Black Swan 2010

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Black Swan is a 2010 American psychological thriller film directed by Darren Aronofsky. Its plot revolves around a production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet by a prestigious New York City company. The production requires a ballerina to play both the innocent White Swan and the sensual Black Swan. One dancer, Nina, is a perfect fit for the White Swan, while another, Lily, has a personality that matches the Black Swan. When the two compete for the parts, Nina finds a dark side to herself. (Wikipedia) Fantastically deranged at all times, Darren Aronofskys ballet psycho-melodrama is a glittering, crackling, outrageously pickable scab of a film. Peter Bradshaw, Guardian, 2010 Black Swan has several different threads of ideas woven together through use of the ballet school. The use of ballet is an interesting concept because (aside from the Swan lake storyline) Ballet has always been incredibly disciplined with a high turnover rate of dancers due to injury, overwork and poor pay. It allows for symbolic ideas such as good and evil, and props that are crucial to the film such as its use of mirrors to reflect personality. Trying to achieve physical perfection will result in deformity over time, shown in the character Beth, and on a smaller scale in the ballet shoes that are so beautiful on the outside, but grossly deform the feet that wear them.

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The Key concepts within the film are self and identity, but it also touches on several other issues encountered mainly in the transition from child to adult. Nina is generally subservient, trying to please her mother, he teachers and her peer group. But she is also experiencing all the elements of puberty: conflict with parents, bad influence of friends, body dysmorphia, tantrums, rival friendships and competition for men, and coming to terms with her own sexuality. There are some unsettling scenes with Ninas mother forcibly undressing her daughter and using emotional manipulation as a method of keeping her submissive. The psychologist VC suggests that Every night, Erica Sayers winds up the music box next Nina in order to make the little ballerina dance. This is quite symbolic of Ninas mind-controlled state. (VC 2010) Nina has always dealt with her mothers mental illness very passively but as she realises she is experiencing hallucinations she is starting to fear that she also is ill. Scenes from work to home are linked by brief periods of calm on the underground but even that breathing space becomes unsafe after a man exposes himself to her, and eventually the journey scenes are cut as work and home life blend into one. Thomass key speech I knew the White Swan wouldnt be a problem. The real work would be your metamorphosis into her evil twin. implies that Nina is expected to be one or the other, good or bad, and Nina, who is already struggling with her identity is flitting between the two states of mind. In coming to terms with the self she will need to merge the two states of mind but she is unable to do this as she is forced to be one and then the other by her teacher and her mother. Portman herself told reporters at the Venice Film Festival that when Aronofsky talked to her about the sex scene He described it as: 'You're going to have a sex scene with yourself,' and I thought that was very interesting because this movie is in so many ways an exploration of an artist's ego and that narcissistic sort of attraction to yourself and also repulsion with yourself."(Collett-White, 2010)

Figure 2 Use of The theatre itself has its own connotations. Theatres are deceptively beautiful to the spectator, who only sees the stage and the auditorium, but behind this ideal there is the flip side of hard work, blood, sweat and tears, and an on-going workshop of ugly parts. The theatre is a place where the two sides never meet, and is a fitting place for a film that looks at why the two sides of someones identity seem unable to meet. The fourth wall filming and close camera work make a claustrophobic experience for the viewer, and the soundtrack is diegetic in that both the music is part of the script, which totally integrates the auditory experience.

Reviewing for IMDB, Barbara OSullivan was disappointed: I felt absolutely no connection with any other character as the movie wound excruciatingly along on its hopeless execrable way to nowhere(OSullivan 2010) and this lack of characters to empathise with would be a problem in most films. However Black Swan is dealing with extremes of personality that makes it hard to connect with anyone, and that feeling of looking in at someone else s life rather than taking part in it is part of what makes it such an interesting film to watch.

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ILLUSTRATIONS Fig 1 - http://www.ebooks-audiobook.com/store/films-on-dvd/movie-black-swan2010-on-dvd/ accessed on 15/10/2011 Fig 2, 3 http://picturesandnoise.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/black-swan-2010directed-by-darren-aronofsky/ accessed on 15/10/2011 Fig 4 http://amiresque.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html accessed on 15/10/2011 REFERENCES Bradshaw, P (2010) Black Swan Review for The Guardian [online] at http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jan/20/black-swan-review accessed on 13/10/2011 Collet White, M (2010) Venice Film Festival Review [online] at http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/09/01/us-venice-idUSTRE67U5OA20100901 accessed on 14/10/2011 Osullivan, B (2010) Black Swan Review [online] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0947798/reviews accessed on 14/10/201 VC (2010) The Occult Interpretation of The Movie Black Swan and its Message on Showbusiness[online] at http://vigilantcitizen.com/moviesandtv/the-occultinterpretation-of-the-movie-black-swan-and-its-message-on-show-business/ accessed on 15/110/2011