Black Swan [105 points / 11 votes]
"“I just want to be perfect,” broods Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), the prima ballerina protagonist of Black Swan, early on in the film as she struggles to master the dueling personalities of her character. Ironically, the film itself never shares in such travails; from the get-go, wunderkind director Darren Aronofsky and his cast and crew perfect both the formal control of the white swan and the raw passion of the black swan.
So much has been said of Portman’s career-defining turn in the lead role, and at first it is tempting to say that she carries the movie. Once the viewer gets the chance to externalize from the film’s thrashing ride after it’s over, however, Black Swan begins to seem a lot like an auteur piece, as Aronofsky’s directorial hand is evident in every piece of the puzzle, including Portman’s performance. But that impulse soon gives way to the broader realization that all of the pieces are just as, well... perfect. The film is a collaborative effort in the truest sense.
It is in the aforementioned bipolarity -- the fine line between lightness and darkness -- that Black Swan attains greatness. On a narrative level, one can choose to believe either Nina is literally going insane, becoming one with her art to the extent at which she disassociates from reality, or she is metaphorically coming to sanity, confronting the foreign concept of womanhood for the first time. These readings could not be more opposite. Furthering this complexity, the film switches on a dime from a straight-laced drama to a “WTF!?”-provoking grindhouse horror flick, to the point at which, like blurry faces in the night, one isn’t sure which is which.
Even the filmmaking itself mirrors the dueling dynamic. At once, the cast and crew exercise technical preciseness and produce work that overflows in passion. Here is a movie that wants to take the viewer to an uncomfortable place, as all great cinema should, and it knows how to get there. Each aspect is impeccably tuned to illicit such a result. Gritty as Matthew Libatique’s 16mm cinematography is, I dare you to find camerawork that was more thought-out than this was. Next, consider Clint Mansell’s score, which provides such a unique dramatic undercurrent for the material, and yet it is derived almost entirely from the original "Swan Lake" compositions. The list goes on. Likewise, each performance is expertly crafted as a diametrically-opposed foil to Portman’s immature, rules-driven Nina: Barbara Hershey as her maniacal, controlling mother; Mila Kunis as her passionate, unafraid rival; and Vincent Cassell as her assertive, no-nonsense coach.
So much of Black Swan is hyperbolic and abstractly emotional that it is easy to understand why its greatness has been lost on many general audiences. But for those of us who connected with the miracle of how it is able to master the cinematic art-form as we know it and, at the same time, push it into uncharted territory, there was not a more perfect movie all year." - Danny Baldwin
No comments:
Post a Comment