“Perfection is not just about control; it is also about letting go.”

Black Swan (Aronofsky, 2010)

I’m not even sure how to begin writing about Black Swan at this point, as I’m still pretty much incapable of doing anything but gushing. I’ll have to watch it at least once more before I can do more than string together a series of vague adjectives. But for the time being, if only for the sake of maintaining my efforts to write semi-consistently, here goes…

Black Swan is an incredibly ambitious film, despite its fairly simple plot. Hopefully it’s not too much of a spoiler to let you know that this film about a ballerina is also a retelling of Swan Lake, the ballet in which Nina (Natalie Portman) is playing the lead. Swan Lake, as summarized within the film, is about a girl who is turned into a swan and, in true fairytale fashion, can only be restored to her original form by the transformative power of love. Alas, because Swan Lake is not a Disney movie, her prince falls in love with another swan, and she kills herself.

Aronofsky sets out not only to retell the story of Swan Lake through the interpersonal dramas that occur within the ballet company that is performing it, but also to showcase the intrapersonal dramas and conflicts of a person seeking perfection at any cost. A movie that is, in part, about ambition, Black Swan is itself quite ambitious. There are a number of tonal shifts throughout the film, and a fairly drastic one leading into its final act; if the rest of the film had not sufficiently prepared us for these shifts, they could have come across as comical. (I gather that this is exactly how some audiences received them, which is unfortunate.) Aronofsky’s grand stylistic choices, however, set the stage for these shifts nicely—making the transitions from the relatively straightforward plot to the magical realism of Nina’s imagined reality quite seamless.

Although (or perhaps because) much of the film is quite dark, the lighting choices stand out quite a bit. There are many exquisitely composed shots that are arresting for their stylistic components and their sheer power. As in The Wrestler (Aronofsky, 2008), Aronofsky uses sound exceedingly well to simultaneously unite and differentiate the character’s mental space from his/her physical environment. The film is technically brilliant, and I would have been captivated by the stylistic choices even if the plot and performances were not strong enough to back them up. Fortunately, solid performances—especially from Portman and Barbara Hershey as Erica, her overbearing mother—that make Black Swan a truly memorable film.

Exquisitely shot and edited, beautiful, and haunting, Black Swan may already be a frontrunner for my best of the year list. Aronofsky claimed that spot in 2008 with The Wrestler—a film that was praised as a solid but unambitious character study. Like The Wrestler, Black Swan offers a detailed and provocative study of a fairly small world—an entertainment industry that is particularly grueling, both physically and psychologically. Indeed, in some ways, Black Swan seems to be Aronofsky’s answer to the criticism of the earlier film—a visceral and powerful film that proves character studies don’t have to be small, unambitious films.