement about his own films.

Under the increasing pressure, Nina begins to lose her grip on reality. She has hallucinations about her fingers bleeding and her toes becoming disfigured. She is determined to hide a small cut on her back, as if it might mar her otherwise perfect figure. In one horrifying sequence, she plucks a small, black feather from the wound. 

She is haunted, in a way, by a fellow member of her company, Lily (Mina Kunis), whose outgoing, sexually frank personality is foreign to her. Her character functions as a sort of doppelgänger in the film, showing up at strange times and often morphing into Nina herself. In an already famous scene, Lily takes Nina out on the town, and the two end up returning to Nina’s bedroom to make love. We learn later that Lily never followed Nina home.

Nina is haunted by the dark side of herself, the side she keeps hidden, like the cut on her back. Her black swan taunts her and seduces her, and wears the face of a rival.

The themes of the film are evident in the cinematography and production design. Nina wears white and Lily wears black. Leroy’s office and apartment are decorated with black and white furniture and decor - he embraces both sides of himself.

Nina cannot escape from herself, and her quest for perfection. Aronofsky reminds us of this by placing mirrors in nearly every scene. Sometimes the mirrors lie. 

The subtext of the film is about filmmaking itself. An actor must give himself fully to a performance; he must lose himself in it if he wishes to achieve greatness. A director is constantly encouraging his actors to do this very thing. When Leroy instructs Nina to go home and touch herself, it is not a sexual advance. He is trying to get her to let go.

In Leroy’s version of Swan Lake, Odette is the only one who plunges to her death at the end. Inevitably, Black Swan must end with Nina doing the same. As she lands on the mattress beneath the stage, her chest covered in blood from a self-inflicted stab wound, she looks up at Leroy and company, and says, “I felt it. It was perfect.”

I mentioned the virtuosity of the camerawork. It is a mistake to assume that shooting handheld is easier than on a tripod or dolly. Very often it is more difficult, especially for the focus-puller. There are some shots in Black Swan that left my mouth hanging open. 

I don’t gravitate towards films shot in this style, but it was the right choice for the material. The camerawork lends an air of reality to the story, which is then disrupted by the nightmarish images of Nina’s mental breakdown. 

This is a rich film with a truly extraordinary performance by Portman. And I should note that the score by Clint Mansell, which incorporates some of Tchaikovsky’s music and is therefore ineligible for an Oscar, is fantastic.

Black Swan might be the best film of 2010.

I felt it.