Telluride Review: BLACK SWAN! Aronofsky! Portman!

Much of my swooning over some of the Telluride Film Festival films is warranted. I swear. I admit that my reviews are often victims to my own excitement and love for the movies, but I will not recommend a movie that I truly do not enjoy. I also want to say that a bad review for a moderately hyped movie is coming soon, but this is not it. This is for a screwed up, scary as hell, masterpiece that is Darren Aronofsky’s BLACK SWAN.

Ever since I saw Aronofsky’s first film PI I knew that he had a horror film in him. There is something about the way interprets human obsession that can be pretty creepy. Exploring the subject of obsession has been a common thematic element throughout his films with mathematical theories, professional wrestling, eternal love, and drug addiction being the vehicles to do so. BLACK SWAN is a loose companion piece to THE WRESTLER, but it is a whole other animal. BLACK SWAN is also about obsession with glory and success, like THE WRESTLER, but it is clearly a horror film. Influences appear from Polanski’s ROSEMARY’S BABY and REPLUSION as well as THE RED SHOES. Forget all of this “psychological thriller” nonsense; BLACK SWAN is a balls-to-the-wall horror film that scares and repulses like the best of them.
Now I’m not doing much justice to this film by giving it a genre label. Horror films have a certain stigma attached to them. They are typically campy, poorly acted, and have low production values, but when a respected and renowned filmmaker, like Darren Aronofsky, makes a horror film none of those stigmas apply. This is anything but campy. It’s absolutely beautiful. From the opening prologue (one of my favorites scenes in any horror film) to the climactic shot are gorgeously crafted and shot with the best eye ever to film horror. In the prologue (meaning absolute opening scene folks so I’m not ruining anything) Natalie Portman dances with the giant, black man-bird, from the trailer, in such beautifully choreographed staging filled with macabre that leaves you awe-stricken and on edge throughout the rest of the film. Paired with all of the beauty and mature acting is a score that films perfectly. The entire score is a rendition of Swan Lake. I was already aware of the creepy and powerful orchestral score for the ballet, but when a creepy, powerful, and nostalgically familiar score is placed over a film like this it becomes so incredibly effective.

What has Natalie Portman done for me lately? Well…not anything great actually. She did well as the bald girl in V FOR VENDETTA and then tragically awful turn in the Star Wars prequels. In BLACK SWAN, she is a master class. Portman plays Nina, an up and coming ballet dancer who is working for a behind-the-times ballet company headed by Thomas Leroy (Vincent Castle). Thomas’s intentions for the winter program are to strip down, as well as stylistically adjust, some ballet classics. In order to bring forth these changes Leroy needs to hire a new lead for his version of Swan Lake. Out goes the great Beth Macintyre, played wonderfully by Winona Ryder, and in comes Nina (Portman). Things take a turn for the weird when new dancer Lilly enters the picture as this new breed of badass dancer played by Mila Kunis.

Basically Vincent Castle, Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, and, last but not least, Barbara Hershey (playing Nina’s mom with all the ferocious obsession reminding us of Mommy Dearest) provide a solid cast to populate this world of dance. If this were a straight-laced film about ballet it would have been good enough, but Aronofsky cannot do it straight. Nina becomes obsessed with her role as the Swan Queen, but Thomas wants both the role of the White Swan and the Black Swan (the evil twin) to be played by Nina. He scolds Nina repeatedly (and if scolding means trying to seduce as well that it works here too) for not being seductive enough for the role of the Black Swan. He says the Black Swan needs to be about lust and sultriness, not about precision and beauty, which Nina does fine. Then the pressure and the cruelty of Nina’s mother Erica (Barbara Hershey) start to wear on Nina as the threat of Lilly starts to threaten her. Next comes the odd creatures, displaced time, strange dreams, and questionable hallucinations that start to plague Nina. Ugly scratches start to form on her back and she starts to deteriorate physically. I refuse to go any further because what ensues is one of the most wonderfully screwed up psychological horror films I have ever seen.

Darren Aronofsky is a genius, and as well as one of my favorite living filmmakers. I have loved, or an at least enjoyed…ahem THE FOUNTAIN, every one of his films. His well paced style and visual acuteness blend to create magic more often than not. And when these abilities are applied to horror they create a nightmare world that will be forged in your memory for some time. It’s very soon to say, but I feel this could be my favorite of Aronofsky’s, and maybe my favorite film of the year. I have been wracking my brain trying to find some negatives to include, but I have come up short. BLACK SWAN is a quick and brilliant masterpiece of psychological horror. Could this be the first time since SILENCE OF THE LAMBS that a horror film can earn some from the academy?

See it and love it.