Film review: Black Swan: Dying for the love of ballet

MANILA, Philippines - Thirty-two fouettes. That is how many a ballerina playing the black swan Odile is expected to do in the third act of Swan Lake. The step was not really part of the original choreography but some long ago ballet dancer wanting a bravura turn did those fouettes and those who came next have all tried to do the same ever since. It is always a wondrous moment watching the black swan go, up, turn, kick, up, turn, kick, again and again to louder and louder applause. Some never get to 32, but nobody really minds. The fact alone that the ballerina got to play the part is already proof of her beauty and dancing prowess and therefore she is already worthy of admiration.

The lead in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake is one of the most demanding in the classical ballet repertoire. Not only because of the fouettes but because it is a dual role. A ballerina traditionally plays both Odette, the white swan queen and Odile, the black swan who is the daughter of an evil sorcerer. For an actress, this is like playing both the parts of the good, put upon girl like Sharon Cuneta and the scheming villainess as in Cherie Gil. And doubly difficult because the dancer performs both on her toes.

Given how challenging the part is, there are times when two dancers are cast in the part. Of course, the more interesting Odile gets more bravos. No ballerina worth her salt though will deprive herself of that. And that is why so many of them have masochistically accepted the challenge of the swans these past hundred years or so, unmindful of battered toes, twisted joints and addled insides that go with the part. 

As directed by Darren Aronofsky, the core of the motion picture Black Swan is this Odette/Odile conflict. Nina played by Natalie Portman is a dancer in the corps who has been tapped by the artistic director of the ballet company to dance the dual role in Swan Lake. She is ecstatic. This is the fulfillment of a dream for which she has literally endured blood, sweat and tears for many years. She makes a perfect virginal Odette, who will die for true love but must now bring out whatever is willful, sensual or simply guile to be Odile.

As the enormity of the job dawns on her Nina begins to unravel. Can she be good and evil at the same time? Will trying to be Odile cause her to crack? Aronofsky, who loves excesses in his films, remember The Fountain, makes this literal as the stress gets Nina’s nails and skin cracking with her fragile mind threatening to follow suit. Will she be able to make it to opening night? Hopefully not, thinks Lily, a new dancer who has the Odile down pat and is clever enough to play sweet and innocent at the same time. Nina had better start watching her back and bring out the black swan in her fast. Or else she might just end up like Beth the ballerina she is set to replace.

 Like most stories from the long ago past, the fantastic and in the case of Swan Lake, tragic tales from the ballet do not easily lend themselves to modern filmmaking. As an animated feature for kids, perhaps. But like a Shakespeare play, they will still work if you get the right adaptation. So Aronofsky with writers Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John McLaughlin pulled out all the stops for Black Swan. They came up with a veritable melodramatic, horror-filled mash.

 It is Applause, a classic showbusiness story wherein an aging diva is bumped off the lead role by a young newcomer. Winona Ryder who 20 years ago might have made a good Nina is the “older” ballerina. It is Gypsy wherein a mother tries to fulfill her aborted dream through her daughter’s success although Nina’s mother, played to creepy perfection by Barbara Hershey is more Mommie Dearest than Rose. It is a woman’s descent into madness, like Carrie. It is about a brilliant but tyrannical mentor, Vincent Cassel as Thomas Leroy and his young pupil, Nina, as in Phantom Of The Opera. It is about a ballerina’s obsessive desire to dance even to her death as in The Red Shoes, which despite all the hype about Black Swan, remains the quintessential ballet movie of all time.

Aronofsky ingeniously strung these together into a psychological thriller about the tyrannical world of the ballet and how it preys on the young and innocent. It is how ballet demands an ascetic existence and destroys the body in pursuit of its ordained perfection. It has no place for the fat and ugly and casts off the old just as the mind is reaching its prime. In exchange it gives indescribable beauty, so fleeting but so fulfilling that those given the gift of dance are willing to sacrifice everything for.

Black Swan is wonderfully photographed with both lovely and gut-wrenching images but it certainly puts to death the old saying that everything is beautiful at the ballet. Oh how Aronofsky loves the destruction of the idea. He must be a firm believer in the concept of dying for love of the art. It can be mathematics and the quest for an unknown, Pi, a deadly but glorious turn at the mat in The Wrestler and so here it is again in Nina confronting assorted demons, within and without, in return for that moment of glory on her painful toes.

It is no wonder then that Aronofsky was able to deftly steer Portman through assorted movie cliches to a triumphant, performance. Restraint has pretty much dictated acting awards choices these past years. The bizarre has been left pretty much in the horror movie circuit. Expect that to change soon though, most surely after Portman wins her first Academy Award. She is a riveting sight, all breathtaking beauty outside and a tormented mess inside, that makes the excesses, lack of originality and implausibility of the picture easy to forgive.