Black Swan

Yesterday we went to see Black Swan. Like many of the audience, our reaction was ‘Huh?’



Yesterday we went to see Black Swan, about which I knew absolutely nothing except that Natalie Portman has been highly praised for her performance in it as a ballet dancer. I was expecting many things, but none of them included a lurch into slasher-movie territory with a host of loud bangs and sudden jump cuts; at the end our reaction of 'huh?' seemed to be typical of many of the audience.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Nina Sayers (Portman) is an ambitious ballet dancer living at home with her domineering if well-meaning mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey). Picked to play the combined roles of Black and White Swans in Swan Lake, a combination that is not only incredibly high-profile but artistically challenging, Nina begins to crumble under the pressure.

Erica notices deep scratches on Nina’s back. Nina continually picks at her nails until they bleed. Nina hears whispers and begins to hallucinate as she seems to be descending into full-blown psychosis.

If Nina is the white swan (impresario Thomas Leroy recognizes her near-frigid perfection for the role) her rival Lily is the definitive seductive black swan. Lily always has an explanation for her behaviour, and when she doesn’t, she apologizes – after the damage is done.

In many ways, the early minutes of Black Swan perfectly encapsulate the art of film-making as we’ve been taught it. Minimal dialogue, none of it on the nose, lots of telling details, such as Nina’s cloying bedroom stuffed full of little-girl toys – and later as she tries to embrace a more adult persona, cramming them down the garbage chute.

But; but. The problem with telling details is that they don’t work if the protagonist is unreliable. Is Lily really after Nina’s role, or is she just misunderstood, easy-going, going with the flow? Is Nina her mother’s near-prisoner, or is Erica simply trying to look after her daughter? Do Nina and Lily have a night of passionate lesbian sex, or is Nina simply fantasizing?

I suspect the answer to that question, and in many ways the whole film is implied in the scene where Nina opens her door the morning after, but it's done so quickly and at the time it's significance isn't clear, that I wished afterwards that I could have taken a rewind button into the cinema.

The other problem with Black Swan is that its makers seem to be scared that their audience will get bored, so we’re given lots of jump cuts (literally at one point) and loud noises to stop us drifting off to sleep – rather as if they’ve taken Sergei Eisenstein’s view of editing as a series of images in collision rather too literally.

The film doesn’t really seem to know whether it wants to be a psychological study, a thriller or even a slasher movie. And in the end, it falls down between the two (or three) stools.