Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky does not make bad films.  He makes brilliant, cinematic pictures, the kind that one should enjoy on the big screen with the big sound.  Black Swan is one of these, an intense investigation of art and insanity that takes big chances and comes through.

Natalie Portman plays Nina, a dedicated ballerina of the New York stage who wins her first lead role: the Swan Queen in ‘Swan Lake.’  Nina’s a tightly controlled individual, emotionally stunted and constrained by a domineering mother and her own drive for perfection.  When she lands the Swan Queen, she doesn’t know if she can do it.  But she tries and tries and tries, drilling and drilling and forgoing sleep and dropping weight from her already elfin body until the combination of stress, malnutrition, and exhaustion renders her psychotic.

And here’s the thing that bothered me about the film, at least in the first two acts: why would anyone put themselves through that kind of torture for the amusement of rich people?  For that’s what the ballet, as presented here, clearly is: an amusement for rich people, the kind who enjoy putting on tuxedoes, drinking champagne at fund raisers, and having a fine night out.  I mean, I get it: ballet is Nina’s world, and achieving perfection in that world is her goal.  But so what?  How is that a noble or worthwhile goal, when perfection merely equates entertaining a few hundred people for a couple of hours?

Ah, but in that third act, when Nina dances the role of the Swan Queen, it clicked.  Her dance is so transformative, so magnificent, that I saw that she wasn’t dancing for the amusement of the rich – she was dancing for art itself, for that quest to attain the summit of human achievement, for the glorious exultation of not technical perfection, but artistic perfection.  What I had seen as a waste of time transformed into humanity personified.

Was it worth it?  Was the psychosis, was the pain, was losing everything for an ideal worth the loss?  I think that Nina would say yes.  As for me, all I know is that I walked out of the theater challenged, elevated, and transformed.  That’s what happens when I’m exposed to real art.