So, you guessed it. This review is about The King's Speech. Only joking.Synopsis
Natalie Portman is a member of a New York ballet company. She lives at home with her somewhat controlling mother - herself a former ballerina. Natalie is cast by Vincent Cassel as the lead in Swan Lake, a role that requires her to play both the White (pure), and the Black (sensual), Swan. As she rehearses, and is pushed by Vincent to lose herself in the part, and also comes to grips with her possible usurpment by Mila Kunis, and her overbearing mother, her psychotic episodes and hallucinations increase. The film culminates with Natalie pushed over the edge of sanity. Does sanity have an edge? Whatever. She goes crazy.
Analysis
As you would expect from an Aronofsky film, this is a beautiful and intelligent whole film. I say 'whole' because as much care is taken with the score (Tchaikovsky beautifully reinterpreted by Clint Mansell), the costuming, the cast, the lighting, the sound design.... each piece is as vital to the film as what he frames and how he shoots it.
This is no new story. A young woman with talent is brought under the wing of an exacting/controlling/charismatic/experienced ....usually all of the above.... man who challenges her to extend herself. He pushes. She is pushed. Her professional achievement or breakthrough inevitably results in her personal destruction - in a true Hollywood movie, it may only be momentary destruction, before the resolved and happy ending. The Red Shoes, Million Dollar Baby, My Fair Lady, Romeo & Juliet, Pretty Woman, The Phantom of the Opera, nearly every movie ever made, etc. Okay, so maybe it's a bit much, to reduce the output of an entire industry into such a simplistic synopsis. But it is certainly a theme of film, of all art really. More philosophically, that fulfillment is in the yearning and the striving, and in the 'having' lies the destruction of that which was yearned for/strived for. It has become tarnished and no longer pure or perfect.
Perfection and the attainment of it, is certainly an instrinsic theme of the Black Swan. Vincent has a conversation with Natalie at the start of the film, explaining why she wouldn't get the part (and hasn't got parts in the past) something along the lines of 'nothing is perfect or you can't be perfect'. And Natalie's last words are 'I was, or it was? perfect'. Furthermore, ballet is certainly the embodiment of perfection, bodies doing physically superhuman things under the guise of ease and grace. Ballet is fundamentally a dichotomous world.
My main issue is, is there a way to reimagine the story of girls becoming women, of sexual awakening, of women becoming themselves that doesn't involve death and destruction of the newly awakened woman?? Perhaps not. Perhaps it is like wanting the Titanic not to sink at the end. Perhaps what makes these stories so timeless, is that intrinsically, regardless of social or political movements and modes of thinking, the world continues to see virginal women as pure, and the sexualised woman as destroyed and broken.
Perhaps also it is the women pushing Natalie - her mother, and Lily her competition? But pulling the strings behind these relationships is the somewhat fatherly (albeit an incestuous father) relationship with the artistic director. Where is her father and what of him? Is it the lack of men in her life that has resulted in a such an emotionally stunted woman.
In the case of Black Swan, is it Vincent or Mila who drives Natalie to the inevitable conclusion? I see Lily as more of an enabling vessel - through her, Nina is able to become herself - but it is Thomas who she 'becomes herself' for. Him that she fears is in a relationship with Lily, him that she kisses exhultantly as the Black Swan.
Also, a few people have talked about whether she really died in the end. I think she did. I don't believe there were any 'twists' as such - I think it was a fairly clear parallel story (with Swan Lake). I also think her madness was played out in a very literal way...she scratches her back (self harms), she breaks her mothers fingers in the door, she sees her rival in a romantic clinch, she sees Winona as a broken and nothing woman, she looks in the mirror and sees herself as the Black Swan...
And Finally:
These are some of the things that make this a great film for me:
The somewhat sea-sicky handheld lurking over Natalie's shoulder - rather than a POV, it is perhaps the POV of Nina's black swan waiting to emerge? Swirling with her as she dances. The camera work communicates a truly visceral mood of foreboding, of tension.
The incredible sound design - her rosined pointe shoes on stage, her measured breathing as she exerts herself. Behind the scenes of the effortless ballet!
The performance of Barbara Hershey - controlling and overbearing, or loving and protective? ... and obviously Natalie Portman is incredible.
