Black Swan [Blu-ray]

Firstly lets get a few things straight. This is not a movie for twee middle class mums to watch with their daughters about being a ballet dancer. Many reviewers seem to think that would be the case. Be warned it is not. The 15 certificate may have given it away. 15 years ago it would have been an 18.

It is a very dark and bleak study of a top ballerina. And believe me Natalie Portman is outstanding. I know nothing about ballet but she seems to have put her heart and soul into this role.

Brilliantly directed, fantastically edited, superbly acted this is a visceral movie of the highest order. But as said earlier this will not be for everyone!!!

This film is not residing in the middle of the road. It definitely has an original, darker stroke fitting well with the title. Nathalie Portman pays her dues for her Oscar in a great performance, showing off a wide pallette of emotional expressions. Though we've seen the "if you want fame, you gotta pay with sweat" theme before, this movie goes further into the darker quarters of how the human mind responds to stress overload. The main character is an ambitious young ballerina, working hard with her dancing, dreaming of doing the lead role in a famous ballet production. To achieve her goal, she evidently has to face more stress than her mind can bear. The deeper she sinks into mental exhaustion, the more she is plagued with hallucinations and paranoia and her tense relation to the ballet production director doesn't make things easier. This movie is definitely more than a chick flick for wanna-be-ballerinas and it takes a peak behind the curtain, depicting the thin line between hard work and being absorbed in absurdum with a task. The director included a couple of graphically explicit, lesbian sex scenes. If they add substance to the story is to be debated. I guess the director didn't dare to omit this oldest trick in the book.

Seeing a new film from Darren Aronofsky is always cause for excitement, and Black Swan is arguably his best to date, mixing elements of The Red Shoes, Repulsion and Suspiria to awesome effect. Reminiscent in many ways of his debut feature Pi, the film is a master class in genre cinema, with the tension and surreal madness being orchestrated to fever pitch. It's a real assault on the senses, bombarding the viewer with increasingly weird imagery and loud, frantic bursts of opera and classical music. Aronofsky walks a thin line between madness and genius in his movies, and you are never really sure which side he spends more time on. His previous films can justifiably be classified as being disturbingly brilliant, or brilliantly disturbed depending on your point of view, and Black Swan is no different. His movies are not what you might describe as being "feel good", but they all are capable of evoking reactions in the audience. That reaction may not always been what they want to feel, but it is always deliberate, and always well done. Aronofsky's films are not always well received (especially The Fountain, which was critically and commercially panned), but they can be respected for what they attempt.

The film revolves around Natalie Portman's Nina Sayers, a woman who has dedicated herself completely to the ballet and the art of dance, that it has stunted her development in many ways. She is cold and isolated, and has difficulty relating to people, while still retaining a purity and naivety that teeters between innocence and cowardice. She is afraid of everything, but has no idea why. Fueling this repression is Nina's mother Erica, a former dancer who achieved only moderate success, and now lives vicariously through her daughter. When it is announced that the star of the show, Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder) has been made to retire, the remaining dancers all compete to win the coveted role of the Swan Queen in the first production of the season, a role that will elevate the dancer to fame. The movie hits its stride about 3/5 through, as Nina begins to change, both physically and mentally. She undergoes a form of mental torture that she subjects herself too, and this is where the genius and madness of Aronofsky shines.

Portman delivers what is arguably the best performance of her career, you pity her and you feel for her, but you are also frustrated and annoyed by her reluctance to embrace her opportunities. The actual dancing also plays a major role in the film, and Aronofsky approaches it in such a way that without wasting much time in lengthy explanations, you understand the logic of the ballet and its insulated world. The film looks fantastic on Blu-ray with an excellent 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 encode (2.40:1) which looks every bit like it did in theaters. Filmed with a combination of digital cameras and Super 16, the stylized picture comes with a thick grain structure and restrained contrast levels.

Whites remain crisp and bright nonetheless, and the textured grittiness weirdly adds to the movie's grimly surreal theme on psychosis. Theres plenty of special features including Black Swan Metamorphosis (HD, 49 min) -- This three-part featurette is essentially a making-of doc that looks at the early stages of production and moves into the final phases with some digital touch-ups. A trailer, along with some interviews with the cast and Fox Movie Channel Presents (SD, 23 min) -- Which is a series of five promo pieces that originally aired on the Fox Movie Channel program called "In Character" grouped together, but appear separate in the bonus area. Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is a masterful psychological thriller set in the physically and mentally demanding world of ballet. It's a beautifully photographed but a creepy film that harkens to Roman Polanski's early works and features an enthralling performance from Natalie Portman. I highly recommend this.