Oscar Roundup: Black Swan

“Black Swan” is a chilling psychological thriller, and the rare movie that made me question if ballet should even exist while simultaneously making me want to dance.

Dancers too often hate and torture their bodies, which are kept under tight control and often unhealthily thin. They are prone to eating disorders, self mutilation, and a host of psychological problems. Their strenuous careers are often ended by the time they hit thirty, leaving little space for a childhood, or anything resembling a balanced life, and therein lies the problem. I knew this going in.

The movie does its best to illustrate one damaged girl who has spent her entire life being exactly who her mother and dance instructors asked her to be - and now faces criticism that she is too perfect, too controlled, too practiced.

Natalie Portman’s Nina sadly watches the other dancers, flirty and laughing. She cannot laugh; she cannot breath. And when her inner turmoil rips its way to the surface, shattering Nina’s tense reality, we are taken along for the ride. It is often unclear what is real and what is paranoid fantasy, and the audience is forced to question the identity of Nina’s true enemy - those who have made her weak, her mother, her instructors, her competitors, or Nina herself.

The mother’s relationship with Nina is an eery portrayal of deeply damaging psychological abuse, and Nina’s story is a beautiful metaphor (if not a necessarily a true-to-life interpretation) of the struggles many young women with anorexia nervosa and related mental disorders face.

Props to Mila Kunis, Ksenia Solo (kickass sidekick of TV’s Lost Girl), and the often loathsome Winona Ryder - all of whom held their own in difficult roles. Of course, Natalie Portman is the real star, and her acting ability stands up to the toughest scrutiny.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again...did any other Best Actress Nominee lose half their body weight, play a character having an intense nervous breakdown, and learn to dance hardcore ballet for their role? Hells no. Natalie Portman, I’ve had my mixed feelings - you were in The Phantom Menace, and you may, in some ways, be a colder, less relatable version of Anne Hathaway, but if you don’t take home that Oscar, you’ve been robbed.

Grade: A-