Black Swan

 

Partner and I saw “Black Swan” on Sunday.

 

 

OMG!

 

First of all, Natalie Portman is just about perfect. Why does it always amaze me when a movie star actually turns in a good performance? Well, hers is better than good, it's terrific. She goes from fragile to terrifying and back again. And there's a great supporting cast: Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, and especially Winona Ryder as a washed-up ballerina who, ahem, isn't taking retirement very well at all, and who just about spontaneously combusts in her three or four little scenes.

 

It made me think of that other really excellent ballet movie, “The Red Shoes.” In “Red Shoes,” an innocent young ballerina becomes a star by portraying a role in which she dances herself to death. She falls in love with the young ballet composer, she leaves the ballet, she finds she can't live without it, she's torn, she goes back . . . Well, I won't tell you the ending. But it ain't very cheerful.

 

Same in “Black Swan,” but with a difference. The heroine is told, over and over again, that she can't dance meaningfully unless she understands the emotions underlying her role. The story of the innocent white swan and the wicked black swan starts to invade her everyday life. Creepy things start to happen. Or do they? Doesn't matter, because she dances better and better. It's the old Romantic fable of the suffering / struggling / crazy artist, except that it feels mighty real, even when people start sprouting feathers and such.

 

It doesn't matter if you like ballet or not. Just jete your little Early American butt down to the local cineplex and see it.

 

If you don't come out doing a plie and a cabriole and a grand arabesque, you're just not a human being.