Black Swan (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2010)- Review

Certain art forms are built to flaunt suffering. They tend to come out of a certain cultural context, too- the English churned out plenty of saucy plays and satirical operas, the Americans had their pre-code screwball comedies, but they left serious exhibitions of swooning misery to the Continent, who honed it through possibly the most sadistic form of beauty out there: ballet. In 2010, Darren Aronofsky turned out perhaps the last gasp of an august but now archaic genre: a snapshot of a practice of aesthetic gendered sadism. Hinging first on France, then on Russia, the discipline beat generations of star athletes, celebrities, and, naturally, aristocratic mistresses out of the exhausted ranks of diminutive, often anonymous women, with little supervision until the 21st century. Even now, efforts towards ballet’s ‘Me Too moment’ have been hampered by its fundamentally physical nature; no number of mental safeguarding protocols or access initiatives can erase the essential violence of the art form and its canon.

Darren Aronofsky revisited this insular, otherworldly setting after the success of his film Wrestler (2008), a marginally more mainstream take on a cultlike world of physical suffering bound up with stardom. Black Swan takes a more hallucinatory, psychological tone- one which today’s Netflix ‘chillers’ can only dream of, in that the tightly defined bounds of the medium allow it to hit recognisable beats. 20th century psychiatrist Klaus Conrad defined madness as finding meaning where is none. Black Swan’s tightly regimented intertextual vocabulary ensures that its most melodramatic, sadistic moments have, at least, a clear intention. Virginal, wide-eyed Nina (Natalie Portman) is a soloist in an unnamed New York ballet corps, mincing into her late twenties burdened by her growing artistic ambition; her codependency with her mother-slash-roommate (Barbara Hershey); and an army of stuffed toys. Lecherous French director (Vincent Cassel) offers her the lead in Swan Lake on one condition: that she loosen up. How else can she hope to embody the good Swan Queen’s wicked double, the lascivious Black Swan?

“Lose yourself,” her bully exhorts. “Live a little". Nina can never do so- she labours under too many contradictory demands, embodied by her overbearing, undermining mother (Barbara Hershey). But she does gain a demonic double. Ramming her soft toys down the garbage chute after a drug-fuelled, bisexual nympho bender, the newly-minted maniac arrives at the theatre in an orgasmic fury- winning a standing ovation and the director’s ultimate admiration and gratitude for her Black Swan.

Naturally, in the spirit of the fairytale tradition, Nina’s sacrifice doesn’t ever seem worth it. The blame lies partly with the constrained camerawork, which never reveals what all the struggle is for. To keep from betraying Portman’s modest training – she devoted a year to a discipline that demands a decade at minimum – the camera stays above the waist. Body double Sarah Lane of American Ballet Theatre provides the precise footwork, with none of the midrange shots of the whole body and expressive face that light up classic dance movies: Gene Kelly singing in the rain, Astaire and Rogers rollerskating in the Park, Moira Shearer pas-de-deuxing with stray newspapers on the vast stage of The Red Shoes.

Worse, though, is the relentless misery to which Aronofsky subjects his heroine. Portman’s face quivers and her eyes brim with tears in almost every scene – even before the balletmaster raises the stakes. When she speaks, her voice barely emerges from her throat, it is so choked with anxiety. Her spine is stiff with fear. In light of her suffering, the thrill leaks out of this thriller. Who cares whether Nina has really sprouted wings or is only going mad? You want the torture to stop. If Aronofsky had paid some attention to the ballet Nina is destroying herself over, he might have made a less odious film. Sure, there is a good maiden and a sly vixen in Swan Lake, but, like the ballet’s dopey prince, Aronofsky gets them mixed up. The virtuous woman has a self to lose; the schemer merely fakes it.

Odette – part swan, whole queen, once simply a woman – is complex: wild but also majestic, animal yet gentle. Feeling and animal sense direct her nuanced moves and help her decide whom to trust (a skill I wish Nina had). Eventually she falls slowly backwards into the prince’s arms in a luxurious rapture that makes Nina’s “liberation” – getting banged in a club bathroom by a couple of drunken lads – seem especially pathetic. (Bad girl Lily, played with pleasing insouciance by Mila Kunis, orchestrates this drugged-up defloration.) Aronofsky and his movie double, the ballet director, get things backwards. If Nina can do the white swan she can do anything, because the Swan Queen has an inner life. Next to that, the lessons of random sex and other experiences pale.