SparkNotes Version
The Deep Dive (Spoilers Ahead!)
"Black Swan" triumphs as yet another Darren Aronofsky surrealist masterpiece - and not exclusively for the notorious Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis intimate rendezvous. Critics rave on account of the film’s accurate portrayal of the grueling nature of the high arts, honing in on the mental deterioration prevalent when the best require to be, well, the best. Indubitably an athlete’s existential disintegration in the pressure cooker is one of the film’s highlighted talking-points, as the audience slowly witnesses in a "Rosemary's Baby"-esque fashion Portman’s character Nina’s psychological slippage performance after performance. Indeed, I found myself scrolling through this season's upcoming performances at Lincoln Center in New York. "Black Swan", however, isn’t some cinematic voyage into sports. Few truly took away that much from the tutus.
The craft of portraying subtle psychological abuse is no easy feat, yet the Black Swan withstands as my top-rated on Letterbox’d as it does so with grace through Nina’s gradual psychotic break. Of course Ocean's Twelve's Vincent Cassel’s performance as the misogynistic mentor-turned-predator is the obvious paradigm of abuse, but the real culprit for turning our white swan black? Nina’s mother, played by the critically acclaimed Barbara Hershey (The Portrait of a Lady, The Last Temptation of Christ).
When entering Nina’s dull-lit, silent apartment shared with her mother, one can already discern from this cinematographic technique that one is not about to experience some Cheaper by the Dozen, happy go-lucky familial dynamic. Not to mention that the bulk of Nina’s portrayal beyond the dance studio is exclusively her interactions inside this gloomy space with her mother, a former ballerina projecting her anguish related to her unrealized potential onto her shy, rigid daughter. This ingenious juxtaposition from studio to apartment reinforces the tragic nature of Nina’s existence, where in the studio, she embodies control of her surroundings, yet her life beyond this oasis communicates the unfortunate truism that her being is at the control of another.
In abusive relationships when “the abused” has lost control to “the abuser,” to placate this psychological effect on one’s psyche, “the abused” routinely works to latch onto other facets in their life as a mechanism to re-establish that control. For Nina, evidently, this was ballet.
The paradoxical relationship between passion and control had my brain running on overdrive, as it did with Nina. Regardless of her immaculate technique, her performance as the black swan requires innate passion... and passion cannot exist without a loss of control. As simple as dancing slightly more freely may appear to the average individual, for someone like Nina traumatized by lifelong abuse, her rigid composure represents her sole armor against truly devolving into psychosis. To sum it up... it’s simply not that easy.
Sex sells – and undoubtedly when it's an on-camera sex scene between Portman and Kunis, but this singular racy moment has unfortunately remained one of Black Swan's most central legacies. What so many individuals perceive incorrectly about Black Swan is the intent fixation on the Portman and Kunis complicated dynamic, where Kunis’ black-winged-inked character Lily is but a catalyst for Nina to relinquish the buildup of abuse and unleash her inner black swan. Did Lily sabotage Nina by drugging her following a night on the town? Did Lily... even exist? The beauty of this film is that these questions are not in dire need to be answered, as when the credits roll, I exhaled a sigh of relief with the understanding that Nina has finally embodied that sought-after black swan - in the ever-tragic manner of her self-inflicted demise.
Catch ya when the credits role!
Xx
