Darren Aronofsky on Black Swan, 'Pulling' Actors and Life Vs. Art

Say what you will about his provocative, polarizing films, but don't think for a minute Darren Aronofsky ever takes the path of least resistance. The director's latest, Black Swan, springs from a place from which few filmmakers emerge alive -- the hyper-competitive world of ballet, where, upon earning the role of the Swan Queen in a new adaptation of Swan Lake, young prima ballerina Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) commences down the road to paranoia, lust and madness.

It's not exactly the most commercial of concepts on paper, which played at least part of a role in Black Swan's decade-long development process. But in the hands of Aronofsky, the story swings from wrenching melodrama to graphic horror to dark comedy before spinning repeatedly, uncontrollably full-circle in the final act. The filmmaker recently spoke to Movieline about managing tone (and defining genre, to the extent we can), putting performers through the wringer, and how -- or even if -- personal crises affect one's art.

Black Swan is one of the most frightening films I've seen in some time. How do you feel about Black Swan being described as a horror film?

Horror has kind of been destroyed, the word, because of these gore films that have dominated the horror market for the last five or six years. So, what people associate with that, I don't know. I've never done a genre movie in my life -- with Pi, The Fountain...

That's going to change soon.

[Laughs] We'll see. I haven't really figured out how to do that, so I don't know how to classify it. Some type of psychological thriller or psychological horror film is fair. I think there was a "wicked, psycho-sexual film" -- what some reviewer wrote that was on a newspaper ad that I saw the other day. I was like, "Oh, that's cool. Psycho-sexual? OK, fine."

Black Swan looks like a very demanding film on the actors. Where does Vincent Cassel's character begin and you end, or vice-versa?

Well, I think, you know... I wish I could be as manipulative as Vincent's character. I'm pretty straightforward, and it's caused me a lot of problems. I've probably scared away many A-list actors by telling them how tough the film was going to be. And I feel like if I could have suckered them in a little bit... But I'm just not that type of person. I'm pretty direct and straightforward with what's going on. I don't think it's necessarily demanding on the actors. I mean, they end up doing a lot of work, but I think the reality is the actors that I end up working with are actors who want to work -- who want to show what they want to do. And I definitely really never push them. I pull them sometimes, but I never push them because they come to these jobs knowing that they've got to bring their game because there's a lot to ask.

Like the amount of training Natalie had to do?

The reality is Natalie Portman went way above and beyond the call of duty to transform herself into a premiere ballerina -- that I could have never pushed anyone to do that. She had to do it herself.

OK, so did you ever consider going with more of an unknown who had more dance experience?

I did. I recognized that it was an incredibly tall order to ask a non-dancer to become a prima ballerina. Most dancers, it takes 20 years for that to happen. So even with a year of training, it was still really, really tough on her. And I didn't know if it was possible -- if it was actually humanly possible for anyone, no matter how athletic they were, to actually do that.

That's interesting that it was tough on her considering -- Mickey Rourke aside -- a lot of your female characters go through hell, often with unfortunate endings.

Well, hold on. All of my actors... What are you talking about? Who doesn't? Marlon Wayons, Jared Leto, Mickey... It has nothing to do with female or male [laughs].

So you don't think that's true at all?

That it's more toward female? I don't think so. If anything Marisa Tomei is probably one of the healthiest characters that I've had in my movie.

But at the end, she's abandoned.

No, she leaves.

She leaves because Ram forces her to leave.

Yeah, sure, OK, fine. But it's not the same thing as to what happens to Mickey in that movie.

I agree with that.

I just think that it seems like my characters end up, you know, searching -- that they're in a deep search. And it's often very painful. But I remember Hubert Selby Jr., the guy who wrote Requiem for a Dream, talking about how the reason he searches the darkness is because he's searching for a diamond of light. Which actually reveals all of humanity. And I think the tragedy is a form that we've lost, yet it has a very, very similar result as one of these heartwarming films.

How so?

It's just another way of looking at it from a different direction.

On the technical side of the film, the scenes in the studio look gorgeous. The scenes back at Nina and her mother's apartment have a grainier look to them, and the lighting isn't as clear. Did you ever have to give up something on the visual aspects of a scene for the flexibility of your camerawork?

I don't know what you're talking about. We were definitely pushing the apartment to be darker and scarier and a gloomier space because, you know, the relationship with the mother was about imprisonment, to a certain extent.

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