BLACK SWAN Blu Ray Review
I recently recently argued with the inestimable Aaron Krasnov, one of our contributors on the site, about the kind of legacy Black Swan will have years from now. It was his contention--and I'm still not quite convinced--that Aronofsky's latest will in time be a source of inspiration for future horror filmmakers the way that a film like Suspiria was a touchstone for the generation of directors in its wake. Black Swan certainly is a well-crafted horror film with a well-deserved Oscar for its lead actress, Natalie Portman, but outside of a couple of truly compelling scenes of body horror, I don't know what kind of legacy it will leave.
Certainly, it is a meticulously-realized and effective piece of work, extending the director's fascination with the obsessed and the driven into the unlikely world of ballet with a fairy tale-like structure mirroring Swan Lake, the work at the heart of the film. It's perhaps the aggressive lack of subtlety that is the most attractive aspect of the film for me--it begins the mirroring motif fairly early on and doesn't let up until the final moments, with a soundtrack that is in part bombastic score and tortured breathing. Make no mistake--this is a horror movie by way of melodrama, a genre whose relative absence I've despaired of in the past.
The character of Nina is a change from the typically knowing roles Portman has taken in the past. Her portrayal of the dancer is that of a little girl trapped in a woman's body--a body that's been starved, toned, and tuned for dancing at the behest of an overbearing mother (Barbara Hershey, perhaps the most frightening thing in the movie). Her voice is so small, almost breathless, and when the director of the ballet company, Thomas (Vincent Cassel, sly, mostly wicked) tells her she lacks the darkness to play the Black Swan, we're mostly compelled to agree with him.
What happens next--Nina meeting her "double" (Mila Kunis, pretty great), slowly losing her mind--is as inevitable as it is compulsively watchable. It is, after all, a fairy tale in the Grimm sense of the word. The princess will not get her prince, but will instead dance on bloody feet for a cheering crowd before a show-stopping flameout.
Aranofsky paints a picture of the world of ballet as one even more harrowing than that of professional wrestling in The Wrestler. Sure, wrestlers get knocked around, lose their money, their looks, fame, and health, but ballet seems predicated on a mix of athleticism and high art that demands nearly constant punishment of the body for such a small window of opportunity before a steadily dwindling audience. You have to at once admire and despair for these performers and the tortures to which they subject their bodies.
But back to the point with which I opened this piece: the longevity of Black Swan: of course, I can't say with confidence what kind of legacy this movie will leave (and who can, really). But the impression that I get from it is that it will remain well-regarded with the particulars of the movie telescoping into the distance and the performance of its lead living on in the history books. I suspect 20 years from now, I won't be able to call out specific scenes from Black Swan, but I'll be able to tell you that Natalie Portman was terrific in it, and under the direction of Darren Aronofsky, she was allowed to go, for a time, completely and terrifically mad on-film.
Audio and Video
During the "Metamorphosis" making-of included on the disc, Vincent Cassel notes that during his days studying dance he was often taken aback by the sound of the breathing of the dancers--he compared it to the sound of horses, if I recall. That startling, sometimes ragged and pained sound is one of the most standout elements of the disc's 5.1 DTS mix. Indeed, Black Swan is a one of the most compelling and simultaneously jarring sets of sounds in the 2010 films I've had the pleasure of seeing, and this home version brings to the fore elements that I actually missed in the theater.
Visually, maintains the vérité-style look employed by Aranofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique (Iron Man 2, the upcoming Cowboys and Aliens and a raft of other titles), including much of the intentional grain and color desaturation. You'll find no complaints from this viewer about the actual look of Black Swan on Blu Ray.
Special Features
The disc includes Fox Movie Channel interviews with the actors as well as a digital copy of the film.
However, the main feature is the "Metamorphosis" documentary (clocking in at around 40 minutes or so), which is just on the edge of being excellent but as it stands is a really interesting look at what was surely an intense filmmaking process. We learn that the shoot took around 45 days in the dead of winter between Manhattan and upstate New York. The strain on the cast and crew peeks out around the edges in this doc where the impression is given that the director was driven and committed to a meticulous vision. I suspect that given more of a running time and a broader focus (and more time with the actors), "Metamorphosis" could have truly been an incisive look at this particular director's process.
