Rating: 3/5
It may have won a clutch of awards, and may be on track to scoop a few more, but Black Swan is decidedly more camp classic than cinematic art, a film hyped way beyond its stature.Where the film lets itself down is in the details. From my very brief flirtation with ballet at the age of five, I know that dancers are not permitted to wear jewellery or have their hair down while rehearsing and that huge tattoos are highly unlikely to be seen gracing the shoulders of principal ballerinas. They might also have enlisted a foot-double for Portman – I’ve seen ballet dancer’s feet and they look as though they have been mauled by dogs!
That the film’s central performance has been showered with awards baffles me entirely. Apart from the fact that she is very good at portraying ‘cold’ and ‘unresponsive’ Natalie Portman’s acting leaves the audience with no sense of character whatsoever. This works to her advantage in a film like Closer, but seems to be a disadvantage in Black Swan. If the whole film rests on Nina, then her characterlessness makes the entire film insubstantial. She also seems to have trouble speaking, as if she doesn’t know what to do with her tongue, and this can be very distracting.
Aronofsky's strategy for avoiding film cliche's related to madness, is to avoid subtlety altogether. This is jarring for the viewer, accustomed to more regular representations, but not necessarily a bad thing. The film is best where it is most ludicrous, which is also where it is violent. The scenes that stick in the brain involve blood, smashed fingers, broken bones and mutilation - the gruesome, gory side always reined in enough not to disgust. The sexual content seems set up to have the same effect, but fails.
Mila Kunis, while very good, is almost annoyingly stereotypical in her role as the ‘bad Californian girl’ who likes sex and cheeseburgers, takes drugs, and wears a lot of black. I feel sorry for her: one feels she could have done so much more with the role if the director weren’t so hell-bent on abandoning subtlety in favour of caricature.
Much has been made of Winona’s Ryder’s ‘supporting role’ and while the moment when she plunges a nail file into her face is one of the film’s most startling moments, she really has little more than a cameo. Far more substantial, and chilling, is Barbara Hershey as the chilling, obsessive stage mother who keeps her adult daughter in a little girl’s room, confined to an apartment where there is no privacy.
The ending, I felt, was lazy. In fact, the final scene is such a mirror of the ending of The Wrestler that I was almost annoyed.
And yet…and yet…for all its cartoonish excess, the film is enjoyable. I laughed out loud (something I rarely do) in several places, and jumped in others. I feel the hype around the film may have drawn in the wrong audience – I derived much the same pleasure from Black Swan (aged 30) that I did from Scream (aged 16) and I somehow feel the two should be watched in the same spirit, by fun-loving people looking for a few laughs and a few thrills.
