What I Watched -- Black Swan

As with most of you I'm sure, I'd heard lots about Black Swan before I saw it, most of it laudatory.  There were a few critical reviews, as well, of course, but mostly good.  Although for my part, the last awards season made me loathe Natalie Portman's annoying self in a way I never thought I would after her wonderful turns in Beautiful Girls and Garden State.  Turns out, I can.

The plot: Nina (Portman) is a ballerina who's just scored the lead role Swan Lake at Lincoln Center.  She's perfect as the innocent white swan, but has to discover her inner demon in order to perform the twin role of the black swan.  Helping her along her road to discovery are Lily (Mila Kunis), the easygoing ballerina from San Francisco with a wild side; Nina's mother (Barbara Hershey), a former ballerina who gave up her career to have Nina, and with whom Nina has a very uncomfortable relationship; and Thomas (Vincent Cassel), the director of the company whose adoration of his ballerinas is a little creepy.  And let's not forget Nina's own crazy, mixed-up, paranoid mind.  It's that last one that does most of the work.  Was what she just saw really real?  Did she imagine it?  Did she dream it?

And the funny thing is that starts to work on you eventually, too, or at least it did on me.  There were ballet scenes where I found myself wondering: was that part of the dance?  Is that just Nina going crazy?  Interesting to watch a movie when you don't know what's going on.  What's more, mirrors are everywhere in this movie.  There's always the question of whether what you're seeing is the literal reflection - sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.  But there's also the figurative issue, you know how it goes: reflections of various parts of your self, the dark side looking back at you, yadda, yadda, yadda.

After my back-stage tour of the Peabody Opera House, it was really interesting the sets in this movie.  I always had this idea that dressing and prep rooms for the principals in various shows would be lovely and glamorous.  Actually, they're usually kind of shabby, compared to what I had in mind.  Cement block walls, bare (but bright) light bulbs, cramped.  I guess it was surprising to see that's (more or less) true at Lincoln Center just like everywhere else.

Mila Kunis is both gorgeous and goofily likable as Lily.  Winona Ryder has an appropriately crazy part as the former lead ballerina who has been replaced by Nina. 

Bottom line: good flick.  It's both predictable (the ever-increasing craziness) and unpredictable (the details of how that plays out). Worth watching and being perplexed and transfixed by once, but I probably won't watch it again.