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A timid ballerina grows into an artist. Regardless of how complicated Black Swan tries to be, that is the essential struggle it depicts. The arguable issues with the film come in the distorting themes layered upon this otherwise familiar tragedy.

Much in line with his previous film, The Wrestler, director Darren Aronofsky has set out to traumatize his audience with a visceral and violent depiction of a traditionally sterile art-form. Drawing much from Michael Powell’s The Red Shoes, Arronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique have turned Swan Lake into a sensuous Danse Macabre.

The two main characters, Nina and Lily (Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis) are constructed as foils to the point of a classical fable. One precise, one passionate; one paranoid, one carefree; one virginal, one wanton; one wears white, one wears black. The theme of explicit opposites is displayed so prominently that at many points it begins to grow a bit desensitizing.

As Nina grows less and less stable, her perceptions morph into those of a paranoid schizophrenic. Unfortunately, Aronofsky chooses to portray her unwinding with the tact of a typical slasher film. Suspenseful music and horror movie tricks dominate the last act of the film, making it less about representing our heroine’s tragic demise and more about depicting a series of abstract climaxes. It might have been more effective for Aronofsky to take a note from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, and realize that a paranoid descent into madness is most terrifying when it’s implicitly felt rather than scared into the viewer.

Grievances aside, Aronofsky has endeavored to make a complex film that doesn’t spoon feed the audience its exposition. There are many issues, but none of them are due to a lack of ambition.

-Paul Brinnel