Natalie Portman Takes a Dark Turn in Black Swan

It’s Oscar readiness time again. I started off the year having seen just a few likely Oscar contenders from 2010. Over the weekend, I checked one more off my list with Black Swan, the unsettling tale of a hard-working ballerina who undergoes a twisted psychological journey after winning her dream role.

The film, written by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John J. McLaughlin and directed by Darren Aronofsky, stars Natalie Portman as the delicate Nina Sayers. A sweet, naive perfectionist, she is ideal for the part of the White Swan in Swan Lake, but Thomas Leroy (Victor Cassel), the director of her dance troupe, has decided that he wants one girl to embody both the pure-hearted White Swan and the seductive Black Swan who stands between the protagonist and her happiness. Nina displays just enough spunk to convince him that she is capable of pulling it off, but the real challenge begins when the role is hers and she must find some way to move beyond her self-imposed barriers and find the darkness the role requires.

I’ve been hearing a lot of Oscar buzz over Portman’s performance, and it’s well-earned. Along with the incredible challenge of learning ballet for the part, Portman gives a mostly restrained performance that occasionally branches off in unexpected directions. Despite the physical challenges, Nina’s ordeal is mostly psychological as she battles with herself and several significant people in her life.

There are only four other major characters. Winona Ryder is haunting as Beth, the star ballerina who is forced into retirement, serving as a chilling reminder of the ephemeral nature of Nina’s success. Barbara Hershey gives a layered performance as Nina’s mother, whose close relationship with her daughter is not as tranquil as it initially appears. Cassel is superb as the fiery Thomas, who pushes his dancers to great heights but has a reputation for seducing his leading ladies. His methods are both effective and distasteful, and I found my opinion of him oscillating wildly throughout the movie.

Finally, Mila Kunis of That 70s Show brings an enigmatic quality to Lily, the young dancer who joins the troupe after Beth’s departure. She arrives with murky motivations, a symbolically loaded name and an unknown history. The screen sizzles whenever Kunis and Portman share it, whether Lily’s intentions appear helpful or harmful to the overwhelmed Nina.

This is a movie that earns its R rating. The profanity, while not pervasive and rarely used by Portman, is strong, and several scenes contain disturbing imagery. The film is by turns violent and sexually explicit, and its surrealistic quality makes it increasingly difficult to tell what is real and what is a result of Nina’s mangled perceptions as her preparations take their toll.

Black Swan is a dark exploration of the price of perfection – both in Nina’s rigid sense and Thomas’s ideal of “letting go”. Once was enough for me, but its craftsmanship and Portman’s performance are indeed Oscar-worthy.

Anne Of Green Gables Didn't Need a New Beginning; Stick With the Old One

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved Anne Shirley, the protagonist of the beloved L. M. Montgomery series, and I’m equally swept away by Kevin Sullivan’s flawless adaptation of the first book in miniseries form. Almost as good is his sequel, Anne of Avonlea, though it takes considerably more liberties with the story. However, his third and fourth Anne films are a complete departure from the books, and they threaten to sap away much of the charm of his own first two installments.

The fourth, and presumably final, chapter in Sullivan’s Anne saga is Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning. Right off the bat, he alienates most of his female audience by killing off Gilbert, that stalwart doctor who waited so patiently for Anne to accept his regard for her, setting millions of hearts aflutter in the process. Sullivan’s series is set a couple of decades after Montgomery’s, so while the books show us a middle-aged Anne and Gilbert watching their sons go off to fight in World War I, here we have a middle-aged Gilbert dying against the backdrop of World War II. Seemingly, he has been killed in action, though the movie barely bothers to mention why Anne is on her own. It all feels very glossed over.

Another problem is that the cast is almost entirely unfamiliar. Aside from brief glimpses of Jonathan Crombie and Colleen Dewhurst as Anne remembers Gilbert and Marilla and a quick appearance by Patricia Hamilton as Rachel Lynde, who’s still chugging along well into her 90s, no actors from the original miniseries remain, and few characters do. Anne is now portrayed by Barbara Hershey, as well as Hannah Endicott-Douglas in flashbacks to Anne’s youth. The present finds Anne back in Avonlea, hoping to sell Green Gables, but first she wants to enjoy its quietude once more as she tries to work out the kinks in a play she’s writing for a community theater production. When she stumbles upon an old letter sent to Marilla by her father, it drastically changes the direction of her play and sends her in search of some definitive answers about her past.

That’s where my biggest problem with the movie lies. Here, we find out that Anne lived happily with her parents until the age of nine or so, and then her mother died in a tragic accident and her father headed for the hills. As a coping mechanism, she made up a story about both of her parents succumbing to illness in her infancy.

Um... What?

I’m sorry, this is just too great a leap for this purist, and it cheapens Anne of Green Gables immeasurably if we’re supposed to believe that Anne just kept up this ruse indefinitely. It renders her not so much imaginative as an egregious liar. And Green Gables is such a glorious haven for Anne in large part because she never had a place she could truly call home. If she had a normal, happy childhood for nine years, then Matthew and Marilla’s impact is greatly reduced. The whole thing just puts a sour taste in my mouth.

I couldn’t connect much with the older, melancholy Anne with writer’s block and a boatload of daddy issues. Much more engaging were the flashbacks, and Endicott-Douglas was very believable as a younger Anne, capturing her feisty spirit and tendency toward the overdramatic wonderfully. Sullivan gives her several exciting adventures, including a sojourn in a horrific homeless shelter of sorts that is largely a rip-off of The Count of Monte Cristo. But her subsequent immersion in the Thomas family falls apart, and there’s a definite disconnect at the end, with her abandonment a little too abrupt and complete to make much sense.

I will always love Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea, and I thank Sullivan for making them. But he should have quit while he was ahead.