Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Black Swan




Black Swan is a psychological thriller set in the world of ballet.Nina(Natali Portman) is aspiring ballerina who spend all her time in it.Her mother a retired ballerina ,support her daughter's professional amibition.Nina gets the prime role in "Swan Lake" which is the opening production of the season.She is so excited and praciting day and night.'Swan lake' needs to be performed by a single dancer as both white swan and black swan,so she has to show subtle difference of expression for each swan. The artisic director is impressed by her performance for white swan but he is not satisfied by the black swan performace. In the mean time the new dancer Lily caught the attention of the director and he  makes Lily  as a standby for black swan. Now Nina is paranoid that lily is conspiring to take her role and her dark side exposed and she loses her mind slowly and the  rivarly between the two dancers heats up.

She is not able to see her mother and increasingly unwilling to obey her.She sees her face in others,harming her own body,at last she becomes the like of devilish black swan.Natalie Portman gives the performance of her life time,simply awesome.It seems that she spent lot of time in practicing minutes of ballerina and the ballet.She is brilliant.I like Vincent cassel as Thomas Leroy(Artisitc director) he has done is job perfectly expressing his love,lust and the anger.Mila Kunis as Lily is free spirited.

The director shows the suffering of the ballerinas like skipping meals, blood stained toes etc. which are unknown to the common man like me.Its like watching a horror movie but the actors and music brings the story alive.Music by Clint Mansell is amazing specially the track " A Swan song for Nina".

Darren Aronosky's adoption of Swan lake and his story telling is wonderful.This guy deserves to be praised for this beautiful work.I like the cinemotography also specially the shots that show the evilness. Its a visual treat.He is the same director who directed the movie "The Wrestler" in which the actor Mickey Rourke got academy award for best actor , i hope this time Portman will get the best actress award.

Of course there some drawback , the director never fully explained the reason for her aversion towards  her mother and her late night party with Lily and friends before the actual performance. Over all a great film , not to be missed.

Click here to check out the accolades received by Black Swan.


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