Black Swan (2010)

Darren Aronofsky, along with Gaspar Noé, Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke is one of the best independent filmmakers of this generation. From this diverse group, his films have always been, for the lack of a better expression, the more accessible and humane.

This facet has always worked in his favor: the human condition in his films, though portrayed in a raw manner, is also distilled with less bile than in the works of his colleagues. For Noé, Trier and Haneke, the protagonists are sacrificial lambs, to be launched into the jaws of a cruel and absurd universe for study purposes; for Aronofsky, they are condemned creatures, whose destruction is filmed without falter, but also with compassion. However, Black Swan, marks a crossroads for the director: it is both his greatest success to date, and his less genuine piece.

Leaving, in order to stay

Nina (Natalie Portman) is a classical dancer, who is presented with the opportunity of a lifetime, when she is chosen for the lead role in a new interpretation of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. She is a frail creature, frightened, but hard-working, disciplined. However, the director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel), intends her to play not one, but the two roles which lay at the core of the ballet, that is, the White Swan and the Black Swan. Nina, weak and frigid, as Thomas characterizes her, was born to be the White Swan, but the Black Swan, sensual, assertive and manipulative, proves much harder to attain.

As the date of the premiere approaches, Nina suffers a gradual transformation. It is a painful, but fertile process for her. For she is an entirely passive being: for individuals like Nina to rise above their condition, in order to grow and find their own voice, exceptional circumstances are required. For her, this is not about winning or losing, but surviving or being crushed. To her, survival means perfection. This may seem an extreme goal, and for that, an unreasonable one as well. But in Nina's case, that's all she has. You can try to touch the sun, and suffer the fate of Icarus: but the truth is, below Nina is a black void, a dreary swamp. Returning to her previous life would be unthinkable. Being, and then ceasing to be, is always better than to remain in a condition of never having been. All of Aronofsky's films deal with tragic figures on their way to dissolution, but always in demand for something more than the mundane life.

Nina lives with her mother (Barbara Hershey) in an old apartment, the ubiquitous aronofskian apartment, filmed as only he knows, and where most of the human population spends its life: stifling cubicles, falling to pieces, immersed in darkness, where light enters through cracks. Aronofsky films its apartments like they are cloisters. The mother is a failed dancer. She is caring, but also smothery and abusive. The father is an absent figure. There is also a recent addition to the dance company, Lily (Mila Kunis). She is wild, strong and free, and even seeks Nina's friendship. Nina responds to her advances with a mixture of curiosity and paranoia, seeing in her both a model for the Black Swan, and a rival, an usurper.

Thomas (Vincent Cassel) is the typical egomaniacal genius, frank and raw, sometimes generous, but mostly ruthless. The former prima ballerina of the company (Winona Ryder), now disgraced, acts as a foreshadowing of the tragedy that lies ahead for Nina. On paper, these figures appear to be stereotypes, and they are: this is the first sign that something is wrong with this film. A little more, and Aronofsky, as in his other works, could have transformed stereotype into archetype: the characters would then avoid becoming mere ideas, inert vehicles for concepts. Characterization in Black Swan only averts complete disaster thanks to the complete merging of Natalie Portman with her ​​role, very much in line with what ​​Mickey Rourke offered us on The Wrestler, and also due to the superb efforts of the rest of the cast in fleshing out paper-thin characters.

It is a small ensemble, but each one of these people has influence over Nina, while Nina doesn't exert influence over anyone. She will have to use this external pressure in order to finally break free. This is the most impressive weapon at the disposal of the fragile: when thrown into the furnace, rather than being burned, they sometimes are shaped, like glass, into fantastic creations. Thus, she must not only play the Black Swan: she must become it, be reborn into it, through will alone. Her personality, however, does not have enough power for this creative act; that is why her unconscious begins the systematic destruction of her persona, so that something new can emerge. Nina persists on this path of risk, in part due to weakness, ambition, but also to a profound desire for change.

The ending presents us yet with this issue. Nina, the star, triumphs, but we can say the same for Nina, the individual? Aronofsky lets us decide for ourselves. But in the body of his work, we find this is a recurring dilemma. In Nina's smile, lying on the floor, we see traces of Jennifer Connelly in Requiem for a Dream; of Pi, with the protagonist looking at the trees in the end; of The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke preparing his final blow. Aronofsky lays them with a wide smile on their faces in the middle (or end) of a downward spiral, in a gesture of bittersweet irony.

In all these films, the characters search for happiness, though mainly through the mutilation of the Being. Herein Aronofsky joins a long tradition of American filmmakers, and their exploration of the mythos of the American dream. Only in The Fountain does the protagonist obtain a real and permanent transcendence: he is the only one who can distill something genuinely positive from the tragedy that affects him (as such, paradoxically, he is the only aronofskian hero that does not smile at the end). Black Swan is located halfway between The Wrestler and The Fountain. The jump from the platform, at the climax of the ballet, perfectly emulates the final jump, but into the ring, of Randy. As Randy, Nina's professional life is all she has, everything she knows. However, there was, from her part, still a desire to move on, to break free, to evolve. Nina is young and Randy is old, finished: it is too late for him, but perhaps not for Nina.

Aronofsky's Ugly Duckling

When you reach the caliber that Aronofsky has, the influences should take a more subtle position on the artist's canvas, otherwise they risk being denounced as theft. With Black Swan, Aronofsky falls captive to the referential aspect of postmodernism, of which Tarantino is the undisputed master. But if the appropriation of other's formulas and images is for Tarantino the creative method in itself, in Aronofsky such recycling makes us suspect of artistic bankruptcy. With Tarantino, a reference is always a playful homage as well; in Black Swan, the reference is merely expropriation. Tarantino is the abusive husband, but who still loves his wife and the fruits of the relationship. Aronofsky here is simply a pimp.

We'll start with the most obvious instance: Perfect Blue, to which Aronofsky even bought the rights. While for the other examples we may speak specifically of sparse or merely stylistic influences, Perfect Blue is more than that: it is the mold from which the entire narrative of Black Swan is fabricated.

Perfect Blue

The sexual latency of Nina and the relationship with her ​​mother refers immediately to The Piano Teacher of Haneke, but without his shocking courage, his uncomfortable frankness. Here, ambiguity is used to conceal rather than highlight.

The Piano Teacher

Moreover, it should be noted that the sex in Black Swan is filmed in a completely gratuitous manner, not in a moral sense, but rather a commercial one. The sequence where Nina masturbates would be better placed on an episode of the L Word than here. The embellished, objectified, sanitized and polished ass of Natalie Portman in this movie is like the scene with real penetration in Trier's The Idiots, that is: a moment of boldness transformed into artistic betrayal.

The reference to The Red Shoes is obvious, but must be made, because of the weight it bears, being forever established as the archetype of psychodramas about dance. It is curious that some criticize the dance scenes of Natalie Portman. You could not have demanded more of her, despite the use of doubles, which would always be rather mandatory, anyway. It would be ridiculous to demand that she become a professional dancer overnight, or in this case, over the course of a few months. However, it is one of the many weaknesses of the film, despite the efforts of the director. And Aronofsky creates an entirely artificial situation, putting a creature so passive at the top of an ultra-competitive world. These points can destroy the 'magic' for connoisseurs of the medium. Interestingly, Moira Shearer, the star of The Red Shoes, came from the world of dance into cinema, and never cared much for the latter; but, ironically, the film destroyed her dancing career.

The Red Shoes

The scene in the nightclub brings immediately to mind Gaspar Noé, although in this case, there is more of a correspondence of styles than expropriation. There is also clearly the shadow of Lynch and Cronenberg clinging on to many a sequence. To give just two examples: the sequence in which Nina stumbles in the dark auditorium, and finds Thomas and Lily, is very reminiscent of one with with Laura Dern in Inland Empire. The physical transformation of Nina into the Black Swan takes us to the cronenbergian world of carnal metamorphosis. Aronofsky has always managed to give a personal touch to the physical, and always treated it in a more "direct" and "real" manner than Cronenberg (like in The Wrestler). But here, seeing Nina taking off the skin of her fingers, plucking feathers from her flesh, how could we not possibly think of The Fly?

The Fly

Black Swan

Following this, another weak point of the film are the special effects. It is only natural: indeed, it is incredible that Aronofsky can even make films with the ridiculous budgets they keep giving him. But the effects. Yes, the effects are bad, to the point of arousing laughter, like in the scene where Nina's legs twist, or her neck lengthens. When it comes to transformations, it is far below the effects of The Fly, An American Werewolf in London or The Thing. (It may seem disproporcionate to compare Black Swan with these films, but they are not so far apart in terms of genre as one might think: more on this below). The final transformation of Nina, on stage, is at once beautiful and cheesy. We are still far from an independent cinema with credible computer-generated effects.

An American Werewolf in London

Moreover, the question arises: are these effects really needed, even though we are seeing things (mostly) through Nina's eyes? Aronofsky wanted to create a fusion of fairy tale and psychological portrait, but did not have time to explore neither one nor the other; and to further complicate things, the two modalities are almost opposites: the fairy tale/fable is a universal simplification, a moral breviary of sorts, while the psychological portrait is an individualistic deepening, and usually more prone to complexification rather than linearization. The fairy tale condenses, the psychological portrait expands.

That's why, while trying to stitch together a composite of the two forms, Aronofsky ends up treating the mental condition of Nina in a reductive manner. The mannerisms of Portman, her frightened eyes glittering while she looks away or is suddenly fixated on something, do more to reveal her inner hell than any special effects could. I would like to have seen a greater emphasis on the evolution of Nina's behaviour, because the character is formulaic, but fertile. Instead, we are bombarded with cheap symbolism, and metaphors which have already been beaten to death: the theme of the Double, the Manichaen divide between darkness and the light, etc. Paradoxically, the film strives too hard to show us these simple corollaries. It seems to be, unfortunately, a current trend in the film industry (for instance, see Inception).

What Ingmar Bergman was able to show us with an exemplary subtlety (the collapse and deconstruction of the persona), Aronofsky rams it down our throats. Here he is like Trier and his Antichrist. And both share yet another serious flaw: on the third act, they enter the territory of pure genre, in this case, the horror thriller. There, ironically, they lose all their steam, because they are clearly worst horror directors than any average Tobe Hooper wannabe. An almost endless range of narrative possibilities, which is the hallmark of artistic cinema, is thus sadly funneled into the cul-de-sac of the genre.

Ultimately, the term "patchwork" perfectly sums up Black Swan, but I propose yet another metaphor, this one more convoluted: it is like one of those pictures from Rubens' workshop, painted by his apprentices, and to which the master only applied the finishing touches; and in this particular case, it is as if the apprentices also copied from other masters. I will gladly welcome the director's next film, but must I repeat: what we want to see in a film by Aronofsky is Aronofsky. We can forgive the real artist almost everything, except not being himself.

More information: Black Swan on IMDB.