Black Swan

I am, sad to say, your typical American movie-goer. Give me blood, blades, and babes and I will happily sit and munch on over-buttered popcorn 'til my lungs grow too fat to breathe. Give me a plot more complex than a bus that can't stop because it has a bomb on it and I start getting a headache and looking at my watch.

I saw Black Swan and did not look at my watch once.

I know that sounds like I am comparing the cerebral art work that is Black Swan to that of the mental pig slop that is Speed, but that is not what I mean. I mean that I was so enraptured by this film, my head was so filled with the plot twists and the visual symphony of it all, that I had no time for an ache and no thought of my watch.

College theses will be written about this movie, DVD copies will circulate around film school classes like wildfire. It is a movie that deserves to be studied.

Natalie Portman (Garden State, the Star Wars films that must not be named) plays Nina the ballerina, a fragile young woman who has just been cast in Swan Lake as the graceful and poised White Swan and as the lustful and dark Black Swan, a role she has trouble getting into, until her own dark side boils and rises to the top. Portman plays the part with frightening accuracy and sensitivity.

That is the plot in its simplest form, but there is so much more, so many subplots with their own layers of subtext. Watching the movie is like playing with those Russian dolls: every time you peel back a layer you find another doll staring at you.

The movie is dark, but not "dark" as in "twisted," but "dark" as in the way night feels.

Director Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, The Fountain, Requiem for A Dream ) uses all the senses to paint a magnificent picture; his use of light and dark, CGI, mirrors, music, and makeup all weave together seamlessly to transport you into the world of one persons mental breakdown.

I had heard this movie was a mind fuck: I went in expecting my brain to be battered with metaphors and abstract representation like it was when I watched Mulholland Dr.(that movie DID give me a headache) but it wasn't, it was chased by sexual energy as it was led through a psychological maze that was complicated enough to keep the mind reeling but straightforward enough that it never got too lost.

I will see it again.

5 stars

Oh, and it has this awesome lesbian scene in it.