I don't think I will ever be over the opening flashback scenes & credits of Black Widow. Every time I watch it, I notice something new and another layer of emotion is peeled back.
The way that Melina comforts Yelena while still trying to mentally prepare her for the inevitable future in the Red Room. Then being vulnerable enough to say she didn't want to go back, trusting Alexei with those forbidden words. Then having to be strong as she watched Natasha's heart and hope shatter. Taking just a moment to sit in silence with her pseudo daughter, being vulnerable enough to let the child know she wasn't ready to leave either, that she was sorry, that she wished things were different.
The facial expressions and emotions while American Pi plays. Yelena's obliviousness compared to Natasha's utter despair. The way this dynamic both foreshadows and describes the lives the girls have each already lived.
The desperation in Natasha as soon as they landed in Cuba. Speaking to Melina in Russian, calling her mom, saying she was sorry. Then, protecting Yelena without hesitation. She hasn't been in battle for 3 years, knows that such actions could get her killed, and yet her instinct was to choose love.
The way that you know it was real to all of them, not just Yelena, because of these scenes. It didn't need to be said later because it's evident throughout this entire intro. Despite Nat, Melina, and Alexei all knowing the ruse was over, they continued calling each other mom/dad/girls/sweetheart. They didn't have to anymore, even for Yelena's sake. But they chose to because it had stopped being a ruse to them. It was real.
I may not be a film buff, but these first few scenes feel like an entire movie themselves between the many layers under each statement and palpable emotions. The lighting, music, acting, and visuals perfectly tell the story and it's a shame that people don't respect it more.
Kid Natasha stalked away looking upset when Melina was comforting Yelena. What did you make of it? Was she shrinking away from Melina's gentleness? From the always present knowledge it was part of an act, even if it felt so real? Or was she reacting to Yelena's vulnerability, so easily on display, so unacceptable in the Red Room? Was there some resentment that she wasn't treated so kindly at the same age?
I feel like I keep saying this about this movie, but this is another one of those situations that I love because every read is awful but also every read informs Natasha's adulthood differently.
I'm gonna go into detail with each of these, and a few more besides, because it's so bad and that makes it so good.
The one thing I think we 100% get from it is how each of them has adjusted to living as a family: Melina knows how to play her part well (with an asterisk). Yelena accepts this as the norm. And Natasha is in that awful in-between place, where she knows she's living in a lie but everything around her insists it's true and even if she has three years of proof of consistency, she doesn't trust it- which, later that day, she's shown to be right not to trust.
Is Melina a good mom? She definitely plays the part of a good mom. She definitely knows how to put on the performance of being a good mom. I don't know if that's the same thing, and more importantly, don't know if Nat or Yelena would think it is; pretty much everyone i know who has significant trauma struggles to reconcile the facade presented to the world against what really went down, and that has to be even harder when the facade was presented even to them. Alexei and Melina both insist they played their roles to perfection, but they were roles. Part of that seeps in. At the end of the day, Natasha was willing to pick up a gun to protect Yelena, while Melina and Alexei were both just fine putting Nat and Yelena in a plane to be shot at.
How did Melina feel about all of it? We know she couldn't have kids of her own (she's been cycled through 4x); we know she doesn't want to go but not only does so anyway but also tells Yelena they're going "home" (echoed, obviously, later with the pigs- "go home where it's safe" even though the home she took them back to was anything but). Was being a parent an act for Melina the way it was for Alexei? Was she comforting Yelena because she was supposed to? Or was she offering what she'd never gotten but wished she had? Natasha said that what Melina had given them was what got them through the Red Room, but how much was intentional parenting and how much was performing and how much was playing house in between experiments in the SHIELD labs? Melina says she didn't raise them to be weak; how much was involved in that?
(The girls do backbends for fun in the backyard; we know gymnastics and ballet are part of Red Room training for Widows. How much of Melina's parenting was preparing them for the world and how much was preparing them for the Red Room? Was it to help them or because she had to?)
After at least two years in the Red Room (because we know Nat was younger than six when she started and this mission has been three years), it's pretty amazing she's able to respond to gentleness as well as she does. How could it not seem like a trap? Yelena isn't a spy; she's living the life the family set up. But Natasha is old enough to see the cracks and know she has to pretend not to.
And seeing Yelena's vulnerability, as you said, must have been terrifying, because vulnerability came with consequences. We see in Cuba that Nat wants to protect Yelena; it must seem like Yelena, crying just from falling down, is painting a giant glowing neon target on her own back. Or is this the RIGHT way to behave? If being better at undercover means showing weakness, what is a baby Widow supposed to do? And how does this reflect in how Natasha as an adult responds to vulnerability, when she needs to offer it and when she needs to (but often can't) accept it?
There's also the theory that she felt responsible for hurting Yelena- did she not want to get in trouble? Did she not want to deal with her guilt for harming her? Did she just not want to see Yelena hurt? Or was she remembering a time when hurt children did not get kisses and firefly lectures, when girls face off in a ring and snap each other's necks?
I feel like all of these are very real possibilities and all of them are terrible but fascinating to explore, and the only thing they have in common is that Natasha, especially as a kid, has absolutely no sense of what is a logical consequence of any given act. The same things that were unacceptable in one context were encouraged in another. The Red Room clearly got under her skin but then she had to spend three years pretending it didn't, and then get right back into it. I mean, shit. It was, what, twelve hours between being encouraged to call their "mom" about Yelena's scraped knee, and Alexei telling her to not try to protect her sister from being kidnapped to the Red Room, which Nat knows for a fact is an abusive murder factory because she's lived there and doesn't want to go back?
Yeah, there's no read here that doesn't hurt.
And I can absolutely understand people who see this as the text not committing to a single read, but to me, it's the text allowing for all the reads at once. This movie had to straddle the line of being a PG-13 movie about severe child abuse, and it leans heavily on giving us just enough to make any read we could figure out feel horrifying.
I think I might feel differently if Nat had more of a future in the MCU, which- as far as we know at this point and hopefully subject to change- she does not. For me it's a kaleidoscope of pain, and every possible twist reveals new ways for us to interpret Natasha. And if we're not going to get new things to interpret, I like that we have this many lenses to use on what we've already got.
