Black Swan

One would have a hard time finding a genre in which to fit Black Swan.  Indy drama, while a fitting title when viewing a trailer of the film, simply won’t do when one actually sees the drama in this film is quite unusual.  You could try to mark it as a horror film.  There is definitely blood, shock value and some very disturbing images.  But to call this a horror film would diminish the message the movie is trying to convey: the nightmare one lives when dealing with obsession run amok.

Natalie Portman does a great job as the frigid, tight-ass white swan of the film who is struggling to release her darker side.  What’s at stake?  The leading role in the second most well-known ballet there is.  Mila Kunis also does well as the supposed black swan.  But you expect a little more competitiveness from her, and don’t get it.  There’s no backstabbing, sabotaging or really any kind of negative energy cast in the direction of the always paranoid Portman.  On the contrary, Kunis spends the movie trying to show us just how much of a problem she doesn’t have with Portman’s character.  For being the black swan, she isn’t much of a bitch.

But the film doesn’t leave much to the imagination in utilizing the light/dark aspect of the ballet.  If there is something bad to be said about this film, it’s that you don’t get to draw the parallels for yourself. It’s not as obvious as Star Wars, but it’s not far off.  The comparison is right there in front of you, forcing to you acknowledge it.

But it should be noted the main theme of the film was not good v. bad, so one wants to forgive this bludgeoning cliche.  Where the movie is really great is inside the mind of Portman’s character (okay, I’ll look her name up, it’s Nina.  I’ll call her Nina from now on).  Having dabbled very lightly with obsessive-compulsive behavior, I really enjoyed seeing a visualization of the absolute nightmare experienced by Nina throughout the film.  Nina’s horrors were manifested several ways including self mutilation, hallucination and eventually losing all touch with reality and creating a self-destructive mind-set that would be her undoing.  Fear was the driving force of the movie.  Before Nina even got the part she was scared of her competition, scared of her mother and mostly scared of failure.

Driving this fear was what seemed at times to be a living ghost, Nina’s predecessor.  Having slipped over the edge herself, Winona Rider’s character, Beth, seems intent on ruining any enjoyment Nina might get from her dancing.  But Nina doesn’t seem to understand what’s good for her.  Her morbid fascination of Beth’s emotional decline keeps Nina from shutting Beth’s negative energy out for good.  It’s as if she can see exactly what direction she’s heading toward, but is too obsessed with her drive for perfection to do anything about it.

It is never clear whether Nina gets the part because she’s the best, or because the director was trying to quash a possible sexual harassment suit.  The viewer is left to hypothesize as to what her ability really is.  There is no doubt she is a technically sound dancer, but her psyche as well as her inability to shut out her emotions are her biggest enemy.  By the end of the film, she is such a wreck that you wonder if she’s even capable of completing a single performance.

The violence in the film has been criticized as gratuitous, but it was necessary to show how these emotional problems can come through in physical form.  I hate metaphor as much as the next red-blooded American, but those physical wounds were representative of Nina’s damaged interior, culminating in the final moments when she stabs herself in the stomach while hallucinating.  The obsessiveness that got her the perfect performance she wanted so bad also got her killed (or did she make it?  I can’t remember now).

So, where does this behavior come from?  Why, the parents of course.  In this case, it’s just the mother, but as a strict Freudian I believe it’s important that we all find something about us that is wrong and blame it on our parents.  In this case, it is obvious to see where Nina gets her behavior.  Her mother’s portraits of her daughter as well as her violent mood swings (including an attempt to entrap her daughter when she feels Nina has strayed to far) lends a creepy reality to this kind of cyclical behavior.  Through her mother, we can already see where Nina will be in thirty years.

So to sum things up, I give this a definite go-ahead.  I doubt it will win best picture because it did seem to lay things on pretty thick.  But if you can stomach it, I highly recommend this film as a great example of a damaged interior to a beautiful body.  Oh yeah, and there’s a great lesbian scene.

Whence I return we will discuss how the world was saved from the clutches of Hitler by a foppish Aussie with a crooked nose.  Until then.

Alouishis