FEATHERS IN MY HEAD: Darren Aronofsky’s BLACK SWAN [6?/10]

Published on: January 29th, 2011

Black Swan labours in the daunting shadow of not one but two masterpieces: the previous film by its director (The Wrestler) and the sole previous entry in its sub-genre of “bonkers ballet horror”, namely Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977). Because while it’s being pushed as a “psychological thriller,” so gothically over-the-top is Aronofsky’s directorial approach to the struggles of Nina (Natalie Portman), an inexperienced prima ballerina in a chilly Manhattan, struggling to cope with landing the starring role(s) in Swan Lake, that we quickly end up in the rather more “disreputable” terrain of shock-cinema.

And while by now it’s universally acknowledged that “comedy is hard”, horror can be just as tricky – not that this has stopped numerous “respectable” directors trying their arm, usually some way into their careers, with wildly variable results. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), for example, wasn’t much of a Stephen King adaptation, but it did pay dividends as a savagely satirical family-values deconstruction at the very dawn of the Reagan era. Ingmar Bergman, conversely, proved such a dab-hand at horror in The Hour of the Wolf (1968) that – heretical as this may strike some – “art” cinema’s loss might well have been horror’s gain.

Gliding quickly past the likes of John Frankenheimer’s killer-bear turkey Prophecy (1979) – and the picture with which it’s often confused, John Huston’s quasi-Cronenbergian Phobia (1980) – and leaving aside obvious woman-in-peril predecessors such as Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and John Cassavetes’ Opening Night (and ballet-themed extravagances like Powell & Pressburger’s The Red Shoes) the most relevant reference-points for Black Swan might well be Irvin Kershner’s Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), and Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist (2009).

Laura Mars tried to transport the glossily absurd extravagances of Italian giallo thrillers – typified by Argento’s 1970s output – to the New York fashion scene of the Studio 54 era. Treating a shallow, vacuous, wealthy milieu in a lush, opulent style, Kershner did his best with the unpromising mixture of whodunnit and supernatural elements that comprised John Carpenter’s original story. Black Swan, however, is shot with the same rough-edged super-16mm grittiness that proved so well suited to the New Jersey hardscrabble of The Wrestler, but which sits very uneasily with the top-end ballet world which Nina and co occupy.

And just as Von Trier’s incorporation of creepy gothic touches was allowed to get wildly out of hand in Antichrist - evoking more giggles than frissons - Aronofsky goes overboard with the spooky cuts, sound-effects and fantastical/hallucinatory flourishes in Black Swan, resulting in a camp-kitsch bizarrerie that’s consistently good for a laugh, but which seems to want to be taken seriously as a harrowing journey into a young woman’s tormented psyche.

Full-blooded performances by Portman (especially in the pre-climactic ‘Black Swan’ number that’s the picture’s showstopping, jawdropping highlight), Barbara Hershey (as her demonically controlling mother, perpetually hovering on the edge of psychosis) and Mila Kunis (as her freewheeling, loose-limbed, hedonistic alter-ego-cum-rival) help distract us from the fundamental silliness of proceedings – the one scene with Hershey and Kunis (“wow, she’s a trip”) is also something of a doozy. Not so lucky are Winona Ryder, thrown away in an underwritten role as Nina’s boozy predecessor, and Vincent Cassel – as Nina’s lecherous choreographer – gets the worst of the tin-eared dialogue and looks understandably fed up from start to finish.

At least Malcolm McDowell, who played the equivalent role in Robert Altman’s far superior – and still cruelly underrated – The Company (2003), was allowed to have a bit of flamboyant fun and ham it up a little. In Black Swan, as was the case with the garish 1960s horrors that followed in the wake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, it’s the ladies who get the meat to chew on, while the blokes have to nibble what gristle they can off the resulting bones.

Neil Young
29th January, 2011

BLACK SWAN : [6?/10] : USA 2010 : Darren ARONOFSKY : 108 mins (BBFC)
seen at 20th Century Fox screening room, London (press show) {17?/28}