Movie Review: The Black Swan

Though I thought Natalie Portman did a masterful job of portraying a ballerina on the edge (who eventually goes over the edge), I did not like this movie. It was very dark and depressing--and frequently impossible to tell whether things were really happening or happening only in the ballerina's mind. Which I'm sure the director felt contributed to the mood of the movie, but which made the story a little hard to follow.

I do think the movie provided a realistic view of life behind the scenes of a ballet company--the hard work, the pressure to achieve perfection, the competition for plum roles, the starvation diet to maintain those tiny figures. But that wasn't enough.