Black Swan is brilliantly disturbing. Centered around Nina Sayers, played by Natalie Portman, an intense psychological bond forms between viewer and dancer and dancer and role. The film follows Nina’s journey from casting to performance, and we are exposed to every moment of her journey, private, public, real, and imaginary.
Although the film has been advertised by the face of a “troubled ballerina” - just take one glance at the crazed expression on that poster - I was surprised to find that the “Black Swan” persona is one that Nina struggles to achieve. The Nina we see in the beginning is “mad” only in the way that any blindly driven overachiever is - and to an audience with madness in mind, Nina’s initial state is an interesting reflection on how we might define “madness” in general.
The pure “white” Nina we meet at the start, the one in pale pink and a fluffy white scarf, elegant and obsessed with technical detail, struggles with the concept of “perfection,” a state of performance she aims to reach that, she is told, can only be found by letting loose.
Portman’s performance is utterly convincing. Pure, naive, confused - Nina doesn’t quite get it and we can see from Portman’s slightly furrowed brow and the occasional stifled gasp of horror. Supporting standout performances include Mila Kunis as the exotic and attractive Lily, whom Nina seems to love and hate simultaneously, and Vincent Cassel the slightly invasive yet effective ballet instructor Thomas Leroy.
Nina’s mother Erica Sayers, played by Barbara Hershey is delightfully hate-able, as she should be. Despite the character’s creepy level of involvement in her grown-up daughter’s life, this overbearing mother is the only one who notices that there is something wrong with Nina. Erica treads the thin line between caring and controlling enough that she invokes sympathy rather than pure hatred.
The soundtrack, which includes sequences from “Swan Lake” played backwards with modifications (thank you, IMDb trivia), is not only a creative detail but an effective addition to the film. Despite its brilliance however, it is the silent moments that are most effective, as such minor noises as ballet shoes tapping on the floor create an atmosphere of precise stillness.
The cinematic tone of the film through camera angles and general visual darkness is sleepy and dreamlike, which comes to make more and more sense as the images and events become more fantasy-like and it becomes unclear what is real and what is Nina’s hallucinations.
Overall, the film is about transformation - for Nina, transformation into the “perfect” ballerina. Certain parallels to “Swan Lake” are undeniably obvious. Lily’s bad-ass persona complete with dark tattoo across her back instantly labels her as the epitome of the Black Swan, and her lending Nina a black top at the party clearly represents Nina’s transition towards embodying that persona herself.
Other attempts are symbolism are more confusing, such as the significance of Nina’s random tendency to bleed, which is never specifically explained. Strange transformations such as the webbed toes make sense, but the only symbolic explanation I can think of for the bleeding is that it represents her personal sacrifice for ballet, which seems too nonspecific.
Black Swan is to its audience as “Swan Lake” is to Nina - both capture their subjects and lure them into an uncomfortable, personal, and beautiful understanding of what it takes to push the boundaries make great art.
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