Black Swan is certainly intense; it's also really good. It's an extremely interior film, which makes sense given that Black Swan is thoroughly concerned with identity and everything else that lies just below the surface of consciousness; in the creeping sense of unease and disquietude, of things being somehow not right, that it produced, it reminded me of David Lynch, and of Amenabar's memorable Open Your Eyes, which figures, since, from opening dream sequence to shattering end, it shares with them a preoccupation with effacing the distinctions between the inner and external worlds, between dreams and waking life. And it's also about art, and the toll that it takes, and in this it's lifted by a brilliant turn from Natalie Portman - one simply forgets that it's her, and it never feels as if she's acting at all. Her achievement is to take us deep into Nina's mind, when that very mind is shattering before our very eyes.
Black Swan flourishes its motifs with a boldness typical of Aronofsky - mirrors, doubling, control/letting go, dreams/reality - which works to the film's advantage because its themes demand such grand treatment, particularly in the context of its structuring metaphor, the tale of Swan Lake itself, recounted early in the film as a 'white swan/virginity - black swan/seduction - liberty in death' plunge, and then played out in terms which could almost be as literal or as figurative as each viewer pleases.
I thought after seeing the film, yesterday, that my dreams might be affected, so vivid and intense an experience was it - and (unusually) that actually happened...I think it'll stay with me.
(w/ Sunny and his friend Caroline)
