Movie Night: Black Swan

Hi everyone,

I don't get out to the movies much, but I'm glad I managed to have a girl's night out for this film. Since I never feel I can really talk about my thoughts on books that I've read, for fear of professional backlash, I'm going to take my opinions to the movies instead.



These are my thoughts on the movie Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman. This isn't a review, so much as everything the movie made me think about as I watched it. It may contain spoilers, it may influence your perceptions as you watch the film. I just feel like this is a film that sparks discussion, and so I wish to discuss. This isn't the type of film that hinges on "What's going to happen next?" or even, "What is real and what is not?" It's fairly clear from the beginning that this is a movie about what is perceived.

Before I get into my thoughts on the movie in detail, I do think it was an amazing film. It was beautiful, edgy, frightening, disturbing, and a thriller. Natalie Portman gave a performance that defies words to describe it. She was completely convincing in an extremely complex role that required so much of the narrative of the story shown through her emotion. I know Natalie Portman will probably never read this, but if you do, Dang, girl. Bravo. I've never seen a performance to equal that one, ever. If you do not win the Oscar, I'm personally going to rant at the TV and swear off Hollywood for good. I hope you take some time to recover from this film, because it had to take a lot out of you, literally and figuratively.

So, here are my perceptions.

Black Swan is the story of Nina, a dancer in a ballet company set to perform Tchaikovsky Swan Lake. The sweet and innocent ballerina lives in a tiny apartment with her mother, and her whole life revolves around seeking perfection in the dance. When the former prima ballerina gets the boot from the production and also from the director's bed, Nina finds herself cast as the Swan Queen and while she's the embodiment of the white swan, pure, innocent, and guileless, she struggles to perform the black swan, the embodiment of sensuality, trickery, and temptation. As her mind becomes consumed by the pressure of the role, she finds herself drawn into both roles until she can no longer separate herself from the performance, or escape the performance's tragic end.

First, I found it interesting, if not a little expected, for the movie itself to follow the classic plot. Nina as a delicate and emotionally sheltered ballerina, is a perfect fairy-tale princess. She does what is expected of her, seeking affirmation. The prologue shows her dancing as a princess, then transformed by the evil sorcerer in the form of a frightening bird. I saw the sorcerer as the art of ballet itself. Ballet has control of Nina's life, just as the spell has control over the princess. She cannot break away from it.

When the director pushes her sexually after her audition, she fights back, and that fight is what lands her the role of the Swan Queen. In the allegory aspect of this film, he plays the part of the prince, though not a very nice prince. He comes to her with the potential to break her out of the confines of what dance has always been for her and make her a princess of the art instead of simply a pretty little bird in the corps, and she's seduced by it. But the ballet has a sinister side in the form of Lily, a new ballerina from San Francisco. Open, sensual, free, and naughty, Lily is the perfect embodiment of the Black Swan in Nina's mind. She's even marked with a tattoo of black wings across her shoulders. While Lily becomes both a rival and a friend, it is clear that the director's confidence in Nina as the lead is challenged by the new dancer. Lily threatens to seduce him away from Nina and give her the role.

As Nina faces opening night, she manages to become the black swan in her mind, but that transformation destroys her as she finds she inadvertently sacrificed herself to become the Black Swan.

I loved how the movie really put us inside the head of Nina, keeping us close to her body through the use of the hand-held camerawork. It was so creepy and unsettling as we were forced to question what was real and what was not, until it no longer mattered, because Nina was acting on what she perceived.

That is where I had the most fun watching the movie. It was so entertaining to closely look at everything around Nina, from the stuffed animals in her fluffy pink room, to how she systematically destroys a new pair of toe shoes in order to make them suitable for dancing. There were many shocking moments where she finds herself picking at a small injury only to make it worse, ripping her own body apart, much as she did those shoes.

What I found most fascinating was the idea of The Black Swan and what that represented. Having already shared my thoughts on Ballet as part of the feminine pressure toward idealized womanhood, namely beauty through frailty, I found this movie reflected many of those thoughts. Perhaps I went into the movie with those thoughts in mind, but everyone brings their own perspective when enjoying art.

The overriding theme of the movie for me was facing the virgin/whore female conundrum. For a woman to be a "perfect" woman, she somehow has to be both at the same time. But you can't be one without sacrificing the other, and so the battle to balance both extreme female personas tears us apart until we no longer know what we are or what we're supposed to be.

Nina in the beginning of the movie dresses like the white swan, always in white or soft pink, and all the fabrics were feathery. On the streets and in reflections of herself, she starts to see a darker Nina, a confident and sexual woman, not a frail ballerina. It terrifies her, but it's there. It has a stranger's face. It's something she's not familiar with, but it's a part of her.

When Lily barges into her audition, Nina's mind fixes on Lily as the embodiment of everything the director is asking her to be, loose, free, sensual, and seductive. To the movie's credit, I really liked the portrayal of Lily. For the most part she seemed genuine, while her devious attempts to usurp Nina seemed to come from Nina's paranoia as opposed to Lily's character, though she was the alternate to the lead in the production so I'm sure some of Lily's actions could have been in frienemy territory. She made a wonderful "Devil" character in her temptation of Nina. As Nina's mind dissolves, she see's flashes of her own face every time she looks at Lily, and while much has been made about the "lesbian sex scene" in the movie, that moment wasn't about sex at all. It was about the Black Swan within Nina seducing the innocent Nina to become like her, to let her out and be free, then Nina's fear that it will kill her.

It was the ultimate psychological struggle to maintain innocence in the face of an awakening female sexuality. My only trouble with the movie is that feminine sexuality and power is associated with dark and evil, but this is a fairy tale, and so par for the course.

I loved watching how Nina's costume slowly changed, donning more black as she slowly gives in to her darker half. I also liked how the pressure from Nina's mother was portrayed. The obsession was personified by the Mother's room being covered in slightly grotesque paintings of her daughter, and the locks on the door of the apartment, but no way for Nina to lock her own room from her mother.

I have a million more thoughts, but this is a blog post, so I think I'll stop right here for now. Please chime in if you saw the film. To me, this was the ultimate journey into a woman's mind, filled with her insecurities, fears, obsessions, and envy. Yes, guys, it is a very scary place.

That's why the film is so chilling and amazing at the same time.

Happy movie watching,

Jess