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Rating:
The Emo Swan.
"Black Swan" is built on already seen stereotypes, including the concept of the double, transposed into cinema and literature hundreds of times. Let's say I detest this kind of gothic with mentally ill and self-destructive protagonists, which, for some strange reason, appeals so much to mongoloid psychologists and a good portion of a sufficiently perverse audience who appreciate such cerebral disturbances that are more self-serving and much less introspective than they claim to be.
It's not my style to recount the plot, so I'll just say it's a film about a supposed "dark side of classical ballet" and tells the story of a (damaged) girl who manages to become the lead dancer of yet another adaptation of Swan Lake and, while being an excellent white swan, she doesn't know how to act as a black swan. To become a black swan, she must face her dark side "the dark side of ballet, indeed". Which in her case means becoming worse than an emo (because she is already emo to begin with).
Sure, thinking of the world of ballet as some kind of idyllic paradise is too naive: it's a demanding profession that requires a certain spirit of sacrifice... and even in this elite sphere, there's rot, including sexual favoritism and forms of rivalry. Let's say Aronofsky excessively overdid it to "impress" viewers more, so any reference to reality is purely coincidental.
I acknowledge that "Black Swan" has its strengths: first of all, the director should be remembered primarily for the beautiful "Pi" and the excellent "The Wrestler," but even his less successful films have always had a good visual impact, and this Black Swan at least is well-directed, with remarkable lighting effects, good cinematography,good dance choreography, and Tchaikovsky's music.
So what is the main problem of the film? The protagonist along with all its content aspects. While well-acted by Natalie Portman, not everyone could endure 2 hours of her mental struggles accompanied by serious brain issues and an emotional attitude that borders on dementia. The fact is there isn't even a change in perspective throughout the entire work that frames this mental castration in every scene, often seeking devices borrowed from horror films to "distress" the viewer (like third and second parties suddenly disrupting, lights going out abruptly, the classic "bathtub scene," etc.). In short, the director realized that the screenplay presented a certain underlying monotony and tried to break it within the limits of the possible, although it may still turn out equally tedious at various points.
Another cliché besides the typical artistic director exploiting his position of power? Of course, the overprotective mother who seems the modern version of the one in Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher" (there's also a specific scene that closely recalls the film in question).
"Black Swan" fails precisely in its main element: representation. The interpretation of the essence of the black swan is rather superficial: it reduces everything to behaving like lustful floozies doing silly things at disco partying and talking with malice almost exclusively about sex. But the idea of the white swan is even less convincing: the protagonist is a perfect white swan, being an apathetic virgin aiming to reach a purely scholastic "perfection." The dark and light sides, interpreted in these terms, are much less evocative than they should be in an overused theme, that of dualism, as old as the world itself, relegated to the canvas of characters fairly empty inside who fail to significantly embody the complementary opposites or the darkness that triumphs over light in the story of Swan Lake. The film talks throughout only about insignificant adolescent psychological problems magnified beyond measure to align them with borrowed symbolisms.
But the bottom line is touched in the final part with the protagonist in the grip of sadly pathetic horror hallucinations. A rabbit? Watch the original ballet, which is much more beautiful and evokes great emotions, unlike this crap of a disturbing and nauseating film.
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