Black Swan vs All That Jazz

Nina doesn’t want anything as much as she wants to dance the lead in Swan Lake. She barely talks, but when she does, it’s what she talks about. She dreams about it. She works harder than I work at anything, than I’ve ever worked at anything, and it pays off. She gets the part. She sneaks into a restroom stall, shuts the door, and calls her mom, whispering the news. And then, containing herself almost completely, Nina cries, laughs, and trembles with nervous energy. It’s a quick scene, virtually silent, and it’s such an engrossing display of emotion, I would have loved the camera to linger just a second longer. Nina is played by Natalie Portman, who apparently went through a lot to make Black Swan. If she wins an Oscar, and I think she will, she’s earned it as much for those moments of spontaneous emotional honesty as she has for any abuse her feet might have suffered (and they’ve been through a lot as well).

Black Swan fits squarely into Darren Aronofsky’s filmography. Aronofsky’s movies deal with obsession, addiction, delusion and ambition, all too often at the physical expense of the main characters. It’s fitting that Black Swan follows The Wrestler. Both feature performers dependent upon specific perfections their bodies aren’t made for, in fields where aging out is a guarantee, and calling in sick is unthinkable.

Black Swan is set in New York, at what appears to be a prestigious ballet company. Nina is part of a large group of dancers all warming up, stretching, and doing whatever it is you do when you’re a ballet dancer and there’s a bar along a mirrored wall. They’re being watched by Thomas (Vincent Cassel), the company’s director, who’s about to mount a new version of Swan Lake. As Thomas moves throughout the studio, the dancers know they’re being evaluated for the lead role; they’re thrown a curve when some are tapped as if they’ve been picked, and then are told they’ve been eliminated. Nina wasn’t tapped, and is soon auditioning for the lead. Her technical precision and vulnerability make her perfect for the White Swan, but the lead must also dance the Black Swan, the ballet’s villainous, seductive dark side. Lily (Mila Kunis) is new to the company, and is all husky-voiced come-ons. She’s freer than Nina, less polished but more open. She’s the Angelina Jolie character; she’s the Rizzo. She’s not afraid of anyone, and she’s Nina’s biggest competition.

You could probably talk your way through a few of the plot points in Black Swan. Nina gets the part, and must deal with backstabbing members of the company. There are misunderstandings with Lily, sexual advances from Thomas, and grueling training sequences. But just as The Wrestler expanded beyond the boundaries of the typical sports movie, any show-biz competition clichés you might apply to Black Swan are defeated and flipped over each time they’re presented. Nina’s mental state is fragile, as is her body. She has cuts and scrapes that are probably self-inflicted, but that she doesn’t remember getting. She barely eats (and vomits when she does). She’s growing paranoid, seeing strange girls, sometimes doubles of herself. Her reflection betrays her. Paintings mock her. Ballet fairy tales come true. Nina is struggling to portray both the White and Black Swan, on stage and in her life. As Black Swan progresses, the lines between reality and ballet blur. Nina is hallucinating, rebelling against her mother (Barbara Hershey), and going through some confusing, chilling transformations.

Black Swan is a beautiful, scary, challenging movie. Natalie Portman deserves every word of praise she’s getting for her work, and then some. By now we’ve all heard how much she trained to be believable in the dance sequences, but it’s her character work that impresses the most. Near the end, Nina has (maybe) done something (possibly) awful, and has hidden the evidence (I suppose), but the show must go on (probably), so she sits and starts applying her make-up. With each exhale, a tear streams down her cheek, but she powders each away, mustering her strength to go out and be the best swan she can. It’s another of those silent moments, and Portman makes it matter. Nina is becoming…something, and so is Portman. Alongside Portman, Vincent Cassel is good as Thomas, the only significant male character. He’s Nina’s taskmaster, but he’s no monster, and like Portman, is believable as a dancer. Mila Kunis and Barbara Hershey have the fun roles, as Nina’s rival and her mother, respectively. Hershey is especially good; her character is simultaneously over-protective and bitterly jealous of her daughter, but Hershey isn’t a shrill stereotype. Winona Ryder has a small, pivotal role as the recently dropped lead of the ballet company. She’s being pushed aside, not because she lacks talent, beauty or grace, but because her dwindling youth makes her a distraction from the fresher ingénues. Ryder—it’s no secret I’ve missed seeing her in major roles—is perfectly cast, and delivers both the film’s funniest and scariest scenes.

Darren Aronofsky presents Black Swan much as Nina’s mental state: grainy, hand-held reality is juxtaposed with hyper-edited, surreal fantasy. Scenes of the ballet company look as if they were pulled from a documentary, while Nina’s hallucinations and transformations are more in keeping with classic horror (with carefully chosen and executed special effects). Nina’s night out on the town with Lily is strobe-lit, beat-heavy, and downright intoxicating. Everybody knows there’s a sex scene between Nina and Lily, but what you might not have heard is that it unfolds like a fever dream, and features living tattoos, rippling, moving skin, swapped and mistaken identities, and is every bit as scary as it is hot.

Prior to watching Black Swan, I researched every movie I thought might have influenced Aronofsky, from classic horror like Rosemary’s Baby and Suspiria, to dance movies like The Turning Point. Somehow, I settled on All That Jazz.

You can if you want. You want a fun double feature with Black Swan? Watch Single White Female, which plays out the Nina/Lily rivalry within the confines of a huge apartment and the rules of 1990s thrillers. Or you could watch Chloe, Atom Egoyan’s take on movies like Fatal Attraction, but with an added layer of paranoia and voyeurism. I’m sure I’ll get to that one on here eventually. Somehow, I settled on All that Jazz.

From the opening, it looks like we’re in for a good time, sort of Black Swan told from the point-of-view of Thomas. Roy Scheider is Joe Gideon, a Broadway director who serves as a stand-in for the movie’s director, Bob Fosse. Joe drinks and smokes too much (constantly, even in the shower), and is as notorious for his womanizing as he is for his perfectionism on stage. He’s brutal and rude to everyone he knows (including a character similar to Ryder’s, who is aging out of the ingénue role, and isn’t going quietly), and is mounting an experimental show that will make or break his reputation. He suffers a heart attack, and from his hospital bed, begins to hallucinate the end of his life, through song and dance performed by the women in his life, including Jessica Lange as some sort of Ghost of Christmas Past mother figure. It’s every bit as cheesy as it sounds. That’s a shame, because the first half really hums along. Roy Scheider is excellent as Joe Gideon/Bob Fosse. Ann Reinking plays his girlfriend (and also herself? She plays herself? I think?), and has a couple energetic dance sequences. The last half is mostly campy and faux-sexy, as if it thinks we’ll be too disturbed by Joe’s failing mental and physical state to remain invested in the film. It wants to distract us with pizzazz. All that Jazz is a classic, won a pile of Oscars, and is probably worth your time, if only for that first half. For my money, Black Swan is the keeper. It shows that the fall and the rise are the same thing, really, and that there’s beauty and terror in both.

Black Swan: A

All That Jazz: C+