Swanning around

The awards season has rolled around again with dreary inevitability (as opposed to zestful inevitability). The BAFTA nominees, the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors’ Guild awards, the Oscar nominees and soon the BAFTAs and Oscars proper (and that’s just the Anglo-US contribution). This time of year is a massive luvvie-fest which may account for the good notices for Black Swan, as if in the medium of ballet they recognised a kindred spirit.
One might think that a young woman’s schedule in preparing for the lead role in Swan Lake would be more of a collector’s item than box office or just dull á là the opinions of the two blowhards that appear fleetingly midway through the movie. But this is a Darren Aronofsky flick, with all that goes with that. He went seriously off all known reservations with his last outing, but there were probably enough good memories of Requiem for a Dream and π to give him another crack at the directorial reins. For this is a major release with a good deal of expensive CGI (is there any other kind?). But his auteur side is too prevalent to make this film great. In contrast to Natalie Portman’s lead, Nina, with her initial rehearsals, this cinematic offering let’s itself go much too readily.
The plot is, essentially, a psychodrama, with gore, horror, melodrama and ultimately pretentiousness all getting a whirl. The world of ballet is indeed demanding, stressful, even self-destructive for some (I’ve read a few interviews of dancers currently in the trade), yet to have it painted in such a lurid way, one can understand why the real professionals are irritated by this release. I have learnt that there is an upsurge in turn-out for ballet performances, but for me, if anything, the film was a turn-off.
This is not to say the story is universally bad – though it flies dangerously close to the ‘it was all a dream’ device, with so many hallucinations by Nina that the whole projected reality can be questioned – for my heart at the end would have given competitors at Aintree a good run for their money. Black Swan is effective. I had sat down with virtually no pre-conceptions of what was to follow. The masochism and sexual ‘violence’ are a couple of notches lower but reminded me of the bludgeon that was The Piano Teacher. Altaa, afterwards, posited that Black Swan was challenging. I would of further – it is brutal, relentless. This is exacerbated by the quality of the acting. In addition to Portman, excellent contributions are turned in by Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis and a mature Winona Ryder. I would have no complaints if Oscar recognised this.
This is a movie that yearns to be on a film studies course. All manner of conceits are deployed: Nina’s metamorphosis into a swan (of which one interpretation is that it is indicative of her determination to be perfect); the mother whose failed career induces her to live tyrannically through her daughter, who is thus infantilised before going off the rails like Britney Spears (what will those earnest students say about the absent father…); and the parallels to Swan Lake itself, told as a nihilistic, secular fairytale (only missing the MASH tune Suicide is Painless), among many, many paraphernalia. By the same measure, it could be sent up mercilessly.
The pretension is victorious at the end when [SPOILER] Nina expires to triumphant applause - a twist on the saying ‘to die for’. Pare it down, it is just going out on a high. Rather than being tragic though, it is not far removed from Oscar Wilde’s reaction to the death of Little Nell. This continues into the arrangement of the final credits, with needless tricksiness unfortunately reinforcing this effect. It is not a film I would see in a hurry again, but it does the job. Boosting the audience for ballet can’t be too bad. Next time though, could we have a discursive debate about Karl Popper’s theory of black swans please? 3 out of 5.