You may have noticed that, for the past couple of weeks, The Film Experience has been overtaken by one persistent question: Who should be the next Amy Madigan? We’ve done a team-wide vote and two readers’ polls, highlighting both men and women. At this point, you might be a tad tired of this business. On the other hand, your picks were a nice clue into what performers the readership might be thinking of and harkening for, write-up-wise. With that in mind, it feels like a good opportunity to revive the long-dormant Almost There series, where I go over performances that garnered some significant precursor support before fizzling out on Oscar nomination morning. They were close, but no cigar.
Case in point: Barbara Hershey, who scored high in both the Team Experience and The Film Experience readers' vote, and might have come close to a second Academy Award nomination for Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan…
Black Swan is one of those films that diminishes in my eyes every time I revisit it. Its pop psychology approach to horror leaves something to be desired, stabs at queer desires and a woman’s repressed sexuality, all too willing to tread in clichés, and only pierces the surface. There’s a tawdry taste for shocking imagery that always works best when dealing with the physical strain on bodies, whether realist or fantastical, but tends to cheapen the picture when Aronofsky moves sideways toward more overt symbolism, perceived transgressions. Some elements stand the test of time, of course, and the whole enterprise remains a fun curio with tremendous formal execution, plus some nasty little B-movie delights.
Seldom has the director’s penchant for high-grain hand-held cinematography felt more purposeful or beautiful, combining the theatrical artifice of the ballet with filmic idioms that automatically call for notions of authenticity, grit, and whatnot. The design, from costumes to set, tells a tale all its own, where Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake contaminates the world of the characters far beyond the protagonist’s metamorphosis. All the world’s a stage, and there may be no greater terror than realizing you’re trapped within a role you didn’t see for yourself or can’t quite recognize, that you feel consuming you until there’s no complex person where one ought to be, just an archetype whose cruelty cuts both ways.
Even though Mila Kunis’ Lily might be the most obviously limited part in that regard, existing as a twisted reflection more than a character, Barbara Hershey’s Erica is the most familiar from a number of other cinematic nightmares. Shift Black Swan’s perspective to center on this former ballerina turned controlling stage mom, and you have a classic case of Grande Dame Guignol, hagsploitation updated for the 21st century, before The Substance took that idea and ran with it to hell and beyond. However, that’s not the movie Aronofsky made, so Hershey exists at the margins, a shadow at the edges of her daughter’s fragile light.
We see her first as that shade, passing in front of the camera while Natalie Portman’s Nina does her morning stretches, a black figure glimpsed in the mirror that occupies most of the living room. We only get to see her fully when it’s time for breakfast. For the working ballerina, that means half a grapefruit whose pink color inspires a bit of playful girlishness between mother and daughter. Very wholesome on paper, very sinister on the screen. Mostly because of how the actresses perform the routine as if it is, indeed, a performance that each woman is putting on for the other and some invisible audience to their domesticity. The casual flair of it all feels fake.
Perchance it’s all down to Portman’s strained soft delivery, every line sounding like the half measure between a gasp and a breathless exhale. A lot comes from Hershey, whose smile seems held together by wires stitched tight under the skin. This projection of motherly affection looks like it hurts to sustain. In fact, it feels way more natural when that pretension withers away, leaving behind a severe sort of scrutiny, laced with disapproval and something approaching viciousness. “My sweet girl” tastes like poison when she says it, looking right through her scene partner just as Erica looks through Nina to see, not her daughter, but a chance to perpetuate her own needs as a former dancer.
She’s a mother facing progeny that’s both a reflection that inspires pride and a bitter reminder of what could have been but wasn’t. When Nina comes back home at the end of that first day, breaking into tears over what she sees as a failed audition for the lead role in Swan Lake, Hershey allows her smile to slash a gentler line across her face, not so tight anymore. Sure, it can be interpreted as a genuine attempt at consoling her daughter, but there’s a disquieting sense that Erica is pleased to be needed for such comfort. A daughter’s sorrow and disappointment, mayhap more than her success, give a mother purpose. They also make Erica feel like an equal to Nina, as suggested by the loose-hair giddiness with which she regards her baby. For an instant, you can glimpse Erica as she once was, another girl in the corps de ballet.
This mother’s caresses sting like a barbed wire kiss. When Nina gets the part, when she asserts herself a tad too much and doesn’t appreciate Erica’s performance of maternal love with the expected deference, the older woman’s whole demeanor curdles. Since these scenes are so short, Hershey has to flip the switch in the blink of an eye. She fighs for the camera’s attention throughout, wordlessly demanding an edit that will linger on all the sinister meaning she can summon out of another sort of smile, one that wanes and doesn’t quite reach her eyes. And she rewards Aronofsky plenty whenever he gives her some breathing room, however small it might be.
Does she deepen Erica beyond the shallowness of a schlock horror harridan, a stock type? Perhaps not. Even so, if she’s merely playing one note of maternal monstrousness, Hershey is still playing it to an inspired level of excellence, negotiating the character-based approach one might expect from a serious drama with the grotesquerie demanded from the movie Black Swan is actually committed to delivering. It helps that the role’s scripted as a crescendo, every scene a step further into madness, each moment more declaratively hostile between mother and daughter, between a discombobulating Portman and a furious Hershey getting ever sharper.
What was once a hint of jealousy turns into open resentment over jewels that don’t look that fake to her critical eye. What was once the soft smother of a coddling mother explodes as weaponized infantilization, so obvious it can’t be rationalized as anything but. By the end of Nina’s descent into darkness, Erica’s malice is on full display, and Hershey positively relishes the opportunity to let go. An inquiry into Nina’s skin is wielded as one would a blade with full intention to draw blood, for example. More curious, however, is the fear Hershey lets into her portrait of Erica. Because the former dancer isn’t just angered by her daughter’s apparent rebellion. She’s scared, too, shrieking in terror and crawling, bloody, on the floor.
One of the great mysteries in Hershey’s work lies in the root of these trepidations. Is she apprehensive about her daughter’s well-being? Is she scared about what she might do to herself? Is she suddenly panicked about what she might do to Erica? Or is it all just the horror of the manipulator losing control over their pawn? Hershey allows these possibilities to coexist right to the end. We last see her on the night of Nina’s premiere and potential death, staring from the audience, those inklings of fear metastasized into awe, teary and terrified, both as a mother and a member of the audience, as a mirror for the woman on stage. Whether or not she’s real or a hallucination, who is Erica supposed to be seeing then? Nina? The Swan Queen? Herself? I’d wager she sees the void, an abyss that’s hungry and bottomless, no matter what face it wears.
For her nightmare of a dance mom, Barbara Hershey received some well-deserved critical acclaim, though reviews tended to privilege other, more outwardly juicy performances in the same film. Still, when it seemed like Mila Kunis would be Black Swan’s Best Supporting Actress bid, Hershey nabbed a BAFTA nomination to join her small treasure of critics' awards citations. She probably finished quite close to the finish line, a stone’s throw away from the nomination. Instead of her, AMPAS chose to honor Amy Adams and Melissa Leo in The Fighter, Helena Bonham Carter in The King’s Speech, Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit, and Jacki Weaver in Animal Kingdom.
Leo won and, in a world where category fraud was more frowned upon, Hershey might have gotten the slop that went to Steinfeld. Then again, Aronofsky’s film underperformed according to pundits’ expectations, scoring nods in only five Oscar categories, though they were major ones – Picture, Director, Actress, Film Editing, and Cinematography. It was ineligible for Original Score because of Tchaikovsky’s heavy presence in Clint Mansell’s compositions, and a small controversy might have hindered it in Best Costume Design even more than its contemporary setting already did. As we all know, Portman came out victorious in her race, aided, in no small part, by the work of scene partners like Barbara Hershey at her most terrifying.
Black Swan is available to rent and/or purchase on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home. There is also a physical release out there, on Blu-ray and DVD.