A Black Swan Lake (warning: spoiler)

About a year or two ago, there were talks of Darren Aronofsky directing a movie about Irish boxer Micky Ward with everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to Mark Walhberg starring as the lead. When I read that he was not directing this film, I was initially disappointed. After seeing Black Swan, I could care less. Aronofsky's brilliance never ceases to impress me. His unreliable first person narration confronts the audience with the same melee of psychological challenges that made Pi such a brain teasing classic. However, the answers to these plot related questions in Black Swan take a back seat to the breath taking performance of both his overtly symbolic imagery and Natalie Portman's stunning performance. Portman ironically performs the role of a lifetime playing a talented ballerina who, despite her perfect form, can't act. Her inability to capture the seduction and darkness of the black swan in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake drives her to insanity. By abandoning reality completely, Nina Sayers (Portman) finds a pscyhologically thrilling loophole in order to overcome her own diffidence. Instead of suspending reality on the stage in order to embody the duality of a suicidal "sweet girl" and her twin, a pernicious temptress, Sayers goes mad making herself all of these things. Black Swan is visceral, poetic, and ultimately awe-inspiring. Portman was impressive enough when Hugo Weaving enlightened her conception of reality in V for Vendetta. In Aronofsky's movie, Portman's character does it all of her own accord, all in her own pursuit of perfection. Perfection drives all of its pursuers crazy. It's a tragedy whenever an artist sacrifices themselves for their art. Aronofsky captured this tragic beauty wonderfully, and all he seems to have sacrificed himself was a chance to teach Marky Mark how to act.