Black Swan

Reviewed by Steve Kochems

There’s no getting around the elephant in the room here. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a huge Natalie Portman fan, so I’m going to get right to it. This movie is incredibly sexual and it stars Natalie Portman. Two and two equal four. So yeah, it scored major points for me right off the bat. Mila Kunis didn’t hurt either. 

However I try to be professional, and I try to remain objective and take a film for what it’s worth, ignoring the external influences that might cloud my judgment that all of you, our readers, put so much stock into. I am going to do my best to do just that, hence why I’ve addressed what would be a glaring issue first in my approach to this film.

Ok, ready? Go.

Black Swan follows the growth of Nina (Portman), a young ballerina who seeks to be the featured dancer in a prominent show, Swan Lake, where she must embody both the pure and elegant white swan but also the passion-filled seducing black swan. Nina’s journey, as the title suggests, is about coming to understand what it means to be to be the black swan. But many things stand in her way- the growing doubts from her employer, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), growing pressure from her mother (Barbra Hershey) a former ballerina herself, and competition from other dancers, primarily the newly arrived and wildly salacious Lily (Kunis), whose friendship may have one or more hidden objectives.

What hits hardest about this film is how many layers it carries under the same plot threat. Nina begins to lose herself as she begins to try to transition from the white swan to the black, but beneath that is Nina making choices as she grows up, the decisions that determine what kind of person she chooses to be. This is evident with the sexual tones of the film, from Lily and Thomas’s advances on Nina to her most intimate moments alone with herself; she begins to lose control under the pressure of being in the spotlight.

I’ve not been the biggest fan of Darren Aronofsky, mainly because I think Requiem for a Dream was a giant bag of depressing, but I think he does a particularly good job here of utilizing the psychological elements in an otherwise grounded narrative. As Nina falls deeper and deeper into becoming the black swan, the lines of reality start to blur, but are well disguised enough so that it feels not as if the film is losing its direction but rather Nina is and we are all witness to it. That is quality filmmaking.

I can’t promise this will be a film for everyone; it’s violent and, as stated before, incredibly sexual. For an average movie-goer, this may seem like nothing more than a soft-core porno with a really messed up plot, but if you’re looking to see how deep a movie can be, more directly how deep one can go into a single character, this might just be the movie for you.

Rating: 5 out of 5