Black Swan. Or, why I'd rather stick to The Swan Princess.

I like Darren Aronofsky, but I have no interest in ballet or watching Natalie Portman act crazy for two hours, so I wasn't going to see Black Swan, but my Reviewing class required seeing it for the first assignment, so I reluctantly went. I had even watched the Golden Globes in preparation, and was actually pretty excited to see it given the number of awards it was nominated for (four, in case you were wondering). I usually agree with most of the nominations, but sometimes I just don't get it. Guess which category Black Swan fell under.

While I was in the theater watching Black Swan, I was tremendously bored through the first half. I must have looked at my watch ten times in the first hour to see how much time was remaining before I could go home, but once they started the actual performance of Swan Lake, I thought it picked up and I was willing to say by the end that I thought it was okay. I went home, told my roommate about it, told my best friend, called my brother and talked to him about it (because he had already seen it), and as I kept talking about it, the more I realized that I didn't like it.

I thought it dragged on and on endlessly, which is an amazing accomplishment for a movie that isn't even two hours long. Most of my gripes are with the beginning, and my main issue is timing. It takes one scene to establish that Nina (the main character) is shy and reserved. It takes one scene to demonstrate that Lily (the adversary) is the opposite. It takes one scene to demonstrate that Nina thinks Lily is trying to sabotage her, and one more to show that Nina may just be crazy. It doesn't take an hour. So the first half was especially slow moving and it didn't need to be.

Another issue I had was that the characters said things that were already clear to the audience, but weren't that realistic to a conversation to make it acceptable that they were in the movie anyway. For example, towards the end, Nina's mother says to Nina that the role in Swan Lake is changing her. The audience has already been watching the change take place for over an hour, so there was absolutely no need for the mother to announce this like it was a sudden revelation she had. I could give more examples, but I don't want to spoil the movie. I don't like movies that treat the audience like they aren't intelligent, and this film did just that. If I want to be treated like a six year old, I'll go watch Nest Family's The Swan Princess, not Darren Aronofsky's rendition of the same story.

So, my opinion is that it’s a beautiful movie that appears alright on the surface, but is very flawed upon closer inspection.