Black Swan
“Bitch” would probably be considered a more than apt title for not only nearly every movie that Natalie Portman has ever played the lead role in, but also an appropriate name for just about every character she has ever played with the obvious exception being her amazing, transcendent work as the tormented young girl Mathilda who sees her family get murdered and then teams up with a reluctant professional hit man in order to avenge them in her stunning debut role in Leon: The Professional. As Portman began hearing the accolades of just what a beautiful, composed (keyword being composed) young actress she was, so also were her own performances turning into safe, competent displays of her showing us just how witty and intelligent her characters were all while projecting an obvious contempt for both the audience and even sometimes other characters (her infamous clashes with both Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker AND George Lucas on the sets of the Star Wars Prequels over her not LIKING her already cast and contracted love interest in those movies did little to help her cause) in her own films and then there were the interviews she would give which were intended to enhance her public image and instead only served to solidify it as her being an ice cold bitch who came across as the type who looked down upon everybody including her fellow students at Harvard because they tried to get her to let her hair down and do some partying with them only for her to make reference to it in an interview as she blasted them to a reporter. At this point, there were only two ways for her career to go: to finally piss off the wrong people in the film industry once and for all so that her acting career would be dead in the water or, to find a way to return to her roots and once again deliver another transcendently great performance as she did in Leon so that she would regain all of the respectability which she had lost. And amazingly, she did just that with this 2010 release, cruising on autopilot to a Best Actress Oscar win after sweeping the awards circuit from coast to coast and doing such a thing with director Darren Aronofsky, a guy who had already brought Mickey Rourke back from the dead with The Wrestler and now considered this film to be a sort of “companion piece” to that earlier success. Unlike professional wrestling, this film focused on the performance art of professional ballet with Aronofsky literally not only adapting Swan Lake for the big screen, but also making the film’s story be about the stage production itself that was being put on for this adaptation. But that’s only the beginning here, as despite its Oscar pedigree, Aronofsky had openly stated that the movie itself was not so much a drama as it was a seriously deranged psychological horror film about one person’s descent into insanity (and it is) but the real kicker is in the obvious parallels on display of not only Portman’s lead character but of Portman herself and her much ballyhooed legacy of acting cute without ever doing anything even remotely sexual onscreen. The truth is that while her character is pushing herself with her dancing to be able to do things that she’s never done before, Portman as an actress is pushing herself to do things that she has never even come close to doing in front of the cameras up to and including sexual shenanigans that only goes with the territory when you’re playing a character that is sexually repressed. Parts of the movie even resemble the infamous vampire movie starring Alyssa Milano that saw her shed her veneer of innocence, but at least this movie is well written and directed and has a very strong story going for it. Portman plays a professional dancer who performs ballet (and is one of many) with a New York City company and upon arrival for the first rehearsals of the season learns that the much beloved star dancer of the troupe (Winona Ryder) is being put out to pasture not only for being considered too old, but also because she just isn’t selling tickets anymore like she used to probably because people are tired of seeing her starring in just about everything under the sun. This means that a new young star will be selected from within the ranks by its celebrated director (Vincent Cassel) to play the lead in his ambitious new remounting of Swan Lake. There’s also a new arrival to the company fresh from San Francisco in Mila Kunis and her appearance has awakened flashes of jealousy in Portman’s eyes. But she needn’t worry as Cassel (after a purposely clumsy seduction attempt) has already selected her to play the lead role of The Swan Queen but even more interesting is what he says to be the need to convey the duality of the character as both The White Swan and her evil twin The Black Swan as Cassel (who is brilliant here but was sadly left out of just about all awards consideration unlike Kunis who at least got some nominations here and there) considers Portman to be a techniquely brilliant dancer who is always on point (thus making her perfect for The White Swan) but always seeming to lack that edginess, that sense of danger and abandon that would be required for The Black Swan (which itself would be a perfect metaphor for Portman’s actual career) and so Cassel rather ingeniously suggests that Portman learn to open herself up more sexually in order to bring her “dark side” out, including exploring the magical wonders of masturbation which is easier said than done for Portman since she still sleeps underneath a pile of stuffed animals and is constantly fussed over by her mother (Barbara Hershey), a former ballet dancer herself whom it is obvious to us is a huge stage mother type from the first moment we see her onscreen. As the pressure mounts is when the horror film aspects start kicking in with Portman’s sexual repression combined with her paranoia about Kunis trying to “steal” her big break along with the guilt brought on by an unsuccessful suicide attempt by Ryder over being replaced which all leads to Portman having a series of horrific hallucinations which on the surface appear to be her trying to bring her repressed darker nature to the fore but which also suggests that she might have some untapped mental illness that is only now becoming full blown by the prospect of performing in front of thousands of people at Lincoln Center in NYC and her fragile mind simply cannot handle it (even as weird and strange possibilities abound such as the idea that her mother might actually be dead and that Portman only imagines having her around when the truth is that she lives alone). There is also the possibility that Portman’s sexual problems stem from possible molestation in her younger years (again from her mother) and this all leads to her engaging in more and more out of control behavior including a growing obsession on her own part with Kunis, who prances around with highly visible tattoos on her upper back and smokes cigarettes while popping pills (Xtacy?) which not only makes her the living embodiment of being Portman’s polar opposite but also the much more obvious choice for the deadly and deceitful Black Swan side of the character that Portman is supposed to be playing, forcing her to endeavor in BECOMING Kunis in order to pull the whole thing off. This includes the now famous and much talked about lesbian scene between Portman and Kunis that not only burns the house down but also finally takes Portman as an ACTRESS to places that she’s never been and boundaries which she’s never broken (and which she has reportedly said will never happen again since she’s gotten her Oscar which should come as no surprise I suppose) and Aronofsky doesn’t hold back on making it pretty damn explicit. But the hallucinations don’t stop there as eventually Portman starts seeing literal body changes in herself (including direct references to Goldblum in The Fly) that make her think that she’s physically transforming into a swan all so that her actual performance on stage will not only be truly perfect but also one for the history books. The nightmarish hell of her character’s descent into madness is an expertly presented depiction and metaphor for any artist looking to go that extra mile in order to give the audience something resembling greatness. And as that is with her character, so it is with Natalie Portman herself, going all out to shatter the preconceptions about her and giving her greatest onscreen performance since her unforgettable debut as Mathilda in Leon: The Professional all those many years ago…
8/10