Review: Black Swan Blu-ray

STUDIO: Fox | DIRECTOR: Darren Aronofsky | CAST: Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder
RELEASE DATE: 3/29/11 | PRICE: DVD $29.98, Blu-ray $39.99
BONUSES: three-part documentary, three featurettes, Fox Movie Channel segments, more
SPECS: R | 108 min. | Psychological thriller | 2.40:1 widescreen | DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1/Dolby Digital 5.1 | English and Spanish subtitles
RATINGS (out of 5): Movie | Audio | Video | Overall

Natalie Portman dances into madness in Black Swan.

Many have described Black Swan as Roman Polanski’s Repulsion meets Michael Powell’s ballet masterpiece The Red Shoes. They’re right: the film’s slow spiral into mental instability is right-on, as are the ballet rehearsals and performances. Director Darren Aronosky (The Wrestler) balances the two smartly if not subtly, with a growing sense of uneasiness that leads to full-on creepiness. Yes, the movie delivers, but it must be said that Polanski did it more effectively with Catherine Deneuve (The Hunger) in Repulsion. (Similarly, David Cronenberg presented the kind of “body horrors” that star Natalie Portman’s Nina endures — scaly skin, crimson rashes, broken toe nails — with more queasiness in such earlier films as Videodrome and The Fly.)

Portman (No Strings Attached) won a Best Actress Oscar for her role in the movie, and rightly so. She plays Nina Sayers, a New York City Ballet dancer who wins the coveted “White Swan/Black Swan” dual lead role in the company’s upcoming production of Swan Lake, only to descend into a dark, psychological whirlwind as she begins to personify the ballet’s “Black Swan” character. The dangerous splintering of her personality is abetted by the ballet’s imperious artistic director (Vincent Cassel, Mesrine: Public Enemy #1), her controlling, failed dancer mother (Barbara Hershey, Insidious) and her new “frenemy,” Extasy-popping dancer (Mila Kunis, Date Night). Nina’s growing sexuality, competitive paranoia and unhealthy quest for greatness takes root early on, propelling her into hallucinatory madness and an opening night that no one will forget.

As splendid as the movie looks on Blu-ray, it sounds even better. The DTS-HD Master Audio track captures all the nuanced sounds of the film, from the scuffing of ballet shoes across the dance floor to the crackling of toe knuckles as the dancers pirouette to the sounds of nighttime New York, be they police sirens, roaring subway trains or pedestrians stomping across sidewalks. Tchaikovsky’s renowned Swan Lake doesn’t sound too bad, either.

Leading off the special features is the three-part documentary Black Swan Metamorphosis, which clocks in at 50 minutes. Like the ballet at the film’s center, this documentary is an elegantly produced piece that covers the film’s production from its beginnings (Russell started developing the idea after reading Dostoyevsky’s 1846 novella The Double) through to its low-budget production ($13 million according to Aronofsky), location work (Manhattan and SUNY at Purchase Performing Arts Center) and post-production visual effects work. The run-down of the effects shots is fascinating — there are some 300 in the film — and reveals the care and consideration that went into every detail of this film. Portman’s remarkable on-stage transformation into the titular fowl at the film’s climax, in particular, was quite difficult to render, though it certainly was worth the work.

The balance of the bonus features are exclusive to the Blu-ray and don’t go into nearly as much depth as Metamorphosis. They include a trio of featurettes on the dancing, production design and costumes, a pair of short profiles on Portman and Aronofsky, a bunch more on the cast and crew as seen on premium cable’s Fox Movie Channel Presents and a couple of very brief chats between the director and his leading lady.