"Black Swan" (2010)

Dwight Dekeyser rating: BCD

Dear Reader:

It’s fun to rename movies, especially when their titles are not terribly descriptive of a provocative film.  I was toying with the idea of calling this movie Black Eye or maybe Psycho Lake.   I finally settled on Scrambled Eggs for this red-plate special is something that has never been served before and will not be served again with any luck.  This movie is billed as a “thriller.”  A thriller by nature is an edgy mystery designed to keep the audience guessing.  The only question I found myself asking was “where is this plot going?”  My question was answered in a manner so bizarre, even I could not have imagined: the swan turned turkey and laid a cracked egg.

Oh, I know this film has been getting good notices and ratings, but I don’t read movie reviews.  Frankly, I don’t understand it.   It started out as a true to life movie about the struggles of a young ballerina in New York.  The director, Darren Aronofsky,  presented the issues a dancer faces honestly and artfully. It was a serious European-type movie, full of feeling and not much action.  Characters struggled with their emotions in atmospheric interiors.  Once the pretense of the film was established, not much happened except for some dance scenes featuring Peter Martins lookalike Vincent Cassel and members of the Pennsylvania Ballet.  The plot was going nowhere.  I was worried.  Is this film going to fly?

The story line of this movie was simple and singular.  That is to say, there was no sub-plot, just a straight track with a couple of unscheduled stops before the collision of a conclusion.  I hate to give away the plot of any movie, but when there is not much of one, I’m afraid it is inevitable.  The movie ends in a choreographed train wreck: a truck load of exotic chickens is struck at the railroad crossing.  You know the scene, “ding, ding, ding," lights flash on the automatic gate, the speeding engine blows one last frantic warning, and then CRASH:  feathers fall from the sky in a heavenly blizzard.  But, I am getting ahead of myself.

Lovely Natalie Portman is Nina the conflicted heroine, a tremendous actress and impressive dancer.  She lives with her domineering mother (Barbara Hershey) a former ballerina herself who gave up her career when she became pregnant with Nina.  Guilt, competition, resentment, and envy define this (typical) mother-daughter relationship.  Nina is up for the part of the swan queen(s) Odette/Odile in Swan Lake.  She gets the role, but can she handle the pressure?  Apparently, not.  Nina has paranoid delusions and hallucinations in an endless series of pointless episodes that lead nowhere until we reach the train tracks.  This picture is not so much about a young woman who loses her mind but a motion picture that is derailed for lack of a destination.

Black Swan attempted to use the plot of Swan Lake to mirror the inner turmoil of this young dancer, her good side and her bad side.  It was not what I call a "good fit," as the psychological dilemma of the ballet was not the one in the movie.   In Swan Lake, Prince Siegfried falls in love with the lovely, virginal, and vulnerable Odette, the white swan queen while on a hunting trip.  Later, at the palace Odile the black swan shows up impersonating Odette.  As they appear identical but for costume (the parts are performed by the same ballerina), Siegfried cannot tell the difference.  Odile, the seductive, vindictive, and manipulative instrument of the evil von Rothbart entraps Siegfried into proposing to her.  He falls for it.  He realizes his mistake.  Too late!  He is engaged to the wrong swan.  In fact, he is engaged to the same woman he fell in love with originally.  He discovers to his dismay the (alleged) dual nature of women as symbolized by the white and black swans.   Swan Lake is a cautionary tale to men about loving women; it is not about a woman's career crisis.

What makes this film so peculiar is its combination of genres.  It starts out a serious art film, morphs into a psycho-sexual drama (no shortage of sexual variety in this ballet company), and climaxes into a slasher movie.   There have been many great swan queens: Ulanova, Plisetskaya, Makarova, Fonteyn, Alonso – but Freddy Krueger?! This is a new twist in casting!   As the competition between dancers comes to a climax, the melodrama devolves into a farcical blood bath ballet.  (There was almost as much blood in this picture as SAW – The Final Chapter, 2010.)  There has always been a dilemma in the ending of Swan Lake: do they live happily ever after, die together or die separately?  In this final performance, Nina is dropped by her partner like a sack of potatoes, grows feathers like a giant crow, and throws herself off a ramp onto a mattress with a shard of glass impaling her diaphragm spurting blood.  How’s that for a finale?   Considering the degree of exsanguination throughout Black Swan, I think the only truly descriptive title of this movie could have been Blood Swan.

Here's the trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmraonoCMkI&feature=related

From the vault: The Turning Point (1977), Directed by Herbert Ross, starring Shirley MacLaine, Anne Bancroft, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.  “Ballet is the cruelest art.”  (I’m quoting myself here.)  You give it all you’ve got and, even if you are one of the lucky ones to achieve professional proficiency, the career doesn’t last long.  No blood in this picture but plenty of daggers.

Best of luck in your movie selections.  Your faithful friend,

Dwight Dekeyser

© 2010 Dwight Dekeyser, Esq.  All rights reserved.