FILM REVIEW: Black Swan

Submitted by Seth Rogovoy on December 19, 2010 - 4:40pm

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BLACK SWAN
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Starring Natalie Portman, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder, Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel

Reviewed by Seth Rogovoy

The most important thing to keep in mind about this terrific movie is that it is a Darren Aronofsky film. It doesn’t really matter that it concerns ballet and Swan Lake – with its built-in motifs of white and black, good and evil, and Dostoevskian doppelgangers -- or that it stars the terrific Natalie Portman and that she does most of her own dancing. Aronofsky is one of those filmmakers, like David Lynch and David Cronenberg and Danny Boyle and maybe the Coen Brothers, whose overarching vision and style trumps subject matter.

This isn’t to say that Aronofsky doesn’t elicit fabulous performances from his actors – of that he surely does, and his casting of Ryder and Hershey in particular is spot-on. And the film, as all Aronofsky’s films do, functions on several levels – it’s a psychological thriller bordering on a horror film about the very real cruelties of the world of ballet (much as he showcased in The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke). From the first shot, Aronofsky ratchets up the tension level, and over the course of the next 100 minutes it never drops.

It’s a brilliant meditation on art and emotion and the sacrifices – sometimes at great personal cost -- one need to make to achieve artistic success. And as crazed and horrific, bloody and gory and over the top as it is, it is probably unfortunately not very far from the reality of the cutthroat (in the movie, literally and figuratively) world of classical ballet.

Black Swan is currently running at the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington, Mass.

Seth Rogovoy is Berkshire Living’s award-winning editor-in-chief and cultural critic.

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