I had to return to David Bordwells description of the art film: "With the open and arbitrary ending, the art film reasserts that ambiguity is the dominant principle of intelligibility, that we are to watch less for the tale than the telling, that life lacks the neatness of art and this art knows it." Black Swan is an art film and very little else. Even the subject matter is art itself, in the form of Ballet.
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As a new season opens, star dancer Beth (Winona Ryder) is pushed into retirement by her ballet director (and assumed lover) Thomas (Vincent Cassell). He introduces a series of reimagined classics--a hint at his opinion of himself--starting wtih Swan Lake. The ballet requires a performer who can embody the virginal white swan who must fall in love with the prince to be released from her swan form, and the black swan twin who seduces the prince instead. Nina (Portman) is praised as the most dedicated dancer in the company, but she is also sexually stunted--still at home with her overbearing, failed-ballerina of a mother. She gets the part for her ability to portray the white swan, but she must also learn to explore a darker side to naturally dance the black swan, which would be much more naturally danced by Lily (Kunis). Nina strives for perfection, explores her darker side, and fears Lily's encroaching talent. Insanity ensues...
Director Aronofsky pins the point of view of this film to Nina's mind. Reality, dream, and insanity all battle for Nina's focus, and all are shows with equal beauty and depth. We, as the audience, are not asked to search for the twist ending or the clue that will unlock the difference between reality and imagination, but rather we are trapped in a deteriorating mind. There is no delineation between truth and fiction--it's just about the experience. Aronofsky shot the film with an enormous amount of grace and fluidity, but the subject matter itself is extremely dark. Make no mistakes, this film is a terrifying journey into a complete disconnection with reality. It is very sexually explicit without being excessively graphic. In other aspects, the film can get very graphic, however. The mutilation and violence portrayed forced me to look away several times.
As a dancer, I am familiar with this world. I know "that girl" who is dedicated to the art and the impulse to reach perfection. This is (hopefully) an artful exaggeration of what that could lead to psychologically, but it feels very organic in its development. Ballet is a suitable backdrop because of the already extreme measures taken for beauty. Shoes are ripped, burned, and sewn as toes are broken and bodies are pushed to atheletic limits under a lack of nourishment. A psychotic break seems to be a quite natural progression.
The acting performances in connection to the beautiful direction make the experience of this film quite striking despite the lack of grounding or discrete storyline. It would also make a really fascinating study of structuralism. This is not a film to be watched for the tale, but for the telling.
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