Black Swan

If Werner Herzog were to make a horror film today, I suspect it would not be totally unlike Black Swan. Director Darren Aaronofsky likes to obsess over obsessive characters just like the legendary German auteur. In Pi Max Cohen was preoccupied with numbers, there were addicts and their drugs in Requiem for a Dream, Hugh Jackman's character in The Fountain was obsessed with making love eternal, and The Wrestler's Randy sacrificed his personal life at the altar of his job. And here in Black Swan we have Nina Sayers, as played by Natalie Portman, whose obsession is being the perfect ballerina.

The film begins will a rather menacing dream of Nina's in which she is dancing the lead in Swan Lake. Upon waking we learn more about her. She lives in a fairly cramped apartment with her mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), whom she occasionally (and disturbingly) calls "Mommy". Erica is doting to the point of smothering as she treats Nina like a child. When not crying while painting self-portraits, mom acts on her conviction that she must do everything for Nina instead of letting her daughter assume some control over her own life. Nina is very shy – almost to the point of being afraid of her own shadow. And she is in the early stages of a psychotic break with reality.

She has developed an inexplicable rash on her back and she develops lesions on her fingers. In one scene Nina picks at one of them and pulls a lengthy piece of skin off only to blink and see that her hand is perfectly fine. In other scenes she sees her doppelgänger who has a preference for wearing black. The film does a nice job of escalating the creepiness by using various sounds, such as the wings of a bird flapping, when Nina brushes past this darker incarnation of herself.

As her dream indicates, Nina wants to land the lead role in a new production of Swan Lake. The ballet company's director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel), recognizes Nina's talent and tells her that she'd make a fantastic White Swan. However he is casting the same dancer to be both the White and Black Swans and Nina is just not passionate enough to let herself go for the role of the latter which is more sensual and sexual. Our protagonist is all Apollo and no Dionysus.

Indeed, Nina is asexual. We are led to believe that she is still a virgin. When she gets the lead part, Thomas announces her homework assignment by saying, "Go home and touch you yourself. Live a little." She takes his advice to heart the next morning but her attempt at ecstasy is interrupted by the presence of her mother. But her divergence from this path doesn't last long. A new member of the company, Lily (Mila Kunis), tries to befriend her. Lily is the Black Swan. Whereas Nina is constantly seen with her hair up looking all prim and proper, Lily lets her beautiful mane free. She is very sensual and likes to indulge her Dionysian side as we see in a scene where Lily takes Nina out to a bar. After popping some ecstasy, Lily offers some to Nina but she refuses. A bit later, however, Nina spies Lily spiking her drink with the drug and decides to take the trip. Upon returning home with Lily, Nina bars her bedroom door and she and Lily have a Sapphic fling.





Having an orgasm helps Nina crawl out of her shell but when it is revealed that it was all done without Lily, who was not there, our dancer reaches her breaking point. She becomes paranoid that Lily is out to get the lead role. The final break with reality comes during the opening night of the performance in a wonderfully disturbing scene in which Nina is fully transformed into the Black Swan.

In addition to the use of non-diagetic sounds that I mentioned above, the dark mood of the film is established well with the grainy look achieved by cinematographer Matthew Libatique who utilized 16mm. Using this format allowed for the extensive handheld work here. The dance sequences are disorientating almost to the point of making me dizzy. Aaronofsky and Libatique also opt for a lot of close-ups. Portman's face often takes up the whole screen and I think she mostly pulls it off with her expressions of timidity and fear which morph into anger later in the movie.

One thing that annoyed me that that Aaronofsky and company overplayed the sudden jolt card. Black Swan worked really well when Nina's breakdown slowly unfolded. The sound of a wing here and the appearance of a doppelgänger there created true suspense. Unfortunately the writers felt compelled to build up the tension incrementally by splitting the progression of Nina's madness into sections most of which climax with someone suddenly thrust into the frame to scare us with appropriately jolting music on the soundtrack. I thought this was a cheesy ploy worthy of a Saw movie. Sure, one or two at the most of these would have been fine but they quickly got old and predictable. It is Nina's interior state that is most horrific here so we don't need a nurse to quietly walk behind her for a cheap thrill.

I purposefully avoided reading any reviews of the film until after I'd seen it. One that I read this morning said that the movie linked sex to madness which I found odd considering that there are other characters, Lily among them, who are sexual yet they don't go mad. What I gleaned from it was that sexuality was positively linked to creativity. It was Nina's frigidity that the film linked to her inability to dance the part of the Black Swan. To be sure, she completely loses it after discovering her sexuality, if you will, but it's too late for her sanity by that point. She's too far gone and no amount of masturbation can help.

Sexuality seems to be at the heart of Black Swan. For Lily it is something that drives her art and I think that the same could be said of Thomas. It's uncertain whether or not Nina's sexuality or lack thereof is at the heart of her mental problems but it is an exacerbating element at the least. I find the idea that pressure to succeed can sometimes cause things to go awry to be a wholly unsatisfactory theme. OK, I guess I can buy the notion that a helicopter parent trying to live a dream of success in a highly competitive field through her daughter can cause said daughter to lose her mind. I'll buy that. But I still find Nina's condition a bit of a mystery. Why is she so asexual? That she is that way makes for a contrast to other characters and allows the film to comment on the role of sexuality and passion in art. But I think there's more to be told to explain how a woman would get to that point.

That we never find out who Nina's father was and that most of the men in the film are after casual sex is interesting. Thomas is surely passionate about ballet but he also likes to fuck his leads. Nina meets an old man on the subway car grabbing his crotch and using his tongue salaciously. The two young men that Lily and Nina meet at the bar are presented to us as only wanting to get into the pants of the young ladies. In other words, male characters that are the focus of a scene essentially just want to get a piece of ass. While it may not be fair to see this state of affairs and then make assumptions about Nina's father, it is tempting to link her asexuality to him in some way. I just wish that we'd spent a little more time getting to know her and to know what drove her to a breakdown. I can accept the premise that it was her obsession with being a perfect ballerina and the pressure brought to bear by her mother that is responsible but I feel cheated and that there should be more to explain such a terrible fate. Perhaps Nina is a lesbian and the prospect of coming out of the closet contributed to her mental decline.

Or perhaps I just need to watch Black Swan again. And I would. Despite some misgivings it is a fun movie. I love the mood that it creates and Nina's descent into her own personal hell, for the most part, a thrilling ride.