black swan

There are some things on my rental list where I'm really not all that sure why they're there.

Black Swan was one of those things.  I mean, I'd heard good things about it, but I can't say that the thought of watching a film about Ballet was really very high up on my list of things I want to do.

I can't really be doing with Ballet.

Well, to be totally honest I can't really doing with dance.

Oh, I've no objection to people dancing and enjoying themselves, it's the whole formalised types of dance I can't be doing with - if it has a proper name and things like "forms" it probably doesn't do anything for me.

Which, to some extent, is hypocritical, as, in general, dancers (general dancers like you see on X-Factor and the like) are almost universally "well fit".

And perhaps that's the real root of why I don't like ballet - it seems to be one of those things that acts like a grindstone, grinding away at the people involved.  In particular it seems to be something that involves impressionable young girls being forced (or, at least, forcing themselves) to do horrible things to themselves - keep themselves horribly thin and dance around with their whole weight supported just on the tips of their toes.

Oh, I'm sure the reality isn't wholly like that, and those are those are clichés, but the other issues is it falls into that whole world of classical music and opera that takes itself too seriously.  It taps into that whole thing of formality and "proper" ways of doing things that just rubs me up the wrong way.

Sorry, I got a bit carried away, but that's kinda the point - despite hearing good things, when this turned up I was hardly desperate to get it into the DVD player and watch it.

But I was rather wrong.  Well, no, actually I was partly right in that it really is about ballet, but it's also a psychological thriller of all things.  Which I was not expecting at all.

The ballet is key to it - this isn't just a thriller that happens to be set in and around a ballet performance or anything like that.  Indeed, the key element - the "black swan" (from Swan Lake) of the title - is core to both the ballet and the psychological thriller elements.

I think if you know a bit about ballet you'll probably enjoy the film even more - apart from knowing that there is such a thing as Swan Lake (which was created by Tchaikovsky, who virtually rejuvenated ballet as an art form) I don't really know what it's about.  So I'd say a quick trip over to wikipedia beforehand if you don't know about it would probably be the way round to do it - I looked it up afterwards, and realised there was a lot of clever stuff in there.

I seem to have rambled on quite a bit.  Basically, what I'm trying to get around to is that, yes the Ballet is important and knowing a bit about it helps, but the psychological thriller part is the key bit and it's a really good film as a result.

It does leave quite a few questions unanswered, but I always think that's a good thing in a psychological thriller.  Leaving it up to you to work out what happened is always the best way to go, in my opinion.

I'm not sure if that counts as a spoiler as such, but one thing I would also say is that the film really reminded me of the anime film Perfect Blue by Satoshi Kon.  Which is a good thing.