"Some films feel as though they've always been classics, embedded in the fabric of pop culture so fully that it's hard to tell when its relevance even began. It's like that for Black Swan, at once a timeless psychological horror and a defining entry in 2010s horror. The film by Darren Aronofsky owes plenty to films that came before, from its most obvious influence, Perfect Blue, to all-time classics like The Red Shoes."
"A brilliant post-modern meditation on paranoia, Black Swan has become a foundational text for female-centered horror... and a crushingly relatable one, despite the lengths it goes to depict it. Few know what a psychotic break truly feels like, but nevertheless find a kind of kinship with Natalie Portman's doomed ballerina, Nina Sayers. Black Swan is about more than the ambition that unravels her psyche like a spool of pink ribbon, and it's more than a tale of obsessive artistry."
Black Swan functions as a timeless psychological horror and a defining 2010s horror entry, influenced by films like Perfect Blue, The Red Shoes, The Piano Teacher, and Possession. It centers on Nina Sayers, a ballerina whose ambition unravels her psyche into a gonzo psychological break. The film melds paranoia, female mania, and obsessive artistry to create a relatable depiction of psychosis. Natalie Portman's performance reframes her earlier on-screen persona, portraying a chaste, emotionally stunted dancer trapped in limbo between girlhood and adulthood. Nina's relationship with her mother, played by Barbara Hershey, and the film's refusal to stop at surface ambition separate it from contemporaries.
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