In terms of both our vocations and hobbies, we often aspire to become great. What happens, however, when this very desire consumes and overtakes us? The 2010 film "Black Swam" starring Natalie Portman as a high-profile ballet dancer, shows its viewers that unchecked ambition can be a dangerous and ultimately deadly thing. This message is achieved primarily through the film's use of detail-heavy camerawork, its character depiction, and its embrace of magical realism and distortions of reality. The main character Nina loses her identity, herself to become perfect and on this way to the culmination of her transformation she experiences a number of hallucinations and gets scared and terrified from herself and her face. When striving to perfection, people do not always realize how far the change can go, they lose their real personality and get entrapped in some demoniac possession, which can lead to the lost sense of life and self.
The film's camerawork often becomes consumed with details in a way that is strange or even unsettling for a viewer. The director of the film Darren Aronofsky creates a psychological thriller, which influences the audience’s cognition in various ways, so one stays puzzled and confused till the very end of the story. Music is one the most powerful instruments to convey the double nature of a person, who is trying to play a role of an alter ego. Nina has to play a white swan, which symbolizes her initial inner world and mindset and any moment she gets psychologically or even physically transformed, the music from the final scene of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”. Different sound effects complement rather suggestive and equivocal visual impressions. One of the first scenes in "Black Swan" shows Nina (played by Natalie Portman) practicing for a coveted dance audition alone in her room. She hurts her toe, and we later see a fracture in her toenail. This itself isn't outstanding, but the filmmakers chose to stay on a shot of her bloodied nail for a seemingly inordinate amount of time is unsettling. Mirror reflection is a basic technique in this film to depict and show the character’s expression, because it helps to reveal Nina’s own vision of herself. Thus, every time she gets some phantom or delusion, she sees it in her own image and at the time, she does not know herself, she sees an unclear silhouette, shadow-figure in a window (Image 1). This moment symbolized person’s indeterminacy and Nina’s not realizing of her own personality, because she is constantly being convinced by her mother to be a good sweet girl. Her white feather-like scarf in the initial scenes also is symbolic and mirror’s her original essence (Image 2). Although, she still wears this scarf, her glance and facial expression already reveal her betrayal of the initial moral principles she was taught by her mother. Mirror is an attribute to be present throughout the whole film, because it creates an effect somebody’s watching Nina’s life and transformation (Image 3). When she goes out with Lily (Mila Kunis) disobeying her mother, the scenes in the club get shot from the mirror, as if Nina’s mother or Leroy (Vincent Cassel) are following her. Nina and Lily are represented as protagonist and antagonist in the Black Swan respectively, but Nina is afraid of Lily’s abilities and desire to take her role and wants to be seductive and tempting like her friend.
Similar instances happen at multiple points throughout the movie as well. While in costume at the dance studio, Portman's character wears a shirt with a revealed back. Glancing at her own reflection, she notices a laceration beneath her shoulder (Image 4), and again the camera stays on this wound for some period of time. Toward the end of the film, when Nina is changing her costume between scenes, her toes become stuck together. We are forced to watch the lengthy process of her unsticking each one from another. All of this focus on grotesque detail becomes jarring. As a viewer, it forces us to see the gritty and disturbing reality behind the star's ambition, and it forces us to see this ambition as something harmful.
Another way in which "Black Swan" exposes the negative side-effects of unchecked ambition is through its characterization of Nina. When we first meet her, the film's protagonist comes off as meek and quiet. The director puts an accents and pays a lot of attention to the character’s eyes. In the first scenes and talks with Leroy she seems to be scared and even offended by his words, that she never can lose herself (Image 5). Anxiety and fear in her eyes reveal her delicate and sensible nature, that was developed by her mother, who herself failed to succeed in a career due to her having got pregnant. Her inner psychological anxiety finds its manifestation in a number of physical consequences. “The other characteristic of physical anxiety which happens to Nina in Black Swan movie Script is feeling of being stiff and numb. It happens when Nina knows that Leroy makes Lily her alternate. Nina really worries that Lily really wants to take her role. This anxiety makes her body seem stiff or numb. But in fact, it is just Nina’s hallucination” (Sartika 11). The highest point of this state and moral destruction of Nina is also couched by her eyes, which look blooded in the scene where she gets really scared that her role will be taken away and she will lose her chance to become perfect (Image 6). In the final scene, where the main character gives an excellent performance of the black swan, her eyes seem to be obsessed, demoniac and impassioned, so a viewer realizes that Nina is not herself anymore, but rather a perfect image she always strived for (Image 7). Thus, optical objects, vision, mirrors, eyes, reflections make together a great psychological effect of contact with person’s inner world.
Even more bizarre and noticeable are some of the details of Nina's residence. At the film's beginning we are shown an extended scene of Portman in her bed, distraught. Her mother hovers above her: not only does she assume the position of a mother dutifully looking after a child, but she is physically tucking Nina into bed during this stretch. Additionally, the sound of a child's music box can he heard throughout the course of "Black Swan". This happens both when the film's protagonist is caged away in her room but also, and perhaps more tellingly, when she is outside of it. These details demonstrate how, despite the fact that she is in her middle 20's, the character has been crippled and continues to act like a child. Her pursuit of success (which in the end quite literally kills her), becomes mortally dangerous.
Her consistent desire to be perfect is not only implied, but gets a verbal expression in a number of scenes. When she comes to her injured, incurable and fated friend Beth, she convinces her, that she only wanted to be so perfect as Beth was, but suddenly sees her own face and Beth sticking her face by a file (Image 8). Opposition of Nina’s definition “perfect as you” and Beth’s crying “I am nothing” show how short the distance between these two guises is.
The way “Black Swan” utilities distortions of reality is probably the most interesting and important aspect of the film, because people’s cultural and personal identity is always kept deep inside and they do not know their essence themselves. At the beginning of the film, these are minimal: Nina thinks she passes herself on the street; she overhears conversations that may or may not actually occur. As the film goes on, however, these become more and more severe. The reflections of characters in mirrors will often turn and look independent of their actual bodies; Nina begins to hear a flurry of voices that do not exist. By the end of "Black Swan", the movie has progressed into episodes of full-blown magical realism. One of the film's final scenes shows Portman onstage with her arms transformed into the fully- feathered wings of a swan (Image 9). All of these distortions show the viewer just how deranged the character of Nina has become: we see that her high drive for success has at times completely cut her off from the real world, causing great pain to both herself and others. She is constantly influenced by others’ words and actions and Leroy is one one of those, who asks her to lose herself, not even thinking of the consequences of such a moral and even physical pressure. The scenes, where he provokes Nina’s desire show how her virginity and innocence are getting lost together with her moral principles and limits (Image 10). Although it has not been explicitly shown whether Nina falls in love with Leroy, her behavior, jealousy and total following him express her obsession and desire to be liked and admired by him. In the final scene, Leroy starts kissing a perfect Nina and even expressing his feeling about her, but it seems that he should have loved her imperfect, because this kind of obsession eventually kills the heroine (Image 11). An open wound serves as a strong evidence of her final being destroyed and as a result in the gradation of various physical scars, wounds, injuries and sores. Some critics evaluate this physical destruction as a result of moral demolition and claim Nina herself to be guilty in her pain, fear and death at the end: “As mentioned earlier, the naive side of Nina is indeed guilty of her actions, the path she chose to win her dream role. First, she steals Beth's (the principal dancer of the troupe and Nina's role model) lipstick, assuming that by using Beth's lipstick, she could win the role. Secondly, her attempt to seduce Leroy into giving her the role. She seems to be so guilty that her mind projects her guilt on to a mirror, with the same red lipstick that she stole from Beth's room, and a guilty feeling that she might have behaved like a whore in front of Leroy, to get her the role” (Raj 292). Thus, another issue evoked in the film is self-responsibility, because when trying to change one’s identity and hoping to achieve perfection in one’s life, a person should be aware of the side effects of such a desire.
A viewer is allowed to analyze and think about the main character, decide whether to trust the visual illusions or no, one’s perception of the film depends on a personal background knowledge and life experience. “Nina is a psychopath who is compelled by external forces, to be someone who she is not, and to repress her true self. The type of unreliable narrator that Nina appears to be is the "Madman" [A narrator who is either only experiencing mental defense mechanisms, such as (post-traumatic) dissociation and self-alienation, or severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia or paranoia]” (Raj 293). Thus, when observing her behavior and actions, one should be very careful about what is true and what it is her imagination and sub-consciousness. The real life also suggests that people can stick to their self-identity and moral principles and never strive for total perfection or making other peoples their idols, but when one decides to open his alter ego, he or she eventually meets more than ever expected and believed.
Works cited
Raj, Anjna. “Unreliable Narration: An Analysis of Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan”. In
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research (3), 2015: 288-294. Print.
Sartika, Wahyu Diah. Study of the main character of Black Swan movie script by Andrez Heinz.
Diponegoro University, 2013. Print.
Clips from the movie
Image 1. Nina sees her reflection in a window in the subway, but she does not see a clear image of herself.
Image 2. A white scarf in the initial scenes symbolizes Nina’s primary and real essence - a good, well-bred and sweet girl.
Image 3. The scene in the club, when Nina disobeys her mother and gets seduced by Lily (Nina’s antipode and antagonist).
Image 4. Nina’s wound as a first signal of her graduate transformation and eventual death together with achievement of a perfection.
Image 5. Nina is afraid of being not good enough to play a role of the black swan and gets constantly criticized and scared by Leroy. Her eyes reveal anxiety and fear.
Image 6. Nina’s eyes get blooded as she gets high-strung and fretful about her role in the ballet.
Image 7. Nina as a black swan - a demoniac image of perfection and excellence. Her eyes reveal passion and final self-satisfaction.
Image 8. Incurable Beth turns out to be Nina, blooded face and wounds as symbols of imperfection.
Image 9. Gradual transformation of Nina’s arms into the wings – full-blown magical realism.
Image 10. “Lose yourself!” is the way to become perfect and play a seductive and desirable role excellently.
Image 11. A real wound as a result of strong contact between physical and emotional state of Nina, climax, in which she dies.
Image 12. Lily seduces Nina and her tattoo makes a viewer think of the mysterious image of a swan, who is fated to die.
