Black Swan

Com­posed in 1875 and ini­tial­ly con­sid­ered a dis­ap­point­ment, Swan Lake came to be viewed as Tchaikovsky’s mas­ter­piece. The same may be true of Dar­ren Aronofsky’s con­tem­po­rary refit. It takes sev­er­al view­ings before the film’s unnerv­ing blend of psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma and tra­di­tion­al hor­ror reveals itself as some­thing unique and powerful.

And fit­ting­ly so. With its depic­tion of a dancer (Natal­ie Port­man) strug­gling to play the roles of the Swan Queen and her evil twin in a new adap­ta­tion of the bal­let, Black Swan is a film about trans­for­ma­tion and transcendence.

It reca­pit­u­lates Aronofsky’s favourite themes of per­for­mance and mor­tal­i­ty, but it is also a self-reflex­ive film of mir­rors, dou­bles and dop­pel­gängers. It is Aronofsky’s com­ment on the art of cre­ation and the cre­ation of art, and in its inge­nu­ity and audac­i­ty he advances a claim for cin­e­ma as the most alchem­i­cal art form of them all. The New York City Bal­let may trans­form the Swan Queen using make-up and chore­og­ra­phy, but up there on screen, the mag­i­cal meta­mor­pho­sis of cin­e­ma is real.

Cred­it for that must be shared not just by the direc­tor and his tech­ni­cians (includ­ing reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tors Clint Mansell, boldy rework­ing Tchaikovsky’s orig­i­nal score; and DP Matthew Liba­tique, paint­ing the film in moody hues of grit and grain), but by his per­form­ers, too.

From the open­ing scene – a pas de deux shot with hand-held inti­ma­cy, but as men­ac­ing as any­thing in The Wrestler – Natal­ie Port­man demon­strates a remark­able trans­for­ma­tion, occu­py­ing both the mind and body of a vul­ner­a­ble dancer. Gaunt and timid, with a voice that dis­ap­pears into a fright­ened whis­per, yet beau­ti­ful in the film’s strik­ing close-ups, her per­for­mance is the anchor that keeps Black Swan ground­ed through its dra­mat­ic shifts in tone and texture.

Cho­sen to embody a dual role, Nina strug­gles to sup­press her intel­lect and sur­ren­der to instinct. Her emo­tion­al inhi­bi­tion is exac­er­bat­ed by the sit­u­a­tion at home, where Nina shares a small apart­ment with her moth­er, Eri­ca (Bar­bara Her­shey). A dancer who nev­er escaped the cho­rus line, a bit­ter and jeal­ous moth­er who smoth­ers her daugh­ter with love, Eri­ca is one of the great mater­nal psychos.

The paint­ings of Nina that cov­er Erica’s bed­room wall hint at a sim­mer­ing sex­u­al ten­sion, bril­liant­ly revealed in a mas­tur­ba­tion scene (fear­less­ly per­formed by Natal­ie Port­man) that sees Aronof­sky at his provoca­tive best. Here, in an apart­ment with no locks, Nina is trapped along­side an old­er, cru­eller image of the woman she might become.

If Tchaikovsky’s Swan Queen rep­re­sents a nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry ide­al of wom­an­hood, this trans­gres­sive ten­sion infus­es Black Swan with a twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry psy­chosis where female trans­for­ma­tion – in the guise of sex­u­al matu­ri­ty, preg­nan­cy and age­ing – is a chal­lenge to our air­brushed ide­al of femininity.

Sur­round­ed by mir­rors, Nina is con­stant­ly sub­ject to an objec­ti­fy­ing gaze, whether her own self-crit­i­cal pur­suit of per­fec­tion or the taunt­ing scruti­ny of com­pa­ny direc­tor Thomas Leroy (Vin­cent Cas­sel). ​“Hon­est­ly, would you fuck that girl?” he asks her part­ner. Grad­u­al­ly, Nina’s sense of self begins to unrav­el as the demands of this schiz­o­phrenic per­for­mance take their toll.

Enter Lily. Played by a per­fect­ly cast Mila Kunis, she is wild and instinc­tive where Nina is uptight and repressed. Lily is soon estab­lished in the corps as Nina’s pro­fes­sion­al alter­nate, but more than that she is Nina’s equal and oppo­site – her own evil twin.

As dreams, hal­lu­ci­na­tions and fan­tasies unpick the frag­ile weave of Nina’s mind, Lily emerges as Black Swan’s Jun­gian sub­con­scious; its very own Tyler Dur­den. Is she a pro­jec­tion of Nina’s shad­ow aspect or does she tru­ly exist? Is she a mix­ture of the real and the imag­ined? And how do we tell the dif­fer­ence between the two?

These ques­tions cli­max in a night­club scene in which Black Swan throws off the shack­les with pri­mal force. Sound and fury accen­tu­ate a deliri­ous dis­con­nec­tion as Nina is lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly seduced by the demons with­in. It’s a make-or-break moment that crys­tallis­es the film’s psy­cho­sex­u­al sub­text. But it also pre­cip­i­tates Black Swan’s descent into a dis­ori­en­tat­ing last act. With Nina’s emo­tions fatal­ly unleashed, Aronof­sky uses a sub­jec­tive view­point to place us inside her frac­tur­ing mind. No longer able to believe what we see, the audi­ence is forced to ques­tion the very foun­da­tion of the cin­e­ma experience.

But this veneer of sophis­ti­ca­tion masks a sim­ple show­man­ship. Aronof­sky has giv­en him­self license to play with the film’s inter­nal con­sis­ten­cy, but in doing so he rais­es ques­tions over whether any of it makes log­i­cal sense. The excuse of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty is his handy escape hatch.

And yet this inter­ro­ga­tion of the medi­um is com­pelling. As Leroy manip­u­lates Nina to extract a per­for­mance, it’s impos­si­ble not to see Cas­sel trans­mut­ed into Aronof­sky, mis­chie­vous­ly decon­struct­ing his own role in the cre­ative process. Is the direc­tor the real artist, or sim­ply a con­duit for the genius of oth­ers? Is he, at that, noth­ing but a bully?

If Black Swan is Aronofsky’s claim to cre­ative genius, it’s one that is under­mined by an over­cooked finale and the film’s own dual nature. One half is a huge­ly effec­tive psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror in which the scares arise from a per­fect­ly cal­i­brat­ed bal­ance between the mind and body. Make no mis­take – Black Swan isn’t for the squea­mish. Aronof­sky vicious­ly por­trays the frailty of the human body – the stretch and creak of frag­ile bones and the gash­es and grazes that cut deep into the viewer’s imagination.

But the film’s own evil twin is a clichéd slap­stick shock­er of crash-bang sound cues and age-old sight gags. Here, the brood­ing tone slips into melo­dra­ma, and you begin to notice the things that don’t work – like the over-lit­er­al cos­tumes (black for Lily; pas­tels for Nina), or the cast­ing of Vin­cent Cas­sel. So charis­mat­ic in recent films, here he plays Leroy as a car­toon vil­lain, lack­ing only a mous­tache to twirl.

Per­haps its fit­ting that a film about dual­i­ty should suc­cumb to its own Jun­gian schism. But for all that Black Swan is an uneven expe­ri­ence, it’s a fero­cious com­bi­na­tion of intel­li­gence and adren­a­lin. It is dark and deep and com­plex. It is aggra­vat­ing, ambi­tious and arro­gant. After all, how many films fade to white as the director’s name appears to a sound­track of thun­der­ous applause?

But then, how many direc­tors have earned the indul­gence? Black Swan may or may not see him at his impe­ri­ous best, but Aronof­sky has.