Black Swan

What most people don’t understand about psychological thrillers these days is that once you start watching one, you become the lead character. If you’re watching Taxi Driver, you are Travis Bickle. In this case, when you start watching Black Swan, you’re Natalie Portman’s character, Nina.

If you want to be, anyway. If not, there’s other characters you can choose from… like Lily (played by Mila Kunis). But that choice pretty much leads you back to Nina. Get it?

No exaggeration: Everybody in this movie treats Nina like a piece of shit.

Nina is a ballet dancer. A damn good one. She’s skinny as fuck, sexy, snow-white, and long-necked. Almost swan-like.

She lives with her mother, Erica (played by Barbara Hershey), in an apartment. Once Nina is out of their loving home, Nina is weak, unsafe, and preyed on by everybody. Including herself.

Her ballet director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel), will fuck anything that moves. He takes notice of her weak character and tries to force some toughness out of Nina. He forces himself on her, kissing her, causing her to bite his lips. She passed the test and is given the role of the Black Swan.

This movie isn’t big with most movie-goers as of now. So not wanting to give too much information away, I feel like I must leave it at this. Unlike most critics, I don’t want to take the piss out of this great movie. Everybody curious enough should go see it for what it is.

With that said, Natalie Portman gives one of the best performances of her career. 

To quote Nina: “I was perfect”.

She was indeed.

The film itself isn’t all hype. In fact, it deserves all the attention it gets. Maybe an Oscar nod or two would be appropriate.

In this day and age, a ballsy movie like this one comes out once in a great while. Like an actual black swan, it’s not unheard of, but you don’t see one like this every day. Yet, when a beautiful swan such as this one arrives, it is left virtually unseen- only seen by a lucky few. I saw it though. Perfect.

It was perfect.

4 stars. ****