Review: Black Swan

Director Darren Aronofsky has many gifts, but subtlety has never been one of them. Hes at his best when hes teetering right on the brink of shrieking excess (see: Requiem for a Dream), and viewers who dont like their drama pitched very high will probably run screaming from his latest movie, Black Swan. Everyone else is in for a spellbinding, wickedly entertaining treat.

For viewers who like high drama, Black Swan is a spellbinding, wickedly entertaining treat.

Set in the cutthroat New York ballet world, Black Swan is several movies in one: a backstage look at the physical demands of a dancers life; an impassioned ode to artistic creation; a trashy mother-daughter melodrama; and a psychosexual thriller complete with raven-haired doppelgangers, lesbian trysts and fistfuls of spiky black feathers. Mostly, its an example of go-for-broke filmmaking, and even in the moments where the movie goes completely bonkers, it still manages to feel like a triumph.

Black Swan centres on Nina (Natalie Portman), a ballerina still dancing pas de quatres after years of grueling training. When her companys artistic director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel), announces shes in the running for the star-making role of the Swan Queen in Swan Lake, wiry little Nina begins licking her chops. But theres a catch. While shes got all the technique to pull off the prissy White Swan steps, Thomas has doubts Nina can access the darkness required to convincingly dance the dangerous, lusty Black Swan.

One glimpse of Ninas dreary home life and we see what Thomas is getting at. Cooped up in cramped digs with her head-tripping, smothering mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey, delivering every line through pursed lips and gritted teeth), Nina is a frigid, emotionally stunted girl-child. Wrapped up in her pink floral bedspread and flanked by an army of stuffed animals, she doesnt have the first clue about the down-and-dirty impulses that drive the Black Swan.

But the taunting, lewd Thomas might be underestimating her ambition. As the handheld camera stalks Nina through labyrinthine corridors, apartments and subways, the lens trained on her grey hoodie and tight hair bun, she could easily be mistaken for Randy the Ram, the hero played by Mickey Rourke in Aronofskys previous film, The Wrestler. Like that beaten-down protagonist, Nina will endure physical agony to achieve that one ecstatic moment in the spotlight. Ballet is all she has, and as Aronofsky lingers over her shredded, bloodied toenails and amps up every snap, crackle and pop of Ninas battered joints, its clear shes willing to suffer for her art.

In the films early stages, Aronofsky records the minutiae of the ballet world with the curiosity of a documentarian, pausing to observe as the dancers scrape shellac off their satin slippers or grind their pointes in crunchy resin. But as the haunting opening dream sequence indicates, Aronofsky isnt going for naturalism. As soon as Nina lands her dream role, the movie morphs into a hallucinatory fairy tale where things go bump in the night, ghostly doubles lurk around every corner and a tightly wound virgin stands poised to go every bit as bananas as Catherine Deneuve in Roman Polanskis classic 1965 film Repulsion.

Our skittish heroine must battle rivals on her journey. There is a bitter, aging dancer named Beth (Winona Ryder, who nails her brief, neurotic scenes), whos none too happy about being cast aside by Thomas. Then, an Eve Harrington figure arrives in the curvy form of Lily (Mila Kunis), a free spirit whose effortless moves both on and off the stage floor send Nina into an anxious flop sweat. Lily is an id in pointe shoes, munching on bloody cheeseburgers and pills, goading Nina into adolescent rebellion, all while trying to soft-shoe her way into the role of Swan Queen understudy.

But as Thomas frequently warns her, Nina is her own worst enemy, and by the time she starts seeing dual images of herself in the change room mirror and picking at an oozing rash on her shoulder blades, Black Swan is getting ready to leap right over the top. The movie works best if viewers do the same. Scratch the surface of the script, and Black Swan is a mess of Freudian ideas and 1950s clichs. Treat it as a nutso rollercoaster ride, and it never ceases to astonish.

Certainly, Portman dives in head first. Shes in nearly every frame of Black Swan, and while her buzzed-about performance isnt all that varied (she basically moves from frightened to more frightened), it is a harrowing physical feat. She uses her gaunt, sinewy body to great effect and registers subtle shifts in Ninas headspace with only her breath. It starts with the hungry little huff she emits when she learns of the Swan Lake audition, and expands to the urgent, animalistic gasps in the unhinged finale.

Her committed approach to Black Swan and Ninas masochistic attempts to channel her inner bitch-seductress provides one of the more satisfying ways to interpret the film. Always a champion of old-school actors who live the part (see: Ellen Burstyn, Mickey Rourke), Aronofsky makes Method acting a metaphor in Black Swan, arguing that the perfection Nina seeks will only arrive at the moment when she risks losing herself completely.

This all-in spirit is present in every frame of Aronofskys film. The script might be shaky, but as a technical achievement, Black Swan is nothing short of breathtaking. The dance scenes are staged with frantic, gorgeous urgency. From the screeching Tchaikovsky strings to the expressionist lighting to the swirling, intense, pirouetting camera moves, the film puts viewers right in Ninas shoes.

As both dancer and movie accelerate toward a frenzied finish, Aronofskys filmmaking has never been better. Like Nina, its creative transcendence hes after, and he gets there in Black Swans finale a brave leap that is exhilarating and pretty close to perfect.

Black Swan opens Dec. 3.

Lee Ferguson writes about the arts for CBC News.