Unfortunately, she's had to deal with an overbearing mother who has sheltered her to the point of psychological damage. Experiencing what she needs to in order to embody the Black Swan, combined with the pressure of the role and the paranoia over new girl, Lily, possibly being after her spot, may just push Nina over the edge. They even share similar instances of a pseudo-documentary shooting style. However, whereas the latter utilized such a style to create a heightened sense of realism, "Black Swan" takes the approach and creates a claustrophobic hell akin to something like Polanski's "The Tenant".
It's a disorienting portrait of the madness that infects many who possess the desire to create art. Nina's sanity is in question early on, and from there, we are kept on our toes in relation to what is hallucinated and what is real. Speaking of being kept on one's toes, we get an up close look at how hard ballet is on the human body. As if the psychological turmoil wasn't enough for poor Nina, the physical toll is just as prominent. As the ballerina seeking the pinnacle of perfection, Natalie Portman achieves that which her character so desperately desires.
Her performance is a milestone, not only in her career, but in acting, period. Every ounce of praise directed toward her is richly deserved. Nina goes through a ringer of emotional changes, be it the sweet, delicate girl she starts out as, the rebellious grown-up Lily unleashes in her or the manic frenzy she's reduced to when things really get out of hand. Portman never misses a beat. I'm happy to say that I was wrong about her, as she is terrific here.
She made me forget all about her role on "That 70's Show". Vincent Cassel is also fantastic as Thomas Leroy, and his relationship with Nina is one of the film's strongest aspects. He had serious doubts about her, but he believed in her all the same. Enough so that he put his doubts aside and took the biggest possible risk on her. Barbara Hershey is unnerving as Nina's overprotective mother, and Winona Ryder makes the most of her brief role as Beth, the aging star whom Nina replaces.
Matthew Libatique's cinematography is beautifully realized. Combining the raw grittiness of the pseudo-documentary material with the nightmarish imagery of Nina's hallucinations and the elegance of the ballet, the film is a joy to behold.
Clint Mansell's music, complete with elements from "Swan Lake", is also amazing, just as much a character as any breathing person on screen. I was disappointed that Mansell didn't have more of a presence in "The Wrestler", so I was happy to have him back in full force with "Black Swan".
Aronofsky is my favorite director to come along in the last 20 years or so. I'm pleased, but not surprised, to say that "Black Swan" is another film that further solidifies his position as a master filmmaker.
As for Portman, she doesn't need the "Best Actress" Oscar to solidify how great she is. Besides, after Sandra Bullock "won" last year, they'll obviously give that award to anybody. Cujo Dec 22, FAQ What is 'Black Swan' about? Is 'Black Swan' based on a book?
What is the story behind the "Swan Lake" ballet? Details Edit. Release date December 17, United States. United States. Official Facebook Official site. English French Italian. Box office Edit. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 1 hour 48 minutes. Director Darren Aronofsky , known for his what's-real-and-what's-not twists as well as pushing his characters to the depths of degradation, acknowledged to Collider that the film looks like one thing—almost clinical in its depiction of the all-consuming rigors of a ballet dancer's life—at first before the Repulsion -esque horror-suspense vibe takes over as Nina starts to doubt her own reality.
In general, it just feels like a documentary, at the beginning, before it freaks out. It worked out for us. But though the haunting film glided into our consciousness with ease exactly 10 years ago, more than a few toes were mangled in the making of this turbulent production. Around the turn of this century, Darren Aronofsky wanted to make a ballet movie, inspired by his own sister's dance studies.
He also became fascinated by the idea of doppelgangers after reading Dostoevsky's The Double. The director continued, "So, we talked a bit about it and I started to develop it, but it was a really tough film because getting into the ballet world proved to be extremely challenging. Most of the time, when you do a movie and you say, 'Hey, I want to make a movie about your world,' all the doors open up, and you can do anything and see anything you want.
The ballet world really wasn't at all interested in us hanging out, so it took a long time to get the information to put it together. He got involved with a script at Universal about a murder that took place in the theater world, called The Understudy , written by Andres Heinz , which Aronofsky hoped could be flexible enough to see his ballet dreams take flight.
When a few drafts didn't work out, he took the production independent, eventually getting distribution from Fox Searchlight. And in the meantime, he had seen Swan Lake. Luckily, Portman was still onboard. Aronofsky told Collider, "Over the years, Natalie would say, 'I'm getting too old to play a dancer. You better hurry up. It'll be fine. That's how it started.
Portman, who had studied ballet and modern dance at the American Theater Dance Workshop as a kid, got started with her dance preparation for Black Swan while still on the set of the raunchy R-rated comedy Your Highness in England—a year before production got underway in New York.
She and her instructor, former New York City Ballet dancer Mary Helen Bowers , "would do two hours a day for the first six months, and that was really just strengthening and getting me ready to do more, so that I wouldn't get injured," the actress told Collider.
We added in swimming, so I was swimming a mile a day, toning and then doing three hours of ballet class a day. And then, two months before, we added the choreography, so we were doing probably eight hours a day. Portman continued, "The physical discipline of it really helped for the emotional side of the character because you get the sense of the monastic lifestyle of only working out, that is a ballet dancer's life.
You don't drink, you don't go out with your friends, you don't have much food and you are constantly putting your body through extreme pain, so you get that understanding of the self-flagellation of a ballet dancer. However, she told Vanity Fair , "it was very intense but really fun, too. Bowers said in a making-of featurette for Searchlight Pictures, "The idea is, if you're going to play a ballerina, you're going to have to train like one.
After admittedly subsisting on very little for the duration of the shoot to keep her weight hovering around 98, a pound drop from her already petite frame, Portman's first meal after they wrapped was pasta, "for breakfast, lunch and dinner," she told Collider. Aronofsky noted that, it being a small i. I actually don't mind pushing because it means I get an extra two or three weeks to get my s--t together, but I only found out recently that Natalie would just be screaming at her manager that she had to live on carrots and almonds for another three weeks.
She was the one who suffered the most from not eating. And yes, toenails were lost in the making of this movie. It's a nightmare for them to be replaced once they've made it to the top and they get these roles. And in response to the "but dancers do eat though, don't they? And I think a lot of them do, a lot of them are healthy. I'm not making a blanket statement at all. But there are a lot of eating disorders.
I don't know if it's more prevalent in certain companies, but when I talked to the women, they said pretty much every dancer in the company has had some bout of eating disorder. There are certainly cases of people who are healthy through and through, but, look, I did ballet for a year and just by the ballet you don't get skinny. You get fit, but there's effort required to look emaciated. Moreover, Portman continued, "It's a very obsessive-compulsive art.
There's so much ritual in it: doing the barre every day, prepping the shoes. There are so many compulsive behaviors which lead to virtuosity. I think you would see it in violinists or computer programmers, or anyone who's really wonderful at something—this obsessive repetition until you get something right. But then there are the negative manifestations, like eating disorders, which are totally connected to that.
After dominating the big screen in the s and s, Winona Ryder hadn't starred in a movie for awhile when she showed up in the small but poignant role of Beth "a wonderful little juicy hamburger of a role," she said on the U. So yes, not entirely unlike Ryder herself making way for then-newcomers like Portman as her own career hit that Hollywood gray area though without the bitter cocktail party confrontations.
I think you would see it in violinists or computer programmers, or anyone who's really wonderful at something—this obsessive repetition until you get something right.
But then there are the negative manifestations, like eating disorders, which are totally connected to that. After dominating the big screen in the s and s, Winona Ryder hadn't starred in a movie for awhile when she showed up in the small but poignant role of Beth "a wonderful little juicy hamburger of a role," she said on the U.
So yes, not entirely unlike Ryder herself making way for then-newcomers like Portman as her own career hit that Hollywood gray area though without the bitter cocktail party confrontations. And now I'm I remember when I was younger, I couldn't wait to be older, because I was always the kid on the set, I was always younger than everyone else.
And now I'm older than a lot of the people I work with. I've been doing this for 25 years, which is so strange. Ryder, a deeply emotive, sensitive actor, got so into her part as the spiteful ex-star that she actually felt guilty after her 10 days on set were over—and sent Portman an apology!
She also recalled, "The scene where I trash my dressing room was my last scene. I remember my first boyfriend used to smash everything—at 18 everything is dramatic. So I took an Evian bottle and tried to break it really meekly. I couldn't do it and then he made fun of me. And even in that dressing room scene I was like, 'Sorry! Meanwhile, a quick glance at the encyclopedia of pop culture infamy reminds us that Ryder was 17 when she started dating Johnny Depp , which she has called her " first real relationship.
Portman, of course, wasn't the only already perfectly fit actress in the cast who lost 20 pounds to look more believably like a professional ballet dancer. Mila Kunis , who played Lily, Nina's rival-frenemy-lover-figment-of-her-imagination, ultimately weighed in at 95 pounds.
Talking to Coming Soon mid-production in December , the That '70s Show star admitted, "I'm so hungry all the time. I just want to eat and not work out and not do anything. I plan on doing nothing. I end Black Swan in February and I plan to be a couch potato for about a month. Aronofsky thought of her for the role after liking what he saw in Forgetting Sarah Marshall , so no audition necessary, but they discussed the character multiple times via Skype before she headed to New York to start filming the movie she called "an anomaly in every aspect of life.
I don't recommend anybody ever doing it. Not being a dancer and having no previous training, "I had to get en pointe [balance in toe shoes] within three months, and so to get en pointe you almost have to fake it," she explained. And part of faking it was being super-skinny. Like it was one of those things, for the first time in my life, I got a food delivery service," she explained.
It was a 1,or-less calorie diet a day It's awful, 1, calories And then I smoked. Though Barbara Hershey 's Erica, Nina's helicopter mom, isn't exactly a wellspring of emotional support for her daughter, Aronofsky did want them to feel invested in their relationship. So, Portman told Collider, "he had Barbara write letters to me in character, as Erica to Nina, for the first portion of the film, that he would hand to me on important days of shooting that I should feel my mother.
Barbara wrote really gorgeous letters that were in character and really gave a sense of our history, our love and our connection. Sadly, one of Portman and Kunis' coaches, Georgina Parkinson —a British ballerina who starred in Swan Lake and was later a coach at American Ballet Theatre— died of cancer at the age of 71 two weeks before they started filming.
While in theory Nina may have been getting intimate with herself, onscreen she's succumbing to Lily's headily relaxed charms. And Darren made a very comfortable situation, he made a closed set, he made it as—". Seemingly she was about to say "as comfortable as possible," but Stern interrupted to ask if she was surprised the movie ended up a huge hit. As for Portman, she told E! News of the scene, "It was awkward and we laughed.
It was strange, but it's something you just sort of throw yourself into. Lane said that, after Glamour wrote a profile about her called "The Real Black Swan," a producer on the film called her up and asked if she could not do any more interviews until after the Oscars. Even with as hard as she worked, it takes so much more.
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