In the past two-and-a-half years, Christopher Nolan put all directors under the age of 45 in check with his one-two punch of The Dark Knight and Inception. In following up The Wrestler with Black Swan (which I was lucky enough to see at the awesome Austin Film Festival), Darren Aronofsky not only pulled a piece back to block the impending attack, he also put Nolan’s own king in check. The film world now has the equivalent of the Fischer-Kasparov dream match the chess world never got. When you consider the entire filmography of each young director, this chess game has been going on longer than we previously realized.

After Black Swan, there is no doubt that Aronofsky is a grandmaster. He effortlessly went from directing a story about a roided-up, has-been pro wrestler who reveals a sensitive side, to one about a perfect little ballerina who goes from Snow White to the Evil Queen. Who else can go from wrastlin’ boots to The Red Shoes? If Nolan has updated the Hitchcockian style for the 21st century, Aronofsky is without a doubt neo-Kubrick. His films are all vastly different; the lone similarities being his visual style along with his uncompromising willingness to take his audience to very dark places in order to reveal truth.

Swan is Aronofsky’s best film. Where Requiem for a Dream made you squirm when you expected it, Swan often made you squirm when you least expected it and was never predictable. The Fountain didn’t have the story to match its own spectacle. The Wrestler (very much both this film’s companion piece and its polar opposite) didn’t have the scale to match its own story. In Swan, the scale and the story are magnificently equal, resulting in the director’s most accomplished work to date.

The film also heavily draws upon an outstanding cast, but it is Natalie Portman who does most of the heavy lifting, err, dancing. Much like how Vincent Cassel’s choreographer Thomas doubted Portman’s ballerina Nina could pull off the dark side of the Swan Queen, I came in wondering if Portman could muster the intensity needed to carry this film. Well, I was surprised a night earlier when James Franco strapped 127 Hours to his back, and I was surprised again tonight when Portman made herself a shoe-in for a Best Actress nom. It appears both only needed an opportunity to “stretch” under the right helmer’s direction.

What makes this movie so brilliant isn’t that the ballet company inside the film is performing the famous ballet Swan Lake. It’s that the story they are trying to make spreads beyond the stage and into Nina’s life. The story about ballerinas trying to perform Swan Lake literally becomes Swan Lake. I don’t want to give any more away than that, even though very few of you are likely to be real familiar with Swan Lake anyway. Let’s just say I had high expectations — just like Cassel’s Thomas. And like Thomas I was both equally surprised and shocked when the curtain closed.