Black Swan: Magic In the Metamorphosis?
Went to see Black Swan with a friend for the holidays. We were thinking this film would be a bit wild, dark, and a little unpredictable. Directed by Darren Aronofsky, with performances by Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel and Winona Ryder. For my own satisfaction, I was more than curious about the use of the doppelganger (the other self) in this film.
What I also liked was the contrast of art and psychosis. To create and destroy within the film is a chaotic paradox worth digesting. There’s something sly and elegant at work within this film. A sublime taste of tragedy that gave me mixed feelings about an ambitious blend of horror, fantasy and drama. I left the theaters feeling a little cheated with the finale. That’s not to say I did not enjoy the journey the story took me to.
Portman plays Nina, a ballerina who’s chosen to play both the white and black swans in a production of the “Black Swan” ballet. While Nina’s perfect for the role of the graceful white swan, she doesn’t not have the freedom to pull off the performance for black swan. She struggles with throughout the film to embody the qualities of both swans. When Lily (Kunis) appears, I got the impression she is the bad girl of the ballet company, and she was made to be the black swan.
While the turmoil and politics of the dance company stir and make for good backstage drama, Nina mental state takes a dramatic turn as she comes undone. This doesn’t mean she was stable from the start. She’s a kleptomaniac, and her mother is emotionally high strung and manipulates her daughter in a bi-polar – let me live through your life – fashion.
The sexual desires of Nina’s psyche come from her attraction to the dark side, and Lily. As a doppelganger Lilly seems to be the things Nina is not. Lily is not as graceful, but skilled. She’s also sassy, a bit crass, and not afraid of drugs. At some point it appears Lilly is ruining Nina’s chance to be the lead dancer. Lily also represents a certain freedom Nina denies herself in order to be the perfect ballerina. Nina’s repression is released in this sexual union/fantasy to some extent. It does not stop the torture and anguish.
The Jungian archetypes are more than interesting to see played out on the big screen. For those not into psychoanalytical theory that won’t matter, but to see the shadow and the unconscious desires come to the surface held my attention. Note the use of color in this film to tap into the symbolic qualities of the shadow: While Nina wears the color white in her clothes Lily wears black.
The reason I feel the fantastic should have been stronger is because the audience kept getting hints of it, and that part of having a doppelganger is that a person is going through a metamorphosis. It’s not that the hallucinations aren’t in Nina’s head, but that we the audience sees them as real in addition to Nina. I’m compelled to let go of my disbelief a little to see that.
Likewise the horror is about deforming the body via mutilation. It’s quite disturbing and tragic as the body manifests physical symptoms of the mental breakdown.
Black Swan for sure is a dark film and part of me wishes it were completely a mix of horror, dark psychology, and the fantastic. Ultimately the genre of Black Swan is tragedy, which possibly should have been how it was labeled from the start.
