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Black Swan (2010)

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Time Out rating

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122 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

It’s best to switch off the more sensible side of your mind, along with any idea that you’re going to experience a documentary-style portrait of the world of ballet, before encountering Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Black Swan’. It’s a film that really only works if you let yourself be swirled up, like its main character, in a storm of hysteria, paranoia and tears: it’s too impulsive and emotional to be picked apart at the level of logic and too ludicrous to exist in a world other than its own. It’s huge fun, but only if you’re willing to swallow its more bonkers excesses.

‘Black Swan’ gives us a harried, weepy Natalie Portman as Nina, a delicate, overly mothered dancer with the New York City Ballet who cracks up ten times over when she lands the dual roles of the White and Black Swans, Odette and Odile, in a production of ‘Swan Lake’. Realism barely gets a look in as Aronofsky and his team go hell-for-leather in reflecting this young woman’s fractured mental state – and the ballet’s own story and themes – in everything from an invasive, swirling photographic style to the monochrome production design of the office and apartment of her mentor and director, Thomas (pronounced the French way and played by Vincent Cassel), a man as stereotypically ‘European’ as Hercule Poirot. A fan of turtlenecks and indoor scarves, he’s the sort of guy who asks his protegées to masturbate, just to explore their devilish sides.

Or does he? It’s rarely clear what’s real or not in ‘Black Swan’. Aronofsky’s approach to psychological drama – to making real the horrors of the mind – makes the likes of Polanski’s ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ or ‘Repulsion’ look very timid. He doesn’t go for a gradual reveal of insanity. Instead, right from the off, we see Nina tearing off impossible amounts of skin from her fingers and hear awful cracks and snaps as she exercises her feet. From there, all Aronofsky can do is throw taste and subtlety to the wind.

The body horror increases: later, we see Nina’s legs bending and snapping, just as she hallucinates while looking at the walls of the flat she shares with her ultra-protective mother, played as a witch by Barbara Hershey. Her other nemeses are a demonic, newly retired dancer (Winona Ryder) and a pretty new colleague (Mila Kunis). Our view of both is entirely distorted by Nina’s breakdown as she struggles to play both swans and defy Thomas’s concerns that she’s too pure to play the more evil role.

The film’s endless pulp elements (erotica, stabbing, drugs, blood, strangling…) are tempered by the beauty of the story’s context – the music, dancing, costumes – and the film’s ballsy momentum. Yet there’s no escaping that this is high-class trash, however enjoyable. Aronofsky has taken a disturbed psychological state – the neuroses of a fragile artist – and flung it into lurid territory. He’s more concerned with expressing Nina’s madness and reflecting it (and, boy, he likes mirrors) in the world about her than in making any sense of her character or the life of a dancer. But he whips up such an orgy of fun in the process that it’s hard not to tear off your clothes and dive in.

Author: Dave Calhoun

Time Out London Issue 2109: 20 – 26 January, 2011

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User reviews of this film

alicia said...

Posted on May 18 2012 12:27 I finally rented this movie, believing I was going to see a good film, based on all they hype. I watched horrified, and then I started laughing at how ludicrous it was. Hated it so much that I took it back to the video store at 4:30 next morning; did not want it in my house.

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fida said...

Posted on Jun 12 2011 23:25 sick gross not even a movie it has nothing to do with the seventh art as they call the cinema i could not even wath all of it .i was so excited to watch it cause i love ballet then it was way too discusting to even watch it to the end .ballet is beauty but in this movie its rubbish it gives the ballet a completely different and wrong view. i have never watched anything that shitty.

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Jo said...

Posted on Jun 08 2011 14:25 I was very much looking forward to watching this film, and was very dissapointed. I kind of felt dirty after watching it. The story and meaning behind it is fantastic as I have worked within this setting, however I found the film was crude and not what I thought I was going to be watching. Very dissappointing, and can say Ill never watch it again.

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chris jackson said...

Posted on May 23 2011 14:43 very overrated

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christoph said...

Posted on May 08 2011 14:30 to put it in perspective, my wife is the one who likes emotional girl movies, and she wanted her money back, terrible.

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me said...

Posted on Apr 10 2011 14:17 Actually i watched the films many times and i couldnt see anything helpful i mean ok we know the point but its not what I expected I thought im was going to see unbelievable moral you know what (( ITS SHIT ))

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carla said...

Posted on Mar 24 2011 22:44 it's only a movie, why so many people compare this great movie to reality and judge it as such. enjoy the great performances like i did, don't hate it cos it doesn't connect with reality, it's not the main purpose of going to the movies. open your mind and take it as it is NOT as you would like it to be.

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Gillian said...

Posted on Mar 22 2011 10:03 If you like a film that endevours to make eroticism and horror acceptable then you will love this film.
I felt I wasted my money but thank heaven we are all different.

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I thought I said...

Posted on Mar 12 2011 16:25 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWESOME GO SEE THIS MOVIE NOW!!!!!!

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That's what she said...

Posted on Mar 12 2011 16:23 Fab

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I said...

Posted on Mar 12 2011 16:23 :)

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Clem said...

Posted on Mar 12 2011 16:22 I loved this. I saw it on the first day of release with no idea of what it was about, and it was incredible. Really excitig and thrilling to watch.

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marfa said...

Posted on Mar 11 2011 10:13 It's so sad - she's stuck in this awful situation battling a terrible mother and a terrible 'father figure'. One is trying to keep her a child, the other is trying to make her grow up in a horribly abusive way. No wonder she is terrified of sex. Whereas Mila Kunis represents someone developing normally - she is happy and cops off with a peer in the dance company - the male lead of Swan Lake. I thought this was brilliant and I felt genuinely sorry for Natlie Portman character. Only thing I couldn't believe is no-one would notice she was going into full-blown psychosis, or care that she was obviously vulnerable in more straightforward ways. Is ballet really that bad?

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John said...

Posted on Mar 04 2011 15:50 I went to see this movie by mistake hoping for ballet, but it was only a pretence for the director to make a horror movie and I was disappointed. I actually hated every minute of it because they managed ton spoil even the dance scenes.

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Alexandra Robedeaux said...

Posted on Mar 03 2011 03:57 There was nothing in this film that was in any way believable. As a ballet dancer myself, this passionless, vapid girl would have never even made it out of the thrird row of the corps. Ballerina?- come on. This woman would be laughed out of a job at Target. Dancers have to have immense feeling, passion and artistry to even continue as dancers. And to believe that any woman over 22 is that unfamilar with her body is ludicrous, it doesn't exist, Mr. Aronofsky. Unless they're dead!!! And also, to be in dance, yuo need passion and feeling even to be attracted to ballet. What universe do you live in - do you inhabit some planet where no one feels? No one grows? What kind of empty women inhabit your universe??

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