Black Swan - **** stars

If someone told me one of the best films of 2010 would be about ballet, I wouldn’t have laughed, I would've said it would need one hell of a director.

Funny, I said the same thing about wrestling in 2008.

Darren Aronofsky is far and away the most ambitious independent director of his generation. In fact, he may the most daring director, period. Not once has the man faltered from accomplishing the film he wanted to make (including the aching process he endured during The Fountain). In 2008, he resurrected Mickey Rourke’s career (and perhaps a genre) with The Wrestler. This year, he leads Natalie Portman to the best performance of her career with Black Swan, a gripping piece of art that turns a woman’s fantasy into a real nightmare.

Portman plays Nina, an obsessive ballerina in a New York City ballet company. This is clearly explained just by how this woman lives: still living with her former ballerina mother in a claustrophobic apartment, thinks and talks nothing but ballet, and is scared by anyone who rivals against her. So when artistic director Thomas Leroy (played with method madness by Vincent Cassel) gives her the lead role in the play Swan Lake, her life begins to spiral out of control.

There are two roles in Swan Lake Nina has to play: the White Swan and the Black Swan. Nina is a perfect White Swan, but it’s the Black Swan she needs serious work on. She befriends a new dancer named Lily (Mila Kunis, who’s career I suspect will explode after this film), who seems to fit the darker role, thus making her a threat to Nina. However, their rivalry turns into an odd friendship, and through this, Nina allows a darker side to seep into her innocence. Fueled by jealously, sexual-desire, and the obsessive drive to be a perfectionist, Black Swan tells a tale that everyone with a nightmare can relate to. What’s physically real or not is irrelevant, because when something is as powerful as what Nina has created in her mind, it’s real to that person. And thus, Nina self-explodes. The third act of this film is an astonishing finish to an already astonishing set-up. You will be shaken to the core.

In an interview with MTV, Aronofsky said that at one point, The Wrestler and Black Swan were the same movie. I suspect many will find Black Swan to be the more superior film, but it would be great if one day someone cuts these two films together. For now, both stand on their own, with Black Swan representing Aronofsky at his most untamed brilliance.