Here are some things which I learned while watching Black Swan:

-- I learned the story of Swan Lake, which I did not know.

-- I learned that you're probably better off buying used ballet shoes because of the damage which must be done to new ones in order to make them useable.

-- I learned that those in the ballet must get dressed in the dark, because they wear all kinds of weird stuff and apparently only own one of everything which comes in pairs.

I also learned that the mainstream media and many critic societies can fall in love with a very flawed movie.

Natalie Portman stars in Black Swan as Nina Sayers, a ballerina in a New York dance company. She lives with her mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), a former dancer herself. Erica is very controlling and allows Nina little freedom. Dance company leader Thomas (Vincent Cassel) announces that the troupe will be doing a new version of Swan Lake and Nina auditions for the lead role, and gets it. Thomas is impressed with Nina's dancing, but feels that she is too stiff and controlled for the seductive Black Swan aspects of the dance. Lily (Mila Kunis), a new dancer, joins the group, and Nina is immediately wary of her, despite the fact that Lily seems friendly. As the pressure to perfect the dance mounts, Nina begins to see things, mostly someone who looks just like her pursuing her. As the premiere date draws near, Nina gets closer to the breaking point.

As regular visitors to this website know, I rarely get to the movie theater, but I did go see Black Swan and I was baffled by what I saw. Here was a movie which could have been good, should have been good, but it simply wasn't. The story shows so much promise. It's easy to assume that Nina was raised in a household where ballet came before everything else and she's had very few life experiences outside of dance. (Her father is never mentioned.) We also get the impression that Erica's controlling ways have kept away Nina away from boys. For the Black Swan dance, Thomas asks Nina to "let go" and be seductive, but she clearly has no life experiences to tap into in order to do this. The pressure to not only perform, but to be perfect begins to have an effect on her. This leads Nina to become paranoid and have a nervous breakdown.

This is a perfectly good basis for a movie and could have made for a great drama. Unfortunately, the movie decides to take things one step further and be a "dark thriller". I don't know if this should be blamed on three (!?) screenwriters or Director Darren Aronofsky, but the attempts to make the movie trippy are misguided. For starters, the movie is incredibly heavy-handed. As noted above, I didn't know the story of Swan Lake, but as soon as it was explained, I knew how the movie was going to end. As this point was repeated over and over, I really knew how the movie was going to end. (Not to mention the fact that every clip promoting the movie shows the finale.) Obviously, the movie introduces the idea of competing personalities and Aronofsky drives this point home by filling the movie with mirrors. However, it's not until the third that anything happens with the mirrors and it isn't very effective. The story becomes very murky in the third act and the story presents us with one scene after another which may or may not be real. But, instead of being engrossing, it simply becomes tiresome -- we don't know what's real anymore and we don't care. The final nail in the coffin comes with the transformation sequences, I don't want to give too much away, but when a certain thing happens to Nina's legs, the movie becomes unintentionally funny. (Which is nice because the movie desperately needs some levity.)

Aronofsky has been lauded for Black Swan and normally I would admire a movie which so boldly wears its influences on its sleeve, but my fear in this case is that a lot of people don't know where some of the movie came from. The hallucinations are very reminiscent of Jacob's Ladder. The way in which Nina's emotions are manifested on her body is straight out of David Cronenberg. While Black Swan never looks like a Dario Argento movie, it certainly has a vibe similar to Suspiria and Opera. Black Swan never truly steals from these movies, but their influence can be felt. Unfortunately, even they get lost in the mess. A drama with psychological horror overtones set in the ballet sounds like a great idea, but Black Swan has two left feet.

Black Swan has way too much fingernail violence on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 30 Mbps. The film has a cinema verite feel and Aronofsky has let a grainy look permeate the film. On this transfer, the grain is evident and visible throughout. Also, the image is slightly dark. This is most likely intentional, but I can imagine that many who have looked forward to seeing this movie will be surprised by how it looks. The colors are good, but a bit washed out. The level of detail is good, and we can make out textures on objects. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 4.0 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. While the video (even if intentional) is questionable, the audio sounds great. Any movie has sounds which fluctuate in volume, but it's rare to experience something as effective as what we have here. Throughout the film, we hear the Swan Lake music and it sounds great. But, when Nina goes to a night club, the dance music is incredibly loud, driving home the point that it's very different from what she's used to. The surround sound effects are good and help to accentuate the idea that things are all around Nina. The stereo effects are good as well, and show nice detail.

The Black Swan Blu-ray Disc carries a number of extras. "Black Swan Metamorphosis" (49 minutes) is a three-part documentary which examines the making of the film. The first section examines the shooting of the film in New York. The second part shows us how the ballet company scenes were shot at a college. The third segment shows us how the visual fx were done. This is a very well-made documentary as it offers a nice mixture of comments from the filmmakers and crew and behind-the-scenes footage. We are on-set for the shooting of many of the key scenes and we overhear Aronofsky giving direction. Through the interviews, we learn about the production and the ideas going on in the movie. The FX section contains interesting images of concept art of how far the swan transformation could have gone. "Ballet" (3 minutes) has Aronofsky and the cast making some surprising general statements about ballet and the story. Therese Perez talks about the look of the film in "Production Design" (4 minutes). "Costume Design" (4 minutes) has designer Amy Westcott talking about the combination of tutus and real clothes. "Profile: Natalie Portman" (3 minutes) and "Profile: Darren Aronofsky" (3 minutes) offer brief interviews. "Conversation: Preparing for the Role" (4 minutes) has Aronofsky interviewing Portman, as she discussing her dance background and how she got ready for the film, while "Conversation: Dancing for the Camera" (2 minutes) has them talking about filming the dancing. We get five entries of "Fox Movie Channel Presents" which focus on Portman (6 minutes), Winona Ryder (2 minutes), Hershey (4 minutes), Cassel (5 minutes), and Aronofsky (6 minutes). Each of these features interviews and film clips. The final extra is the THEATRICAL TRAILER for the film.