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Black Swan tells the story of one fragile woman’s dream coming true and quickly descending into a nightmare of her own making. Given the numerous headlines we have seen of artistic types having a tenuous grip on reality, Black Swan seems all the more tragic. Would no one help this poor lamb free herself from the slaughter?
The general fallacy of most viewers going into Black Swan is that it is somehow about a ballerina going crazy because of her commitment to a role, and a film steeped in eroticism with a hint of thriller and horror mashed in for good measure. But our ballerina is clearly struggling to maintain her grip on reality from the first moment that we see her. Her opening dream sequence in which she is the star of Swan Lake is a prophetic vision of the doom to come. As she dances with the demonic creature that has split her into two personalities and sends her to her eventual death, we can’t help but get the feeling that this girl takes this story far too seriously.
And then there are the moments on the subway or walking home from work where people’s faces transform into her own and back by the time she takes a second look. Surely, this is not the norm for most people. Or the way that her room and relationship with her mother are so repressed and infantilized. She has never truly matured past the age of, oh, twelve, let’s say.
Nina is not going crazy, Nina is already crazy. She has already taken the story of the White and Black swans into her soul and when she lands the lead role in Swan Lake she has already decided to re-imagine her life and the main players in it as the characters from the ballet. She possibly even invented entire characters to fit in with the roles and emotions needed to fulfill her self-selected destiny.
I was always riveted and intrigued watching this artist strive for perfection at all costs, allowing her fragile mental space to crumble as she seeks to free herself and mature as a dancer. Why did everyone just let her continue on? Could no one see that she wasn't just stressed, but having a complete emotional and mental breakdown? As Nina descends deeper into her paranoid schizophrenic state aspects within the film such as character traits and visual motifs change accordingly. Look no further than Mila Kunis’ Lily, a character who seems to be three different people depending on the prism through which Nina sees and relates to her.
There appears to be about three different Lily’s. The first is the femme fatale of the ballet company. She’s not as precision perfect as Nina, she’s more sensual, dangerous and care-free. She is a threat in a luscious package. The second is the frenemy that helps Nina adopt her Black Swan identity. Lily opens the floodgates for Nina to explore her latent sexuality, going out, having a good time and making stupid decisions. And the last is the woman who is gunning for Nina’s prime time slot. The proverbial Eve to Nina’s Margot. And Kunis’ performance is fiercely committed and smoothly changes from one to another. I wish that there would have been room for her in the supporting actress race at this past year’s Academy Awards as her character is made all the harder and more difficult to pull of since she must transition between these extremes within the same scene quite often. That's no small feat for anyone, let alone the girl from That 70's Show.
And, of course, there is Nina’s mother – a woman who gave up her dreams of being a prima ballerina to raise Nina. A narcissistic mother-from-hell that sees her daughter as a vehicle to live through her dreams and an enemy to be controlled and repressed, their relationship is the kind of sick borderline-incestuous co-dependent emotional mess that no one should live through. Does Nina’s mother know that her daughter is so painfully delicate mentally? And if she does, why did she never help her? She is the kind of stage mother who ignores their child’s own desires and dreams and forces them into a field they might not want to go into. She controls every aspect of her daughter’s life and has an emotional freak out when Nina starts to gain her own independence through the Swan Lake role. Barbara Hershey nails the role. Her taunt face is a mask to hide her own perfectionism and unstable mental state that she has inevitably thrust upon her daughter.
And in Natalie Portman’s central performance Black Swan has a heroically committed anchor to spin out all of its craziness. I love Portman’s lost-little-girl face in extreme close-up during the dancing sequences. As Aronofsky’s camera spins, twirls and moves with her character during rehearsals, Portman’s face expresses nothing but an eager-to-please-and-be-loved earnestness that feels so real for such a brittle dancer like herself. Portman is never anything but perfectly on point, emotionally speaking. Her newly made body – dangerously thin and sinewy – gives the perfect illusion of a dancer’s body. And the way she has learned to move makes her passable in the role. Much as been said about whether or not it is Portman in the dancing sequences, and since so many of them are framed from her shoulders up, I would say that yes that is indeed Portman. No one ever denied that she had a body double, so any controversy about her having a body double for full body dancing scenes is moot. She may lack great technique, but she is plausible in the role.
Black Swan’s screenplay may trade in clichés with its story beats and sometimes clumsy dialogue, but it always feels real enough in its phantasmagoric hallucinations and paranoid freak outs. The hand held camera always makes us one with Nina; we are always in her head from the start to the end. We are complicit in every thought and action she undergoes, and it can be a visceral, bruising experience.
