Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky treats ballet as a frightening occupation, and Black Swan is a gripping horror film despite some blunt psychology. His interest is in the discipline that can turn a desire to dance well into a fear of being anything less than perfect. Natalie Portman’s Nina Sayers gives that fear a human scale, even as the film becomes more extravagant around her. The excess mostly works because her distress never feels casual.

Portman plays Nina’s repression with enough physical strain to make the pursuit of perfection look exhausting. She keeps the dancer’s ambition understandable, allowing us to recognise the desire to do good work even as Nina’s demands on herself become frightening. We flinched at the blood, because Portman had already made Nina seem painfully vulnerable. That is why the bodily horror gets to us; there is a frightened person here, and the film does not let us forget her.

Matthew Libatique’s cinematography and Thérèse DePrez’s production design make the mirrored ballet surroundings feel oppressive. Nina’s self-scrutiny is already relentless, and multiplying her image gives that anxiety a visible, simple expression. We are made to look at her looking, until the ordinary business of checking a dancer’s body begins to feel unhealthy. It is hardly discreet symbolism, and its repetition sometimes feels excessive, but it keeps Nina’s discomfort in view.

Andrew Weisblum’s editing helps the mounting panic carry us past some shaky connections between events. There are moments when a little time to think would expose the contrivance, and the film is wise enough to keep pressing forward. Clint Mansell’s score adds to that pressure, giving the melodrama the force it needs without making it any more plausible. The insistence can be tiring, but a restrained accompaniment would scarcely suit a film so committed to making obsession physically uncomfortable.

The screenplay by John J. McLaughlin, Andres Heinz and Mark Heyman is less persuasive about anyone outside Nina. Barbara Hershey makes Erica’s suffocating motherhood disturbing, though the writing gives her little else to do. The supporting characters are drawn so broadly that the actors must supply most of their interest. This helps the horror move quickly, but it makes Nina’s world seem arranged for a breakdown rather than inhabited by people with competing wants. Hershey is frightening enough to make that limitation less noticeable while she is on screen.

That narrowness also affects its account of ballet. The film is so absorbed in bodily punishment and psychological damage that the pleasure of dancing receives comparatively little attention. We would not turn to it for a generous picture of the art, and its suggestion that suffering belongs so closely to achievement deserves suspicion. Gothic horror has room for unreasonable demands and exaggerated behaviour, and Aronofsky uses that freedom confidently. Choose it for an unsettling evening, with no expectation that anyone will behave sensibly.