Black Swan(2010)

It was dark, or it was dawn??

Or it was just a hallucination??

The mind tells a different story,

The nebulous perfection, mandatory??

Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky's fifth and latest film delves deep into the human mind and induces a queer mix of hallucination and reality. The protagonist, Nina Sayers works in a ballet company whose business is declining. Their most high profile dancer has been forced into retirement and a new production "swan lake" is just coming up. Nina fits perfectly into the character of the white swan, beautiful, fragile and all goody-two-shoes; but her life comes into a predicament while portraying the white swan's evil twin, the black swan. In come several characters, her domineering mother who was once a ballet dancer herself, the gray shaded master of the ballet company Thomas Leroy, and lily, who perfectly fits into the character of the black swan.

And Nina's dedication to dancing and performing takes a pivotal role with her mind playing tricks on her.. On her quest to achieve perfection she loses stability of her mind, imagining the impossible, doing the unthinkable. In this regard Natalie Portman's role as Nina should be mentioned specifically. She has trained for this film for months and all the effort shows in the dance sequences. Her eyes spoke, her body language killed. And her performance was definitely one of the best in quite some time. Don't be surprised if you see her walking home with that golden statute for "best actress".

All in all, black swan is a superb thriller revolving around a ballet company, painted mostly in rich dark shades by the director mostly in order to portray the mental state of the protagonist. The transitions from dream to reality, white to black have been shot meticulously well. But as this film delves much into the dark side, it may seem unpleasant for a category of the viewers and i'll advice them to refrain from this film.

Cinematic comparison may be drawn with David Lynch's Mulholland Dr or Mary Harron's 

American Psycho.