“Black Swan”—Dancing in the In-Between
This spellbinding movie, routinely described as a psychological thriller, is not to everyone’s taste but I absolutely loved it: dancing around the thin membrane between a fantasy/dream world and reality. Starring Natalie Portman as Nina, the beautiful but fragile ballerina who wishes to be the prima ballerina of Swan Lake, the movie opens with a dream sequence from this famous ballet. Evil Rothbart envelops the White Swan in his arms, but Nina wakes up in her room, a child’s bedroom of stuffed animals with a classic music jewelry box of a spinning mechanical ballerina twirling around.
In...