The Black Swan Review

The Black Swan is a psychological thriller directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman. It focuses on Natalie Portman's character 'Nina' and her struggles within both the prestigious ballet school she attends and also her not so subtle case of schizophrenia.

Nina is a very timid, fragile character and the head of the ballet company pressures her to step out of her comfort zone and to be bold and daring for her upcoming role in 'The Swan Lake". Nina worked so hard to gain the lead role therefore also puts a lot of pressure on herself to fit the 'perfect' template set out by not only herself, but also her peers, including her overbearing mother who treats her like a child. I think suspense is built through Nina's character as we watch her slowly start to deteriorate, physically and mentally. She challenges herself physically by trying to be perfect at her dance routine and just trying to better herself as a person and mentally because she doesn't know if what she is thinking/seeing is real or not, which must be extremely frustrating. This builds suspense because as we can see her getting weaker everyday, it foreshadows the idea that the worst is yet to come. We are left wondering what will happen to her by the end.

Suspense is also built by the camera angles and lighting. A large majority of the film is based indoors, with very little outside scenes. From this we can gather a feeling of enclosure, which we know has an impact on the main characters, they feel trapped. There is a lot of low-key lighting and hand held camera work, this helps to set an almost eerie tone and the sense of uncertainty, I think it also makes it appear more realistic. I noticed a large quantity of the scenes of Nina at home were particularly dull, enforcing the idea of her being unhappy there with her clingy mother who has always has a close eye on her.

Aronofsky uses a variety of fantasy scenes, these are usually found within Horror films so instantly will put us on edge as we don't expect to see elements like this in psychological thrillers. However, I found the use of these to be highly effective in order of creating suspense. An example of a fantasy scene within this film is the scene where Nina is in the bath, upon submerging herself beneath the water, blood begins to drop from above her, confused as to where the blood is coming from, Nina goes to jolt up out of the water when faint laughing can be heard and a creepy females face appears in front of her. I found scenes like this very successful because we can almost relate with Nina's character, we cant work out whether it is real or not. Is Nina imagining it or did it really happen?

One other feature that I found helped to build suspense was the choice of music. For example, near the end of the movie when the final show of The Swan Lake is taking place, Nina's schizophrenia becomes quite severe. She imagines that Lily (Mila Kunis)has come to hurt her in the hope that she can steal her spotlight, the two get into a fight and Lily begins to strangle Nina. Frightened, Nina smashes her up against the mirror and uses a shard of glass to stab her. Whilst this scene is taking place, loud, overpowering orchestral music can be heard. It picks up pace as the drama unfolds. I think this was successful as not only did it relate to the theme (A grand, high end show) it increased the level of suspense and tension, as the music's volume increased and sped up, we got more involved and were sat on the edge of our seats. Sound effects were also regularly used, for example the sound of the glass smashing. I think this made the film even more realistic as we didn't even have to be watching to know what was going on.

As a whole I thought this was a really cleverly planned film which had an element of surprise to it. It was not predictable at all and kept you wanting to watch till the end. It was able to give its audience an insight on a type of life that they may never have experienced themselves in a sharp, precise way.