Awe and anxiety: The Natalie Portman performance that shook Emily Blunt
Since finding success in her first feature role in Léon: The Professional in the early 1990s, Natalie Portman has truly done it all. From roles in some of the biggest franchises of all time to taking on the character of a real-life First Lady, Portman has proven her ability to take on projects of all shapes and sizes, but there is one performance that stands out among the rest.
In 2010, Portman linked up with cult filmmaker Darren Aronofsky for a terrifying depiction of the dance world. The Requiem for a Dream director had proven himself to be a master of discomfort with his previous projects, and Black Swan would be no exception. The film followed Portman as Nina Sayers, a dancer at the New York City Ballet whose ambition quickly turns into madness.
While Mila Kunis took on the figurative, and arguably literal, titular Black Swan, Portman’s role was mostly constrained to the White Swan as she embodied the naïve and nervous Nina. As she practices under the watchful eye of Vincent Cassel’s dance teacher, witnesses the state of former leading dancer Beth, played by Winona Ryder, and grapples with her mother’s toxic coddling, she devolves further and further into madness.
The film contains some particularly distressing scenes, well and truly living up to the term “thriller”, which would leave many viewers squirming in their seats in the cinema. Fellow actor Emily Blunt was no exception. During a conversation with MTV News, she recalled having a “full anxiety attack” after watching Black Swan, though she clarified that she “still loved the movie”.
This does seem to be the feeling that Black Swan leaves viewers with something between anxiety and awe. It’s a stretch to say that it’s an enjoyable watch – it aims to repulse and repel audiences at every opportunity, pushing them to the limits with body horror and rarely letting us in on what’s real and what’s not.
Still, as the film reaches its final moments, as we watch Nina bleeding out through the ruffled feathers of her White Swan costume, finally obtaining “perfection” as she stares into a blinding white light, it’s impossible not to marvel at the movie. Aronofsky executed his vision perfectly, capturing obsession and self-destruction in a terrifying tale, but it’s Portman who shone brightest.
Her performance as Nina is unbelievable, embodying the nervous young girl who her mother still treats her as, the determined dancer who got into the academy, and the desperate swan who loses herself amidst the pressure. Emily Blunt has starred in her fair share of intense films, from the monster-ridden world of A Quiet Place to Tate Taylor’s adaptation of the novel thriller The Girl on the Train, but nothing quite like Black Swan.
Haunting audiences far wider than Blunt, staying with them beyond their departure from the cinema and for years to come, Portman delivered a career-defining performance in Black Swan. This is emphasised when she took home the title for ‘Best Actress’ at the Academy Awards a year later, which still marks her only win in the category.
Black Swan certainly isn’t a film for the faint of heart, but it’s a blistering thriller for those more hardened film fans and an unparalleled display of Portman’s talent behind the camera (and in ballet shoes).
