By Linda Winsh-Bolard
I don’t know why I do this to myself. It is not as if my expectations were high, or hardly any. I was not paid to see it. But I did. It was a dismal experience.
A young, ambitious, starved in all meanings of the word dancer gets chosen for the part of Odette/Odille, here called the Queen Swan and the demands of the performance further the unraveling of her psyche.
Natalie Portman is Nina, the insecure dancer with controlling mother (Barbara Hershey) and desire for limelight. Mila Kunis is Lily, the equally starved, fun, drug, sex and alcohol loving newcomer. Nina feels threatened by the incomprehensible Mila having just witnessed how brutally the artistic director (Vincent Cassel)dealt with the former company’s star.
Nina begins to have odd experience and visions, everything seems suspicious to her. She is getting paranoid. All that while she trains to dance the double part that is, in this film, presented as virginal innocence versus evil seducer.
From the beginning the premise is off kilter. Ballet companies contract number of prima ballerinas and premier danseurs. These are the dancers who will perform the title roles. They do not audition for each part; nor would anyone dare to call a prima ballerina “girl”.
Each significant role in any ballet has at least three dancers performing it. This is necessary because there could be more than one performance a day which would pose a real strain on dancer’s body. Hence there is never just one “name” posted or adulated. Premier dances in USA usually perform and train together- think of Gelsey Kirkland and Misha Baryshnikov. And the Odette/Odille part is traditionally danced by two different dancers. In one staging, the Black swan was danced by black prima ballerina while the White Swan by a white one.
I have never even heard of am artistic director who would pick a dancer form the corps de ballet and elevated her to primadona. I assume such action would cost dearly in law suits.
As per the constant sexual innuendo, the film is about 30 year late for that.
Ditto for those starved, little girl bodies that Balanchine so adored and abused. That has been over for a bit now as well as most of the sexual harassment. Not all, but most.
Nina would not be the first woman who, while perpetually undernourished, under extreme stress of unnatural expectations (no dancer is as good as the computer image), exposed to alcohol, drugs and power manipulation would crack. But to present this as succumbing to the role is ridiculous.
Dancers train to dance. The ballet mistress/mister is rarely concerned with the story beyond its barest gist. Their effort is for exact movement, timing, high jumps and effortless look. Anyone in dance company will hear the word “heels” (as to land on your heels and jump from your knees) far more often than “seduction”.
The presented milieu is a throw into the past, those stories read and heard on the fringes.
Only when I realized that the entire production was run by men, it began to make sense.
This is one of those stories where males present feeble female mind. Females are only capable of submission to male will, they desire to do so and sexually starved virgins go mad. Females cannot live without males; it is unnatural. Ambitions is unseemly in a female whose psyche is best suited to nurturing of a child and making home for her man. Nina goes mad because she is a warped female, as is the former star ballet, Beth (Winona Ryder). You know, those virgin/mother figures versus the whore. The Virgin Mary versus Mary of Magdala; that is before the Church was shamed into admitting it lied about Mary of Magdala.
As a statement of Christian teaching cliché, the film does a good job.
As a presentation of male ego and the nearly absolute lack of understanding of women by those men of certain age and education, it does an excellent job.
As dancer and dancer’s world picture is worthless.
As a portrait of a prima ballerina it is a bad joke.
As for dancing, there is very little of it. The memorable moment comes as Odette, i remarkable costume and mask, finishes her solo; Nina's arms grow black make-up and change into beautiful black wings. It is a very compelling image possible only in film.
So, I went to take a class. Adult ballet dancer have to this every day. I did not dream about becoming Odette. I always hated those 16 turns on each leg- the film does not show them either.
Fox Searchlight, directed by Darren Aronofsky, written by Mark Heyman, Andrew Heinz and John McLaughlin.
