Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky, claims to penetrate to the romantic, obsessional heart of ballet. Based loosely on Swan Lake, the film follows Nina, its ballerina heroine, as she grapples with learning the dual role of Odette and Odile (the white and black swans in Swan Lake).
- Black Swan
- Production year: 2010
- Country: USA
- Runtime: 103 mins
- Directors: Darren Aronofsky
- Cast: Barbara Hershey, Mila Kunis, Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Winona Ryder
Nina, played by Natalie Portman, is bullied by her mother and director, works herself punitively hard and becomes violently paranoid about her rival, Lily. What tips her over the edge is the challenge of dancing the Black Swan. As Nina tackles the sexy, malevolent role, she unleashes dark forces within herself that plunge us into full-on cinematic horror.
Prior to the film's US release last month, the dance community had imagined Black Swan to be an update of Powell and Pressburger's ballet classic The Red Shoes. As they've since discovered, the film has more in common with Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby: a terrifying portrayal of one woman's descent into madness, set in a world of claustrophobia and pain. Feathers have been ruffled: Robert Gottlieb, the New York Observer's dance critic, found Aronofsky guilty of "recapitulating all the old ugly misrepresentations of ballet", and of portraying ballet as one great "sadomasochistic trip".
Certainly, from the vomiting of guilty calories to the torments inflicted by her sadistic choreographer (with a foreign accent, of course), Aronofsky runs with every stereotype. And the dance sections are brutal: the deliberately choppy style of filming isn't just alienating; it also robs those moving bodies of their true power and beauty.
Portman has been widely praised: she spent months in training, allowing her to do some reasonable faking with her upper body, arms and head. Her main dance material, though, is performed by body doubles.
But what do real dancers think of Black Swan? In Britain, the film isn't out for another fortnight, so the Guardian invited five of the biggest names in British ballet to an advance screening. Were their screams those of recognition, terror – or sheer hilarity?
Tamara Rojo Principal dancer with the Royal Ballet
Natalie Portman needs to work on her port de bras. I really have a problem with this film using an actress, not a dancer, to play Nina: the director seems to think that, in a few months, you can learn a profession that it takes years just to understand, let alone be good at. And in the film, Nina is supposed to be awesome.
This is a very lazy movie, featuring every ballet cliche going. If you want to look at the dark side of ballet, do it properly, don't just give us shots of a ballerina suddenly vomiting. Nina's mother was beyond the cliche of a ballet mum – she was a psychopath. And the only people who looked like they were having a good time were the ones having sex.
The ballet movies that dancers go back to are the ones that have had great dancers in them, like Mikhail Baryshnikov, Moira Shearer, Roland Petit and Zizi Jeanmaire. Ballet isn't something you can just add on. The characters are important because they're dancers – and if they aren't very good ones, it doesn't make sense.
Lauren Cuthbertson Principal dancer with the Royal Ballet
I wish I wasn't a dancer looking at this film, so I could see it from another perspective. Portman is an incredible actress, and I can see why she jumped at this role. But, good as she is, it's impossible for her to look like a professional dancer. Maybe they needed her to sell the film, but [co-star] Vincent Cassel is a big name, too. And I'm sure they could have found a dancer of the right calibre to act the part.
Some of Nina's character felt accurate. We're all obsessive in how we approach a new role: it can dominate our thoughts for months. And some of us like to wear pastel colours sometimes. But in the film it's all so extreme. And Nina's such a good little girl; she wears pink all the time, and her hair in a bun, even when she's outside.
The film makes ballet look as though it's all blood, sweat, tears and sacrifice. Of course, that's suitable subject matter for a horror movie, but it doesn't show any of the pleasure.
Edward Watson Principal dancer with the Royal Ballet
The sad thing is that while this film shows the drive ballet dancers have to become perfect, it makes what we do look so naff and laughable. It doesn't show why ballet is so important to us – why we would want to try so hard.
The best part is the opening sequence, where you see Nina completely involved in her dancing. I didn't think Portman was bad: she had a good neck, face and focus. And the film was accurate about the stress levels in the profession. I've had those kind of dreams where I've missed performances, when I'm hearing the music, but I can't make it on to the stage in time.
But otherwise, it looked like they had taken all the cliches that they had been told about ballet and bundled them into a film. I've seen some choreographers play mindgames with dancers about who they are going to cast, but not with that kind of intensity.
The one cliche they didn't go for so much was the bitching. I thought there would be much more of it. I thought there would be dancers pushing each other down the stairs.
Elena Glurdjidze Principal dancer with English National Ballet
I was quite shocked by this; it wasn't at all what I expected. I thought Portman did quite well for someone who wasn't trained. She didn't look out of place at the barre, and I found it hard to tell when she was dancing and when it was the body double.
But so many scenes were exaggerated. And I didn't recognise anything about the ballet Swan Lake. When I was preparing for my first Odile [the Black Swan], I had a great dancer from the Mariinksy telling me that I had to be seductive like a cat, but it was all within the context of the choreography. Yes, you have to use you imagination to get into a role – but not like Nina. I must say, though, I did like the Black Swan eye makeup they gave her. She looked amazing.
Cassa Pancho Artistic director of Ballet Black
You can tell they did some research. Some of the smaller details, like the broken toenails and the way Nina works on her ballet shoes [scoring the soles, breaking down the blocked toes], were accurate. And I've seen dancers get paranoid, just like Nina, when they miss a rehearsal and find someone else has been standing in for them – although obviously not to the point where they smash the rival dancer in the mirror and drag her into the toilet by the ankles.
I hated the ballet director. He was ridiculously patronising and bullying. That scene when he comes into the class and starts telling the story of Swan Lake, then taps the shoulders of the dancers he doesn't want to use – if I tried that, my company would tackle me to the ground and send me to the hospital.
The most realistic character was Lily, who smokes and has fun. But even with her there are inaccurate details, like when she's rehearsing with her hair all loose. It's another cliche: "Look at me, I'm so relaxed because I don't put my hair into a bun."
Of course, this is a horror movie; it's meant to be extreme. There's been incredible feedback on Twitter, but what most people are saying is: don't worry about the ballet – go for the great lesbian action and the horror.
• Black Swan is released on January 21. Elena Glurdjidze dances Swan Lake at the Coliseum, London, in March; Tamara Rojo and Lauren Cuthbertson dance Swan Lake at Royal Opera House, London, March to April
Comments in chronological order (Total 166 comments)
5 January 2011 10:04PM
Tiger Woods don't make me grab Iron.
5 January 2011 10:40PM
Watching Black Swan for the ballet seems to me like watching South Park: The Movie for the Christian theology.
5 January 2011 10:44PM
I think it was Godard who said that everyone has a second job – film critic. Not in the ballet world, then.
5 January 2011 10:56PM
This movie is as much about a realistic portrayal of professional ballet dancers as Swan Lake is about birds. Instead this movie is about the psychology of a person obssessd with perfectionism.
5 January 2011 11:18PM
Following on from what @Rach89 has said, the choice of director and of an actress in the lead role instead of a dancer would hopefully hint that this is *not* specifically a ballet film, but a horror film in which ballet is used for its metaphors.
It would be better to see Black Swan as a scary movie with some ballet in it, rather than expect a true-to-life depiction of a ballerina's life, as that's not the kind of film Aronofsky makes!
6 January 2011 2:56AM
The film seemed to me 'The Red shoes' mets 'A Nightmare on Elm Street'... on the set of the Panthom of the Opera.
Vicent Cassel is given a run for his money by all the girls cast... Portman, Ryder, Hersey and Kunis.
6 January 2011 8:00AM
I've watched Caddyshack a million times and I still can't hit a ball; however, I have watched Ron Jeremy a thousand times or more, and feel that this has directly made me into the astonishing lover that I am.
Allegedly.
6 January 2011 8:22AM
'I really have a problem with this film using an actress, not a dancer'
Yes, but if the film then used a dancer who couldn't act as well as Portman does, it would be dreadful. Her dancing might not be perfect - but it sounds as if she wasn't bad. And in the absence of a Moira Shearer being available, what's a director to do? The cliches in the storyline sound like a worse offence.
Most films abbreviate the real world for their purposes and don't get pulled up on it with this sort of scrutiny. I don't remember the Guardian inviting a group of heroin addicts to review Requiem for Dream, for example...
6 January 2011 8:33AM
Looks like Swan Lake is something of a cliché itself.
6 January 2011 8:46AM
I was thinking the Guardian could send a journalist to the Shetlands and ask about how realistic The Wicker Man is.
6 January 2011 8:52AM
what is this drivel? talk about missing the point. have you ever seen an aronofsky film?
lazy and idiotic.
6 January 2011 8:58AM
I'm sure I shall be laughing in all the wrong places.
6 January 2011 8:59AM
@duster We actually get people whose occupations are relavant to an art work to review it every week, in our Another View series.
6 January 2011 9:02AM
Er, relevant
6 January 2011 9:02AM
Natalie Portman has made one truly great film so far: Leon.
I am never knowingly going to see this film, but I would imagine that as someone who knows bugger all about ballet, the finer points of her technique may well pass me by, whereas hammy acting most certainly wouldn't.
Problem is, the target audience for this film probably knows a bit more about ballet than me.
I can't see how it will truly please everyone, therefore. Depending on who you are, it is either a dull as dishwater worthly film about ballet with a potentially great actress, or a worthwhile film about ballet with a mediocre ballerina.
6 January 2011 9:07AM
Rach89 has it right. The film isn't intended to be a real-life documentary about the backstage life of ballet dancers. It's an examination of the psychology of someone so obsessed with perfecting their art and the extreme lengths they are prepared to go to achieve that perfection, with the result that it overwhelms them mentally, emotionally and psychologically.
Nina's neuroses, fears, hopes and repressed, initially infantile sexuality are reflected and expressed through her dancing. She is trying to break free of the clutches of her overbearing, infantilising and indeed psychologically unbalanced mother who lives through her, a character who is necessarily extreme in portrayal so that we understand the source of many of Nina's hang-ups. Likewise, her feelings for her choreographer and his manipulation of her in order to obtain the animalistic, sexual dark side he requires for her to truly embody the Black Swan - compared with the innocent purity of the White Swan - add to her pressures and conflicted emotional state (the fact that Vincent Cassel 'has an accent' is irrelevant really, though I suppose it is intended to the sense of exoticism for non-dancers peeking into the ballet world). Ballet, requiring complete and often punitive physical, mental and emotional commitment to achieve true skill and perfection, is therefore the ideal medium through which to reflect this pressure-cooker of extremes.
The fact that Natalie Portman cannot portray the dancing standards of Margot Fonteyn is unfortunate, but largely unavoidable, seeing as most big-name actors are not also professional ballet dancers; either you sacrifice the dancing or the acting, and in this case the former is necessarily secondary. Of course you could look for a less well-known star or a dancer capable of acting, but then it wouldn't carry the 'star power' Aronofsky clearly required to garner widespread interest in the film as a part-psychological thriller, part-horror set in the dance world, rather than a niche-interest film about ballet.
6 January 2011 9:10AM
I think the whole premise of this article is horribly sensationalist and ultimately pointless.
Of course specialists can see flaws in actors technical skills. Musicians, typists, boxers, drivers, gymnasts, sharpshooters, sportsmen, card sharps, politicians and others all see technical flaws in movies that depict their areas of expertise.
Perhaps the movie should be recommended for people over the age of eighteen and dancers with an especial ability to suspend disbelief?
6 January 2011 9:19AM
I'm also really angry about how scientists aren't used instead of actors in films with scientists.
6 January 2011 9:20AM
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6 January 2011 9:21AM
I don't understand some of the dancers comments, Black Swan was never meant to be a documentary of the life of ballet dancers, so obviously liberties had to be taken to support the storyline. It's a thriller, not a documentary.
This film is about telling a story and so he needs actors that can play the part. If there was a dancer that could act as good as Natalie Portman then fine, cast her. But I doubt there was. The same way that Natalie needed body doubles a dancer would need an acting double...
Do you also interview police officers and ask them if they feel 'Bad Lieutenant' is a good portrait of their work????
6 January 2011 9:27AM
Or how about asking Grade A twats how they feel a footballer like Ashley Cole is doing?
6 January 2011 9:31AM
xyzzy I was thinking the Guardian could send a journalist to the Shetlands and ask about how realistic The Wicker Man is.
It would be an interesting editorial meeting: "So, basically we need a thirtysomething male virgin .... I'll contact the Sports Desk."
Not sure the dancers etc have got grip of the fact that this is a film, not real life.
6 January 2011 9:33AM
Yes, why didn't they use real astronauts for Apollo 13 instead of Tom Hanks?
6 January 2011 9:36AM
@Spikediswhack, duster, Cdub, AnaMarta et al
Exactly. Getting the cream of British ballet to review the film as if it were a real-life investigation into the dark side of ballet rather than a psychological horror set in the ballet world is about as relevant to the overall film as asking tricycle manufacturers to review The Shining.
Alex - not to sound too precious, but since you do actually have an 'Another View' series specifically for this purpose, why not include this article?
6 January 2011 9:37AM
The film is ridiculous; Natalie Portman can dance the Black Swan but only if she can learn to wank.
Desperate stuff.
6 January 2011 9:37AM
Might as well ask a bunch of NASA scientists to "review" Armageddon.
A number of (informed) reviewers have commented that the dancing in the film is more than adequate for a popular film set in the world of ballet. What else was this kind of analysis going to point out?
6 January 2011 9:39AM
I agree, but probably not in the same sense as the person quoted.
6 January 2011 9:42AM
Mariinsky rather than Marrinksy, perhaps particularly in an article with a ballet theme.
6 January 2011 9:43AM
I'm so appalled.
6 January 2011 9:48AM
@manhattancat I think your eyes are playing tricks on you - that's how we spelt it.
6 January 2011 9:56AM
Descent into madness is what Aronofsky does best. I don't really care too much what mathematicians think of the movie "Pi". As long as the maths, or here, the ballet, is not ludicrously wrong that even a layman could spot it, the movie delivers on its core theme.
Anyone would think those ballet people were... er... divas.
6 January 2011 10:12AM
Does anyone else get the impression Tamara Rojo tore her agent a new one when she found out Portman was in this?
6 January 2011 10:12AM
Well, none of the dancers quoted in the article are suggesting that it is a documentary. The point is, as the article says:
I think it's interesting to hear from professionals, who have for years endured rigorous training schedules to reach the highest standards in ballet, about how convincing Portman's performance is. And they're not all negative either.
Plus, it's not as though trained ballet dancers haven't been used in films before - see Tamara Rojo's point:
6 January 2011 10:19AM
I suggest dropping a yolk and having a little dance. It´ll cheer you up no end.
6 January 2011 10:23AM
@joshthedog
it's probably best to know something about the film and subject matter before making comments that are absolutely irrelevant. Unfortunately a lot of people seem to be missing the concept. It's not about ballet, it's about psychosis. you know... like pi or requiem for a dream... but then you'd know that if you even knew who darren aronofsky was...
i
6 January 2011 10:24AM
@xyzzy: Shetlanders probably couldn't give a damn - it was set/filmed in the Western Isles, not the Northern Isles! ;-)
6 January 2011 10:26AM
@pintoo
Dancers weren't being remotely diva-ish. They'd been asked to comment on the film's portrayal of ballet, not on its merits as a horror movie.
If you think they missed the point, then so have most of these posts.
6 January 2011 10:28AM
The promise of a lesbian scene between Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman drew me in, but I ended up also learning about the story of Swan Lake.
Ministers for Culture and for Education, take note. If there was ever a 'nudge' then this was it.
6 January 2011 10:32AM
It's not a perfect representation of ballet as has been mentioned, but a psychological thriller about Nina's descent into madness from the stress of wanting to be perfect. I thought Portman did a great job - watch her eyes between the acts during her final performance - and the dancing is done well enough to suspend belief for someone (like me!) who couldn't tell the difference anyway. I was kind of disappointed Cassel didn't have more dancing scenes himself - he studied ballet in his early thirties so knows what he's doing.
6 January 2011 10:36AM
It's interesting to see what the "specialists" thought.
I think the last 2, especially Cassa Pancho showed enough perspicaciousness (gee, what a long word) to take the film for what it is: Entertainment AND THEN make their comments. Those views were good. The the first 3 just show that specialists are not necessarily the most balanced observers.
Personally Ballet has always held some sort of horror for me. In fact dancing in such an extreme or ultra-competitive format would be the antithesis of dancing to my way of thinking: Those grinning faces with gritted smiles look so like the death grin of a human skull and the mathematical and maniacal precision and machine-like procession. What garbage!
6 January 2011 10:39AM
Bloody hell you lot, it was only a little opinion piece. Is everyone not handling the return to work too well or something?
6 January 2011 10:39AM
Well, now we know...
6 January 2011 10:44AM
Oh come on, how can you say that about someone who was in the love scene in "Revenge of the Sith"
6 January 2011 10:46AM
Its a difficult one because it seems like the Ballet experts expected Darren Aronofsky to truly know about Ballet. He is a film director and although, I'm sure, he has spent a great deal of time and effort in creating ( to a normal person ) a beleivable depiction of a professional dancer, it probably is an impossible expectation. There are some hints of self-righteousness in the experts "that it takes years just to understand, let alone be good at" attitude... He is clearly not trying to do a disservice to professional dancers but simply attempting to make a film suitable for a wide audience and one that is good. If the film was about a Ballet dancer who was as able Natalie Portman actually is, it would probably be set in a high school and Antonio Banderez would be the teacher - Take the Lead (i know its not ballet)... And it would be rubbish.
6 January 2011 10:47AM
But you might see it unknowingly? How does that work? Do tell . . .
6 January 2011 10:47AM
I'd say it was more like Repulsion than Rosemary's Baby...but, hey...
Nitpicking; a needless national pastime renowned for ruining nearly everything.
6 January 2011 10:48AM
@affirmative - I promise, all the dancers knew exactly what they were seeing. Some of their comments were hilarious, if unprintable. And you need to see some good ballet. Gritted smiles and maniacal precision? Only in Aronofsky's movie.
6 January 2011 10:49AM
Great lesbian action and horror, you say?
Tickets booked.
6 January 2011 10:50AM
@ Cdub makes a good point about specialists watching films with an overly critical eye. However, sometimes things simply cannot be overlooked becuase they are so unrealsitic that the film loses credibility - that does not appear to have happened here.
My particular favourite though was Emma Thompson in the film 'In name of the father' haranguing the Court of Appeal from behind counsel - something that would never happen - or if it did - would certainly ensure any appeal was dismissed. Indeed, as a lawyer, I'm not sure what was worse - the haranguing or the fact that she was unrobed.
6 January 2011 10:51AM
SWAN LAKE was the "Lindsay Anderson" ballet of its era. It bombed at the premiere, and had to be withdrawn from the repertoire. And no wonder...
# a young man from the cream of society clashes with his parents over his sexuality
# he throws a wobbly, insults the guests at his party, and runs off into the forest
# in the forest he begins a love-affair with a creature of a completely different species
# he refuses to go ahead with the wedding his parents have arranged, has a furious row with his mother, and jilts his fiancee at the altar. Meanwhile the swan who loves him is "beating her wings to a bloody pulp on the broken glass of the church windows" trying to get inside (stage direction).
Anyone who thought this was a gingerbread confection needs to go back to the book and read it again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj-9aay11As&feature=related