Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” is the stillborn offspring of “The Red Shoes” and Hieronymus Bosch—both magnificent and magnificently disturbing. Art, obsession and mental fragility coalesce into something dark, gnarled and hallucinatory. How can something so repulsive be so beautiful?

“Black Swan’s” stage is the renowned New York City ballet, upon which a young, newly minted prima ballerina named Nina (Natalie Portman), whose disciplined life is wholly consumed with her art, is confronted with a new rival (Mila Kunis) for the opening season production of Swan Lake. Innocent, elegant and fragile, Nina is perfect for the role of the White Swan, while Kunis’ Lily, effortless, unrefined and raw, is the perfect personification of the Black Swan’s deceit and sensuality. But as the two dancers embark on a deviant friendship, Nina’s dark side asserts itself in visions hewn from nightmares, the diabolical competition threatening to haul her straight into madness.

A tonal companion piece to Aronofsky’s previous film “The Wrestler,” which also dealt with the seduction of adulation and the fixation on disappearing dreams, “Black Swan” uses the metaphor of its ballet to set up a doppelganger relationship between Portman, who gives one of her greatest, most raw and vulnerable performances, and Kunis, an actress who has shown an unparalleled talent for choosing diverse roles that highlight her considerable talents.

The darkly enchanting “Black Swan” is the sort of film in which fantasy and reality crash headlong into each other. We never, even at the end, know where the demarcation line between the two lies. The result is effective but also unrelenting and at times almost unbearable. The film is deeply uncomfortable to watch, yet, like a car crash, you cannot look away. There is no detail Aronofsky has not injected with some meaning. Small, intimate details come to signify everything. Yet simultaneously, Aronofsky is not afraid to dole out grandiose and hallucinatory imagery; a scene where a character transforms into a swan on stage is breathtaking.

“Black Swan” is a study in obsession and a manic meditation on the creation of art, a stylized psychological thriller that plumbs the depth of dark paranoia, and shines a light on the agony and the ecstasy that goes on behind the curtain. It lays bare the self-destructive epicenter of perfectionism, and presents the divergent sides of control—how we maintain it, how we lose it and what happens after it’s gone.

GRADE: A-

MINI REVIEW: Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” about a prima ballerina’s increasingly frenzied decent into madness, is the stillborn offspring of “The Red Shoes” and Hieronymus Bosch—both magnificent and magnificently disturbing. Art, obsession and mental fragility coalesce into something dark, gnarled and hallucinatory. How can something so repulsive be so beautiful?

Directed by: Darren Aronofsky

Starring: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

Rated R for strong sexual content, disturbing violent images, language and some drug use.

Running Time: 107 minutes

Photo by