"As a study of female breakdown, Black Swan is the best thing since Polanski's Repulsion. But, in fact, with its creepy Manhattan interiors, its looming, closeup camera movements, and its encircling conspiracy of evil, it looks more like Rosemary's Baby, particularly in cinematographer Matthew Libatique's brilliant continuous shot in which Nina makes out with a random guy in a club, then wakes up to what she's doing and, freaked out, blunders through murky winding corridors and out into the night air – there seems no difference between inside and outside. Everywhere is claustrophobic.
But my goodness, Aronofsky likes to play that Swan Lake theme loud. He's probably right to do so. Tchaikovsky's rich, gloriously direct music needs to be punched over, and punched over it is. Motörhead could not have played the Swan Lake theme any louder than this. I left the cinema with blood trickling from my ears.
Black Swan is ionospherically over the top, and some of its effects are overdone, but it is richly, sensually enjoyable and there is such fascination in seeing Portman surrender to the madness and watch her face transmute into a horror-mask like a nightmare version of Maria Callas. It is exciting, quite mad and often really scary."
review from the guardian
picture from geektyrant
xo
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