Black Swan - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"Perfection is not about control. It's about letting go!"

Darren Aronofsky is known for creating artistic, surreal and sometimes even supernatural movies. I'm a big fan The Fountain and The Wrestler, but for some reason I hadn't gotten around to see his latest movie, Black Swan, until very recently. As it usually is the case in these situations, Black Swan of cause ended up completely blowing me away when I finally did see it.

Black Swan is about a ballerina called Nina, played by my future wife Natalie Portman. Nina is a sweet, fragile, innocent and antisocial young woman who still lives with her mother, and she has pretty much dedicated her life to becoming the world's greatest ballet dancer. She is eventually given the role of a lifetime, The Swan Queen in the ballet Swan Lake, and everything seems to go the way young Nina has planned. This abruptly ends when Lily, an uncontrollable and wild chick played by Mila Kunis, who basically represents the polar opposite of Nina, joins the ballet team. Things start to get really weird and creepy, and as pressure and anxiety begins to pile up on Nina's shoulders, one of the most intoxicating and enthralling stories of the decent into madness starts to unfold. 

One of the first things that should be said about Black Swan is that it's a ballet movie and a horror movie at the same time. Maybe not as much horror as  ballet, but it definitely has some incredibly creepy and disturbing moments in it. Some of these did seem a little bit forced, but it never got to the point where I didn't enjoy watching them. Some parts of the movie feel like nightmare'ish fever dreams, and I did not expect it to be as black and eery as it is, not at all. This chillingly creepy atmosphere that surrounds the two main characters throughout the movie, combined with the sense of things being completely out of control no matter how hard Nina tries to be perfect, adds something new to this movie that I've never seen before, and it works out incredibly well. I'm not a horror movie fan at all, so for me to say that I enjoyed the scary parts of Black Swan may be the biggest compliment I can give it. 

Black Swan is one of those movies that is just completely filled to the rim with symbolism and metaphors, something that often gets really complicated and hard to keep up with. However, in the case of Black Swan, I actually found these symbols and hints to be fairly easy to keep track of, and as a result Black Swan left me feeling strangely satisfied, because I was able to pick out the clues and symbols and put them together and come up with something that made sense. Darren Aronofsky reveals just so much of the plot that most people will be able to understand what's going on, but still leaves room for interpretation and stuff to think about, and I really enjoyed that about Black Swan. It's the first film I've watched that has done this, and It's definitely something I'd like to see more of in the future. 

Black Swan has a great story arc and a truly hypnotising musical score, but none of these things truly matter if the actors aren't great. Luckily for this movie, the entire cast does a very good job. I enjoyed Mila Kunis' performance very much, the evil villain from Ocean's Twelve is really great as well, and Barbara Hershey was incredible as Nina's overprotective mother. All these three characters are absolutely crucial to the story, and they all have an incredible amount of influence on the main character. The way these three behave towards Nina are the main catalysts for most of the things that happens in the movie; the twist, the turns and the development of Nina as a character almost all lead back to the supporting cast, and the movie would not be the same without any of them. Black Swan is a great example of how supporting character development can really make a movie shine.

As vital to the main character as they are, the supporting cast never manages to steal the spotlight from this movie's true star: Natalie Portman. Her portrayal of Nina won her an oscar for best actress in a leading role, as well as any other award there is to win, which it's 100% justified. She is spellbinding in this movie, from start to finish. Her facial expressions, her body language, the fact that she does 80% of the dancing in this movie herself, and her ability to display emotions such as anger, despair, happiness and loneliness, it's all magnificent. Perhaps the greatest part of her performance is when she has to flip it 180 and become a totally different person. The reason why she has to do this is that Lily, who embodies the black swan, eventually starts to influence Nina, who in the beginning is the whitest of the white swans, in a very disturbing way. The relationship between the white and black swan and the way they are connected and keep getting into more and more dangerous situations together is the main plot of Black Swan, and i gotta tell you, it's pretty god damn astonishing how great the chemistry between these characters is. 

Whilst watching this movie, I noticed that Black Swan has something in common with the movie Fight Club, another great movie I've reviewed in the past. I won't explain what this connection is in detail because it would spoil the plot of both movies, but the fact that it's there is pretty cool to me. Whether Fight Club or Black Swan handles this element I'm talking about the best is hard to say, but one thing that's for certain is that it's the best part of both movies respectively. Both movies, Black Swan in particular, also manage to keep the momentum going from start to finish, never getting boring or predictable. There's always something happening, something to look out for, an element I appreciated immensely. 

If i had to describe Black Swan with one sentence, it would have to be something like "A fever dream of mystery, insanity and ambition". Any movie with that tag line is worth watching in my book, and if you enjoy physiological thrillers with incredible acting, twists and turns, scares and beauty, Black Swan is something for you. When the movie was done I sat down in a chair for 20 minutes, trying to wrap my head around what I had just seen, and days later I've not stopped thinking yet. Black Swan is an existential mind bender about ambition, pressure, madness and greed that I'll be watching many many times in the future. It's an artistic masterpiece, it's that simple... And it has a Natalie Portman/Mila Kunis lesbo scene, which essentially is enough to earn it the rating of Movie Magic in itself. (6/6)

Black Swan IMDb page here

Black Swan trailer here