Ioz sweetly thumbnails the film "a load of hack-job, gussied-up torture porn by one of Hollywood's most egregious misogynists."
Despite it's grand guignol drag, it is really a dowdy, ten-million-times-before-told tale of art and madness that proposes itself as a psychological thriller even though its psychology is about as insightful as the Saw franchise. Art is interesting, and the real physical rigor of ballet would make an appealingly concrete metaphor for the pain, repetition, dedication, commitment, and struggle behind great art and great performance. As a vehicle for trite mad scenes and a lot of bogus crap about how performers must immolate themselves in order to achieve transcendence, how genius is insanity, it falls, you'll pardon me, flat on its skinny ass. Maybe he should've a movie about a mad opera singer turning into a real Walkyrie, although, I don't know, I guess when you're dedicated to setting Natalie Portman writhing around with her hand in her panties or whatever the notion of some fleshy Brunhilde jumping into the orchestra pit loses some appeal.
It's certainly true that dancers' bodies are subject to brutal conditioning that would put the toughest guys in the NFL on the inactive list, and it's also true, although the extent is exaggerated, that female dancers in particular are prone to eating problems in the obsessive pursuit of physical perfection, and yet as compared to other performers and artists I have known, I find dancers to be generally the least nutso. A lot of them frankly have the zoned-out bliss of a yoga teacher. Well, fuck, a lot of them become yoga teachers, or they get a job selling subscriptions for the non-profit down the road. Like professional athletes, their careers are short; the human body hits its physical peak early, and that's simply that. It is a competitive business. Some people do flame out, unable to take the pressure or live up to their potential, but those who make it into a professional company, an elite company, are very often happy. They are, after all, living their dream.
...There is a joy in achievement after struggle. Yet not once do we see Natalie Portman's Nina Sayers enjoy herself. Nowhere are we permitted some brief glimpse of the joy of great performance. Oh, what, is she doing it because of her central-casting stage mother? Um, Darren, what's my motivation? You're crazy, Natalie. That's your motivation. Now, hold still while we apply this blood to your naked body. Look, even Peter Shaffer, a playwright with the emotional insight of a goldfish whose owner left a book of Freud case studies open on the credenza beside the tank, figured out that Doomed-Genius Composer� Mozart really fucking liked music, was transported by it, was an instrument of a sort of divinity, whose own soul resonated with the notes. Prima ballerina Natalie Portman is an instrument, all right, like a fleshlight. There is a scene meant, I don't know, to imply her burgeoning sexual seductiveness, in which an old perv masturbates through his pants while making kissy noises at her on the subway. Darren Aronofsky, that man is you.
That might explain some of the shaky camerawork.
Nan at Nanarama also renders a verdict on the film: Guilty of extreme hooey.
I shan?t critique the dancing, other than to say that Matthew Libatique?s cinematography and Daniel Weisblum?s editing quite brilliantly disguise, to the degree it?s possible, the rowboat-oar stiffness of Natalie Portman?s and Mila Kunis?s arms and necks. And I shall only carp briefly about the gaffes that show a laughable disregard for the subject at hand, with Exhibit A the continual reference to Portman?s leading role as ?The Swan Queen,? as if she?s about to be given a corsage and a paper crown at an annual prom for birds. (I will give props to the many scenes where characters monotonously beat up toe shoes and sew pink ribbons on them, the most realistic thing in the entire movie.)
[snip]
Mila Kunis has a generous, Jolie-lite beauty, and she?s lovely and natural, bringing the only touch of grace and sly humor to this decidedly clunky enterprise. Yes, she has ping pong paddle hands when she ?dances,? but so does Portman. Ok, I said I wouldn?t do that. Anyway, Kunis provides a valuable service: The key to being a serious contender for Best Actress this year is to have another woman?s head between your legs.* She is that head, and Portman wins in a waltz, even with 2 left feet.
With her bone china face and slender neck, Portman is utterly believable as a ballerina in close up, and her baby voice that?s clearly never spent any time outside of a rehearsal studio works nicely as well. But as a breakout role, Nina Ballerina doesn?t give her much. Aronofsky generally casts well, and in the movies mentioned above, Ellen Burstyn, Mickey Rourke, Jennifer Connelly, Jared Leto, and - shocker - Marlon Wayans have all blazed across the screen like comets. Poor Portman has to continually play a Woman on the Verge, and repeatedly makes a face like a lovely, extremely pampered child who?s been told that she must actually shovel some poop if she wants to keep her pet pony. Much of that is the script?s fault; it?s just silly, and perhaps no one could have done much with the part and still provided as close of a physical facsimile of a dancer as Portman does. But you have to wonder why they didn?t go The Turning Point route and just get a dancer who could act a little. Honestly, she doesn?t have to do all that much except look in the mirror a lot, furrow her brow, gasp a few times, and have an orgasm. Come on, folks, is that really that demanding?
Hell, that's pretty much how I spent an average Friday night in the Eighties, and nobody gave me no Oscar nomination.
Not that I would begrudge Portman hers. That would be petty of me.
*Dana Carvey's Johnny Carson: "I did not know that--that is wild, wacky stuff."
Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2010/12/double-creature-feature.html
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