Black Swan (2010) 15th Anniversary Remastered IMAX Release: Ballet, body horror, and one of the best uses of mirrors in movie history

 

On paper, Darren Aronofsky’s psychosexual ballet thriller should not work as well as it does. This is a film that takes the elegance of Swan Lake and crashes it into body horror, psychological meltdown, and the kind of fever dream imagery that has been parodied to death since. And yet, sitting there in IMAX, it hit me just how powerful and finely tuned this film still is. If there is a better use of mirrors in cinema, I have not seen it.

Natalie Portman carries this film on her shoulders, and it is still one of the great modern performances. She plays Nina as a fragile perfectionist who is constantly teetering on the edge of a breakdown. Her wide eyes, the constant tremor in her body language, and the slow crawl toward something darker is devastating to watch. The final transformation into the Black Swan is not just a dance but a full cinematic eruption. She deserved every accolade she got.

But Aronofsky deserves his flowers here too. His love for big stylistic swings makes the film’s silliest, most outrageous moments work in a way that a more restrained director never could have pulled off. You can feel his fingerprints in every frame. The way the camera trails Nina through rehearsal halls and cramped apartments puts you directly inside her headspace. It reminded me a lot of The Wrestler in how it traps its characters inside a brutal cycle of ambition and self-destruction. The difference here is that instead of dingy wrestling rings, Aronofsky shows us the suffocating perfection of the high arts.

Of course, Aronofsky is not alone. Matthew Libatique’s cinematography is essential to this experience. His camera work is fluid and haunting, creating a world of reflections, shadows, and distorted spaces that feel both claustrophobic and surreal. Clint Mansell’s score, riffing on Tchaikovsky, turns the familiar Swan Lake themes into something terrifying, pounding, and nightmarish. The editing is razor sharp, especially in the final thirty minutes which are nothing short of cinematic gold.

The supporting cast adds just the right amount of spice. Mila Kunis is perfectly cast as the seductive rival who may or may not exist as Nina perceives her. Vincent Cassel is unsettling as the manipulative director who pushes Nina toward the edge. Barbara Hershey brings real weight to the role of the suffocating mother. Even Winona Ryder’s small but memorable part as the fading star adds to the atmosphere of decay.

What really struck me this time was how much the film lingers on the everyday details of Nina’s world before smashing them apart. The ballet rehearsals, the cracked feet, the constant checking of her body in the mirror, the suffocating apartment with her mother hovering nearby. Aronofsky builds Nina’s prison with such detail that when the cracks begin to form, you feel every tremor.

Black Swan is not subtle. The symbolism is loud, the body horror is grotesque, and the psychological spiral is heightened to operatic levels. And yet, fifteen years later, it remains just as rousing and emotionally satisfying. It is pretentious, yes, but gloriously so. That is part of its beauty.

Walking out of IMAX, I realized it had taken me fifteen years to finally see this on the big screen, and it was worth every second of the wait. Black Swan is a bizarre, beautiful, terrifying masterpiece, one of those films that takes obsession and perfection to their most destructive extreme and makes you love every minute of the descent.