Black Swan...WTF

This picture gives me nightmares.

Upon the movie’s end, I sat speechless for approximately two minutes while the credits started rolling.  Fortunately, I am no longer speechless and thus can attempt to put into words my review of the movie Black Swan starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, and Vincent Cassel.  The movie is about the cutthroat world of ballet and its ability to delude the dancers that compete for the principal role.  So basically, take that comforting and beautiful idea of ballet that you had in your head and throw it away.  Black Swan gives it to you raw and real and at times even makes you feel uncomfortable.

Natalie Portman plays Nina Sayers in what will inevitably be an Oscar-winning role.  Nina is a perfectionist who is influenced and controlled by her has-been mother and looks up to the person that judges her most, the ballet’s director played by Cassel.  Portman is cast as the lead in a new rendition of Swan Lake where she will play both the white and the black swan.  Then things get funky.  There are a lot of graphic scenes and some unexpected gory scenes as well.  The kind that make you squirm in your seat and wonder if everyone around you feels as awkward as you do.

Portman is scary skinny and plays the innocent role so well that it becomes terrifying to see her turn into her counterpart, the black swan.  The movie had a Shutter Island feel to it in the sense that you’re still not sure what happened in real life and what was imagined.  Chatting with friends won’t help solve your problems…that’s just the reaction director Darren Aronosky wanted from his audience (he is also known for his controversial film, Requiem for a Dream).  Any more word vomit from me and I might give away too much.  And yet, I can’t stop thinking about the movie and developing my own theories as to what it all means. 

Spend or Save?  Spend before someone spoils it all for you.  Not reason enough?  Spend so that you can say you saw the Oscar-winning film before it won all its awards.