The Black Swan
Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Underdogs face insurmountable odds, and crush them with pride and aplomb amidst show-stopping choreography, usually found in the form of either street dancing or ballroom dancing. An end and reconciliation on a purely satisfactory note is reached. Immediately, Step Up and Honey come to mind. No, we are definitely not strangers to “dance movies”.
Unfortunately, if you are looking for an average dance movie, you will be sorely disappointed, for Black Swan is not one of them. In many recent dance movies, such as Step Up and Honey, there has been an overarching emphasis on street dance. However, Black Swan exposes us to a form of dance which has lacked audience appreciation in recent years: Ballet. The movie also explores dark questions we rarely think about. What if what you love could end up killing you? What if the very thing your life was centered on were the same obsession that was slowly snatching it away slowly and insidiously, dragging you into the abyss without you realising it?
(SPOILER ALERT)
Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a ballerina who desires to play the role of the Swan Queen for the production of Swan Lake. However, to be the Swan Queen, one must be able to embody two completely opposite roles: The sweet, innocent White Swan, and the dark, seductive and downright deadly Black Swan. Nina dances flawlessly as the White Swan, but her director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) believes she has a major problem in portraying the dark side of the Black Swan. Thus begins Nina’s slow but sure descent into pure madness as she ventures to find the darkness within herself.
Almost all the main female figures in this movie are somewhat psychotic, or at the very least, seriously disturbed. Examples include Nina’s overbearing mother, Erica Sayers (Barbara Hershey), who feels the need to live her unfulfilled dreams through her daughter, as well as Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder), the faded star who resents the ballerina who has replaced her. Lastly, we have Lily (Mila Kunis), Nina’s ecstacy-consuming rival, who is shockingly, relatively the sanest of the main female figures within Black Swan.
Black Swan explores the dark side of what happens behind the beautiful, graceful, and immaculately choreographed performance that happens on stage during a ballet performance. We see, literally, the blood, sweat and tears that are shed from the execution of a beautiful rendition of Swan Lake. In the movie, we don’t simply see the flawless arch of a dancer’s feet en pointe, but also the broken, bleeding nails of the same. We don’t just see the innocence and seductive quality displayed by a versatile, graceful dancer on the stage, but also the sanity she sacrificed in learning to be that versatile, graceful dancer.
Natalie Portman deserves every single award she has won for playing the role of Nina. Her successful portrayal of Nina, both as a fragile child, and as a ruthless, Machiavellian manipulator, showcases her versatility and skill as an actor. Barbara Hershey must also be commended for her portrayal of Nina’s mother. Were her affections genuine? Did she really care about her daughter? Hershey’s multidimensional portrayal of Nina’s mother perplexes, puzzles, and intrigues this writer.
To be very frank, many aspects of Black Swan are extremely disturbing. The director, Darren Aronofsky, has pulled out all the stops. He has used every single aspect and stylistic effect he could think of to create a chilling, disconcerting movie, cleverly drawing parallels between Nina’s story and that of the Swan Queen.
It is Aronofsky’s trademark to make movies featuring characters who have such strong obsessions that lead to self-destruction, and this film provides a fine example of this trademark. Aronofsky also twists the smallest, most insignificant actions and sheds different light on them, inviting the viewer to realize the darkness and dementia that they are witnessing, burning impressions into the very depths of their minds. Interestingly enough, the soundtrack of this movie is a distorted, mangled version of the original Swan Lake.
Nonetheless, this film was beautifully done, showing the audience the irony of how something elegant and lovely systematically brings about such destruction of one’s body and mind. While the abundance of sexual scenes in the movie is a bit over the top and unnecessary, most of them are censored in local cinemas. Thus, one should watch the film only if one has the maturity to handle the many unsettling themes within it. Black Swan is a movie that continues to haunt long after the credits have rolled, because even as the movie ends, we are left hanging, and the question is begged: What is real, and what is not? It is this author’s honest say that, after having watched this masterpiece by Darren Aronofsky, that she will never be able to listen to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake the same way ever again.
BY PRITASHINI MIRIAM PAUL
Unfortunately, if you are looking for an average dance movie, you will be sorely disappointed, for Black Swan is not one of them. In many recent dance movies, such as Step Up and Honey, there has been an overarching emphasis on street dance. However, Black Swan exposes us to a form of dance which has lacked audience appreciation in recent years: Ballet. The movie also explores dark questions we rarely think about. What if what you love could end up killing you? What if the very thing your life was centered on were the same obsession that was slowly snatching it away slowly and insidiously, dragging you into the abyss without you realising it?
(SPOILER ALERT)
Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a ballerina who desires to play the role of the Swan Queen for the production of Swan Lake. However, to be the Swan Queen, one must be able to embody two completely opposite roles: The sweet, innocent White Swan, and the dark, seductive and downright deadly Black Swan. Nina dances flawlessly as the White Swan, but her director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) believes she has a major problem in portraying the dark side of the Black Swan. Thus begins Nina’s slow but sure descent into pure madness as she ventures to find the darkness within herself.
Natalie Portman and Vincent Cassel in a scene from Black Swan – Photo by Fox Searchlight
Almost all the main female figures in this movie are somewhat psychotic, or at the very least, seriously disturbed. Examples include Nina’s overbearing mother, Erica Sayers (Barbara Hershey), who feels the need to live her unfulfilled dreams through her daughter, as well as Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder), the faded star who resents the ballerina who has replaced her. Lastly, we have Lily (Mila Kunis), Nina’s ecstacy-consuming rival, who is shockingly, relatively the sanest of the main female figures within Black Swan.
Black Swan explores the dark side of what happens behind the beautiful, graceful, and immaculately choreographed performance that happens on stage during a ballet performance. We see, literally, the blood, sweat and tears that are shed from the execution of a beautiful rendition of Swan Lake. In the movie, we don’t simply see the flawless arch of a dancer’s feet en pointe, but also the broken, bleeding nails of the same. We don’t just see the innocence and seductive quality displayed by a versatile, graceful dancer on the stage, but also the sanity she sacrificed in learning to be that versatile, graceful dancer.
Natalie Portman deserves every single award she has won for playing the role of Nina. Her successful portrayal of Nina, both as a fragile child, and as a ruthless, Machiavellian manipulator, showcases her versatility and skill as an actor. Barbara Hershey must also be commended for her portrayal of Nina’s mother. Were her affections genuine? Did she really care about her daughter? Hershey’s multidimensional portrayal of Nina’s mother perplexes, puzzles, and intrigues this writer.
To be very frank, many aspects of Black Swan are extremely disturbing. The director, Darren Aronofsky, has pulled out all the stops. He has used every single aspect and stylistic effect he could think of to create a chilling, disconcerting movie, cleverly drawing parallels between Nina’s story and that of the Swan Queen.
It is Aronofsky’s trademark to make movies featuring characters who have such strong obsessions that lead to self-destruction, and this film provides a fine example of this trademark. Aronofsky also twists the smallest, most insignificant actions and sheds different light on them, inviting the viewer to realize the darkness and dementia that they are witnessing, burning impressions into the very depths of their minds. Interestingly enough, the soundtrack of this movie is a distorted, mangled version of the original Swan Lake.
Nonetheless, this film was beautifully done, showing the audience the irony of how something elegant and lovely systematically brings about such destruction of one’s body and mind. While the abundance of sexual scenes in the movie is a bit over the top and unnecessary, most of them are censored in local cinemas. Thus, one should watch the film only if one has the maturity to handle the many unsettling themes within it. Black Swan is a movie that continues to haunt long after the credits have rolled, because even as the movie ends, we are left hanging, and the question is begged: What is real, and what is not? It is this author’s honest say that, after having watched this masterpiece by Darren Aronofsky, that she will never be able to listen to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake the same way ever again.
BY PRITASHINI MIRIAM PAUL
