This will be my final posting about the movie Black Swan. I know, I know (sigh) I have a tendency to obsess, like I did with Marion Cotillard over her performance in La Vie En Rose.
While other lesbian oriented websites and blogs inundated readers with all possible scenarios that would give Ellen Page the best actress Oscar, I quietly held my conviction that only Marion was worthy of the accolade. Yes, Marion Cotillard won the award for best actress.
Then I eagerly awaited Cotillard's next performance which was in Public Enemies, only to be disappointed feeling that her character didn't live up to her performance as the adult Edith Piaf: The emotionally troubled singer who is ultimately devastated by her lifelong excesses. I was afraid that the Marion that I had come to admire would forever be gone.
Now it seems that it's happened again , this time with Natalie Portman who has literally 
become a woman in my eyes with her performance as the tense ballerina with the borderline personality in the movie Black Swan. I live in a very cool and progressive city. So it was expected that Black Swan would open here a week before it went nationwide. However, I waited until the movie became available to all (both in the theatres and on the internet) before I delved into my final analysis. You have to see the movie for yourself so as you read my final review you can accurately judge my assessment. In addition I took into consideration Aronofsky's penchant to play with the viewers head and I didn't want to write that something occurred when it had not.
I’m completely in awe of this movie, of the way that it lays out its themes and story right up front: Figuratively, visually and literally (which is why I posted a behind the scenes video, to keep the reality that it’s just a movie).
At the beginning of the movie Nina Sayers (Portman) is seen standing on black surface, alone in a black room, in a white dress lighted by a single spotlight. Nina Sayers (Portman} is then "en pointe" flitting gracefully to and fro, eventually settling into a poised seated position on the floor, much like a swan floating on a lake. When the evil King enters, Portman rises, the two engage in a pas de deux and as Portman spins away from the unwelcome intruder, a flurry of feathers feathers float around her as she pirouttes, her arms gracefully undulating like a swan taking flight from a predator. The transformation is complete, she is the Swan Queen. All to a dramatic score no less.
That's how the fucking movie begins, and it's amazing.
I'm in awe of the way the film glorifies, horrifies, and ultimately satisfies, in the truest sense of the word, rattling you deep inside.
As Nina succumbs to the deepest depths of psychosis, we are witness to her fragmented perceptions, to her tenuous grasp of reality, her instability in self perception and behavior. Right from the start we see that Nina appears fearful of nearly everything and anything. Nina is very repressed emotionally and sexually and having been involved with someone of the same ilk, I know first hand that when they let go and release it's figuratively nuclear. However such a person cannot handle the new found sense of freedom when they allow themselves to let go and we see that internal battle in Nina as the Good and Bad halves of her personality fight for dominance.
We are witness to what appears to be a perpetual plea: Saying "Please" as her teacher taunts her by sexually arousing her and then walking away. Please...what?
Or when she seeks approval from him or guidance from retiring prima ballerina the boozy Beth McIntyre (Played by Winona Ryder).
We witness Nina's mortification at discovering her mother sleeping in a chair, in the same room while she masturbated.
Then there's "Lily" played by Mila Kunis.
I would like to think yes because, that makes that scene all the more relevant and because Nina intentionally blocks her bedroom door with the stick she devised to prevent unwanted access by her mother and when she and Lily arrive at Nina's home after their night out clubbing, Nina pulls Lily into her bedroom after she has a fight with her mother. Nina places the rod to block at the bottom of her bedroom door: A rod that reaches another door preventing the first door from opening. In the morning the stick is removed. Could Nina have removed it herself? I prefer to think otherwise.
However just like with the movie Mulholland Drive I preferred to accept Diane Selwyn's (Naomi Watts) delusion that she was actually lovers with the sensual and voluptuous Hollywood starlet Rita (Laura Elena Harring) when it was all Diane Selwyn's imagination.
Some have described Black Swan as a hybrid of Tales from the Crypt and the Red Shoes.
There were scenes that I winced at and therefore couldn't discern if Nina took the nail file away from Beth when Beth began to repeatedly stab herself, or if Nina had actually done the stabbing (when she arrives home and locks the door she does so by holding a cloth or something as if not to get bloody fingerprints on the door lock.)
Oh my then there's Barbara Hershey as Erica the penultimate stage mother who sacrifices her own career only to fixate on her daughter's career. Hershey is scary as she questions what appears is Nina's self mutilation.
It's a study of madness, MADNESS I say. Nina's madness her mother's, Lily's and even Thomas' (Lily and Thomas were more manipulative than mad) and maybe even our own.
It all implodes the night of the performance as Nina confronts her mother and Lily prior to taking the stage as the Black Swan. When she sees the consequences of her imagined confrontation with Lily we see another aspect of the borderline personality in the manifestation of self-injury without suicide intent.
In this Portman is magnificent as she reacts to what she has done to herself.
Yet again the Black Swan personality takes over as Nina returns to the stage and is transformed into the Black Swan just as she transformed into the white swan at the movie's start.
Portman embodies an emotional fragility, and an elegance that was apparent back in the day when she appeared as Queen Amadallah in that Star Wars movie.
I’m in awe of the ending, that can quite possibly lead to a sequel given some imaginative writing and conceptualization.
Natalie is currently involved with French ballet dancer Benjamin Millepied who she started dating in 2009. Benjamin Millepied was the choreographer for Black Swan. 
