Black Swan: I'm Such a Sucker for the Nervous Breakdown Movie

Having been a fan of director Darren Aronofsky (known for such films as The Wrestler and The Fountain) for a little while, I had been eagerly anticipating his newest film Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis.

Black Swan tells the story of a young dancer who seeks perfection in her art form and is confronted with a challenging role for a new ballet production that will smother her with the highest levels of pressure and stress from peers, her overprotective mother, her instructor, and ultimately herself.

The film's pacing was smooth and the story was focused on a primary plot line, which was thankful because we all know how confusing things can get if you throw too many subplots in a movie at once.  But this was simple: girl does ballet, gets role in big production, and the plot line revolves around her gearing up for this part, which is the climactic moment of the film's end.  Simple.

Sounds kind of like a sleep-fest don't it?  Ballet?  Seriously?  Well, yes, seriously.  Even if you have no desire to ever see a ballet performance in your life, consider the whole point of ballet: to be inhumanly graceful with the human form.  Human beings are not designed to stand on their toes.  They are not designed to plie (pronounced plee-ay) and pirouette as though their bones are hollow like several bird varieties.  In that way, ballet is an incredibly physically demanding activity.  You have to not only be light on your toes, but light in general, and since it's a profession like any other and everyone wants to be the best they can be, competition fuels nasty vibes between peers.

In Black Swan, we get to watch a standard of life not many of us could be accustomed to.  The girl's breakfast is half a grapefruit and a spoonful of some sort of off-color cream which is probably a type of almond butter for Pete's sake!  She has to see a physical therapist regularly, and in regards to the taxing work a dancer puts on their body, it's well known that you can only dance as long as your body can take it, and there is a constant pressure that once you're starting to pass your prime (i.e., out of your twenties) then you are no longer seen as ideal.

Through all of this, we watch the woman's mental stability begin to unravel, and the way in which it unravels is unique, symbolic, and while not everyone can relate to being a ballet dancer, her personal battles can still strum sympathy chords in a general audience because anyone who has had to battle with their own personal issues getting in the way of their goals can understand what she's going through.

To make things a bit more interesting through all of this slow descent into mental turmoil, there is a degree of surrealism within the walls of this woman's reality that is both fascinating and eerie.  I'd rather not ruin the movie any more than I might have already with what I've said, but keep in mind that Aronofsky's penchant for adding that odd touch to the palate of ordinary life is still fresh and well-thought out.

The cinematography was really well done and the characters were all genuinely interesting.  Things are not quite what they seem in the entire film, and just as a fair warning, there are some particular violent images that while simple, will probably make you cringe in that nails-on-chalkboard kind of way.

Bottom line: the whole movie was interesting, visually appealing, and the end was satisfactory.  But then again, it might not be for everyone.  As I said in the title: I'm a sucker for the nervous breakdown movie.

To lighten the mood of this rather cut 'n dry review, here's a Saturday Night Live take on Black Swan featuring Jim Carrey.  It r lolz.