Safely, one of the most disturbing and depressing movies I have watched in a long time. There are times when you simply cannot sit back and appreciate a work of art neutrally. You are taken up in one swift whirlwind motion and thrown into the midst of a complex plot, which is obviously removed from your life, your surroundings, your society, the work you do or even the person that you are; yet you feel that a particular character - in this case, the protagonist - is so much similar to you.
However, that said and done, Black Swan is an exquisite work of art. It is not a sparkling diamond perhaps, that is to say that it is not the undying classic you would watch again and again, but it is definitely a striking crystal.
Watching this movie was a very different kind of experience. There are times you watch a movie expecting it to be something and it turns out to something very different, which actually surprises and pleases you –this was one of those times. I watched the movie prior to the Academy awards so I was unaware of the critical acclaim that it would eventually enjoy. To be very honest, I did not have very high expectations of Natalie Portman; but, my, was I proved wrong and how! As the crests and troughs of the movie unfolded, I was totally taken into this vortex of emotional turmoil that Nina, the protagonist, was going through.
Portman’s portrayal of the obsessive ballet dancer was absolutely amazing. Nina is the epitome of the child who is bent under the parent’s expectations. Only here she not only handles the stress of the expectations of her mother, who is a not-so-successful ballet enthusiast herself, but also her own expectations to be the best. The mechanical dancing girl by her bedside is a true replica of Nina as she is constantly wound up by her mother and driven to perform better and better still. In one emotional crest she reaches out and smashes the dancing girl to pieces in a foolhardy attempt to retrieve her life.
She fights for her place in the troupe with the seductress peer played impressively by Mila Kunis, she fights for her place at home with her mother. At the troupe she struggles playing the dual roles of the white swan and the black swan. Nina is the proverbial white swan, the fragile virgin beauty –she plays the white swan perfectly. However, when it comes to the black swan she falters. She does not know how to seduce men, she cannot be the siren who the Prince would “like to fuck”. In her real life, things are a bit different. She has no privacy in her own home. Though she wants million eyes to look at her in adoration when she is on stage, she shies away from the eyes of her mother at home. She is no virgin, but she has to play the good girl at home. The white swan-black swan duality of the Tchaikovsky piece transcends Nina’s ballet practice and flows into her life so much so that the boundaries of reality and stage begin to blur.
She is fiercely competitive. Though Nina reminds me of the child-woman in Doll’s House at times when she is innocently asking for a chance to play the princess in the performance, we know she is no child. She knows fully well that she is filling in the positions of the erstwhile lead of the troupe. Winona Ryder puts in a sharp cameo as the fading star who is being spurned by the company for a fresher and younger face.
On the night before the grand performance Nina breaks free from her mother’s shackles on a hallucinatory sojourn with her peer and competitor in the dark underbelly of the city’s nightlife. The morning after she finds her world slipping away from her hands, her companion of the night before is almost ready to usurp her place. We see the real Nina only in the final stage performance. As the uninhibited black swan, she has come into her own. She does not falter to grab and kiss the man who has humiliated her for weeks as being frigid and leave him breathless. She does not falter to look her mother straight in the eye. She does not even falter to stab the person who stands in her way, which eventually turns out to be herself.
Nina’s fight with her inner demons does not leave her victorious, or does it?
I was depressed after watching the movie. I had expected it to be the underdog-winning-the-day sort of a movie, where the shy girl who cannot play the seducing black swan finally is able to portray the part brilliantly because of her coming into her own in her personal life. However, it turned out to be something else. Yes, she does finally find her independence, but it is brutally short-lived, quite literally. She is finally suffocated by her Argus-mother who looks on at her final moments being seated among the audience.
