Film Blog #7 - Black Swan
Title: Black Swan
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Date of Release: December 17, 2010
Country: United Stated
Genre: Psychological thriller
Budget: $13 million
Box Office: $8,383,479
Source: http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=blackswan.htm
The film begins with Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) dreaming about dancing the white swan from Swan Lake. She wakes up and tells her mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), about her dream and mentions that her director promised to feature her more this upcoming ballet season. Nina heads to the ballet studio and hears that the prima-ballerina Beth (Winona Ryder) is being forced to retire due to her old age. While the dancers are practicing the director of the company Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) walks in and announces they will be doing Swan Lake as their first ballet of the season, but the prima-ballerina that dances the white swan must also dance the evil black swan. Thomas goes around the room tapping girls on the shoulder and Nina looks around anxiously. He tells all the girls he tapped to attend their regular rehearsals and for the rest of them, including Nina, to meet him in another studio.
While she waits for the auditions Nina witnesses Beth throwing a tantrum in her dressing room and walking away angrily. Nina sneaks in and steals some of Beth’s things. Afterward Nina auditions for the Swan Queen and performs the white swan perfectly, but lacks the seductiveness of the black swan. While Nina does her audition a new dancer of the company, Lily (Mila Kunis), interrupts and Nina falters her pirouettes. Thomas tells Nina he’s seen enough and she goes home bursting into tears as her mother hugs her. She practices the black swan routine until her big toe nail cracks. The next morning Nina goes to Thomas’ office to ask for the part of the Swan Queen. He tells her he’s given the part to another dancer, Veronica (Ksenia Solo), and Nina starts walking out. Thomas stops her and asks her why she’s giving up the part so easily then kisses her passionately. Surprised by the sudden advance Nina bites Thomas, apologizes, and walks out of his office. Nina’s sudden change of character lands her the role of the Swan Queen.
Throughout the next couple of days the stress of the role takes its toll on Nina and she begins to develop a rash and has small hallucinations. Thomas holds a gala to raise money for the new production and present Nina as the Swan Queen. At the gala Nina hallucinates that she rips off a large piece of skin from her finger and finally meets Lily at the bathroom. At the end of the night Nina is confronted by Beth and asked if she had to perform oral sex on Thomas to land the lead role. Nina replies that not everyone has to do that and leaves to Thomas’ apartment. At his apartment Thomas asks intrusive questions about sex to Nina and instructs her to touch herself in order to better inhabit the black swan’s role. When Nina goes home her mother notices her rash has gotten worse and cuts her nails worrying that the role is too much pressure for Nina. The next morning Nina does as she’s told and begins to touch herself only to realize that her mother was sleeping in her room. At the ballet studio the company hears the news that Beth is in the hospital. Thomas suspects she ran into the street on purpose and now Beth can never dance again with two broken legs. Thomas tells Nina to focus on her role and learn to let herself go instead of striving for perfection, like Beth used to.
During one of the practices Thomas becomes increasingly frustrated with Nina’s restraint and control. He tells the other dancers to leave and begins to dance the prince’s role with Nina. He seduces Nina by touching her intimately and kissing her then walks away telling her she should be the one seducing him. Nina stays in the studio and cries when Lily finds her. Lily jokingly accuses Nina of being attracted to Thomas and Nina walks away angrily. The next day at rehearsals Thomas is more demanding of Nina and tells her that Lily told him she was crying. Thomas tells Nina she shouldn’t be whining and in turn Nina confronts Lily and tells her not to talk to Thomas about her again.
That night Lily goes to Nina’s apartment and at first Erica tells her to leave. Nina walks out to see who was at the door and Lily apologizes to her and asks her to go out. While reluctant at first Nina rebels against her mother and decides to go out. While Nina goes to the bathroom after their dinner she comes back and watches Lily pour ecstasy into her drink. Even though the dancers are scheduled to practice on the stage the next day Nina willingly drinks the ecstasy and decides to stay out late with Lily. They go to a club with two men and have a crazy night of dancing and sex. Nina walks out to go home and Lily follows her into a cab. At Nina’s place her mother confronts her about her drinking and drug use. She slaps Nina for being insolent so Nina barricades herself into her room with Lily. The two girls starts to kiss and Lily performs cunnilingus on Nina. When Lily is done she transforms into a darker Nina and smothers the real Nina with a pillow.
The following morning Nina wakes up late and alone and rushes to the studio only to find Lily dancing her part as the Swan Queen. After she dances Lily walks up to Nina warming up and tells her Thomas asked her to step in for Nina because she was late. Nina asks Lily why she didn’t wake her up in the morning and Lily tells her she went home with a man from last night. When Nina mentions what happened in her bedroom Lily is flattered that Nina had a lesbian wet-dream about her. Nina walks away feeling confused whether or not the night before had occurred. Nina learns that Thomas made Lily her understudy and becomes even more paranoid that Lily is out to take her part. While practicing alone in the studio that night Nina has severe hallucinations. Her hysteria peaks that night as she runs from the studio to Beth’s hospital room back to her apartment. All throughout the night she imagines crazy things such as Lily and Thomas having sex, Beth stabbing herself in the face, and the paintings her mother draws of her moving. Finally Nina’s psychotic episode culminates with her rash sprouting black feathers, her eyes becoming red, and her knees bending backward into swan-like features. Nina becomes disoriented by her hallucinated transformation and hits her head on her bed post as she falls.
The next day is the first night of the show and Nina’s mother attempted to lock her inside her room. Nina fights off her mother and rushes to the ballet to perform. Arriving late Thomas tells her he already asked Lily to step in and dance, but Nina tells him she will do the part no matter what. Nina dances her white swan just as rigid as she did in rehearsals. She gets distracted by watching Lily and her nervousness causes a loss of concentration during a lift which subsequently leads the male dancer to drop her. Embarrassed by her mistake Nina runs to her dressing room to cry. In the room she finds Lily in the black swan costume telling her she isn’t prepared to dance. As Lily turns around in her chair she morphs into Nina and the two begin to fight. Nina slams her double into the mirror, breaks it, and during the struggle stabs the black swan Nina, Lily, in the stomach. Lily lies dead at her feet and Nina hastens to hide her body in the bathroom.
Once Nina collects herself to changes into her black swan costume and goes out onto the stage. Nina performs the black swan perfectly, unleashing her darker side she had been trying to repress all throughout the film. Nina’s rash spreads throughout her body and quills start to emerge. As she goes out onto the stage for her final performance as the black swan she grows black feathers all over and ends the dance with full swan wings. Nina exits the stage and passionately kisses Thomas before going back out to take her bows. Nina returns to the dressing room to find a pool of blood forming underneath the bathroom door so she covers it with a towel. As Nina re-applies her white swan makeup there’s a knock on her door. She gets up and opens it to find Lily. Lily congratulates her on her performance as Nina becomes anxious and confused. Nina closes the door and removes to towel to find no blood, she looks down and realizes she had actually stabbed herself. She cries for a minute then steels herself and finishes applying her makeup. Nina goes on the stage to finish the ballet and dances so beautifully the audience fails to notice her blood stain. As Nina stands at the top of the stage, ready to kill herself as the white swan, she takes one last look at her mother’s proud face in the crowd and jumps onto the mattress behind the stage. Thomas and the rest of the troupe run to her to give her a round of applause. When Thomas tells her to take her final bows Lily gasps and notices the huge blood stain on Nina’s costume. Thomas tells the girls to get some help and asks Nina what she was done. Nina calmly and quietly tells him she felt it, she was perfect and the screen fades to white.
The life within the New York City Ballet is hardly ever studied within film, and much less the psychological trauma that occurs to the ballerinas. Black Swan combines elements of horror and thriller movies to underscore the tension and anxiety these dancers go through. On a micro scale the film captures the psychological descent into paranoia and ultimately self-realization of Nina, a new prima-ballerina. The techniques and strategies used to create this film force audiences to experience the terror and helplessness that Nina must face within the confines of her mind.
The sound design within the film is essential in creating feelings of tension and suspense. Throughout the film moments where Nina is dancing her breaths are heightened. The synchronous sounds of Nina’s breathing, most likely added post-filming, highlight her efforts of dancing every move to the utmost perfection. One of the first scenes of the film, when Nina is waking up from her dream, the sounds of her toes cracking are very high in volume. This of course points to the fact that she is a dancer and along with the close up of her feet this is a moment of intimacy between Nina and the audience. Already the audience knows she is the focus of the film and the most important part of her body as a ballerina is on full display for them.
Recurring sound effects throughout the film bring attention to Nina’s body and her inner psyche. Perhaps the most notable recurring sound is a distorted breath followed by a laugh that plays whenever the darker side of Nina surfaces within her. The laugh is associated with Nina’s double or shadow, so the audience becomes aware that Nina’s double is twisted and dark. Key moments when the laugh is played are; the opening title, when Nina steals Beth’s lipstick, when she bites Thomas while he kisses her, when she sees the word “whore” written on the mirror after she gets the role of swan queen, when she tells Beth not everyone has to “suck cock” to get key roles, practically every scene that she runs into Lilly or thinks she sees herself, and most notably when she kisses Lilly in her room.
Much like the laugh is Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake score. The filmmakers were able to utilize the most dramatic music from Swan Lake and incorporate it into scenes in the film pairing it with the melodrama to arise a sense of terror in audiences. For example the scenes where Nina has her psychotic breakdown at the dance studio and the hospital where Beth is, Tchaikovsky’s music is used to heighten Nina’s fear and paranoia. As Nina enters Beth’s room and places the stolen items in front of her the music softens until suddenly Beth grabs Nina’s hand and the music slowly intensifies and reaches peak volume as Nina sees herself stabbing her face instead of Beth. The same intensification of Tchaikovsky’s music happens immediately after when Nina goes home and is severely hallucinating. Other instances where sound is used to intensify feelings of anxiety is when the filmmakers used Foley sounds of bird wings flapping, insect-like noises, dirt rubbing, and the twisting of tree bark, over Nina’s metamorphosis into the black swan both in her hallucinations and in her final dance.
Black Swan is filmed entirely through handheld cameras in order to achieve the look of a documentary. It adds an organic feel to the film, the shaky camera lens heightens the feelings of fear. Due to the film’s real look audiences will empathize more with Nina and have a sense of living through her experiences. The further into madness Nina goes, the more the camera moves and signifies Nina’s loss of control. The film is a closed movie and utilizes medium close-ups and close-ups of Nina and the other characters. These types of shots not only capture the intense emotion given by the actors but it also signifies that the majority of the film plays out within the minds of these characters; especially Nina’s. The camera, in various instances, follows directly behind Nina when she walks signifying that the movie is told through her point of view and also to add to Nina’s belief that someone is always watching her.
The proximity of the camera on Nina gives meaning to her final dance as the black swan when she looks straight into the camera multiple times. Mastering the dance and accepting her darker side Nina is able to look at the audience confidently and revert the feelings of anxiety unto them.
Two of the film’s most effective techniques to emanate the horror and thriller genre is its use of mirrors and physical injuries. Given the important role mirrors play in the ballet world it was evident to the filmmakers that mirrors would be inevitable. However, mirrors are also a huge symbol in psychology for identity and loss of identity. Almost every shot in the film involving mirrors was manipulated with the use of green screens to add a creepy factor. The notion of having a double and scaring audiences with that psychological fear is heightened through the use of mirrors. The following scenes are examples of when mirrors are not faithfully showing what is in front of them, instead they show Nina’s double.
Nina’s rash on her back is almost always shown on screen in a close-up shot. Eerie Foley sounds deepen the meaning behind her rash and the heightened sound of her nails scratching it also point to Nina’s psychosis. The film uses nail injuries to trigger feelings of anxiety in the audience. Nails are a common feature of the body to everyone, and they are also one of the most sensitive parts of the body. Injuries to the skin beneath the nail are extremely painful and the film makes use of this common feeling by showing any nail injury through close-up and medium close-up shots. Some examples include; Nina’s broken toe nail, her mother cutting her nails and finger with a scissor, Nina pulling the skin around her nail, and Nina’s double forcefully cutting her finger with a scissor.
One of the most prevalent themes in Black Swan is the existence of double personalities. Throughout the film Nina is plagued by the thought of Lilly surpassing her talents. In reality Nina is seeing a darker side of herself within Lilly, a side she cannot seem to embody consciously. A useful perspective to use when interpreting Black Swan is the theories written by Carl Jung. The concept of a double or a doppelganger is an integral part of Jung’s theory of individuation, or self-realization, coined by the term “shadow.” A person’s shadow, in Jung’s view, is the representation of the parts of oneself that are repressed and hated. A person can either repress their shadow or project it unto someone else. Confronting and accepting one’s shadow is the first step to self-realization. The second step would be to confront a person’s anima or animus, female and male components of the psyche respectively. The anima would be represented by a female and the animus by a male, according to the times when Jung lived. In today’s modern society the anima and animus can be interpreted by gender binaries imposed socially. In other words, a man must accept the aspects of himself that are deemed “feminine,” and a woman aspects that are deemed “masculine.” In the film Nina’s animus would be the ballet director Thomas. All throughout the film Thomas intimidates and seduces Nina, forcing her to capture the essence of the black swan. When Nina effectively seduces Thomas and aggressively kisses him she took on the more traditionally “masculine” role and accepted her animus.
The film uses various cues to cast Lilly as Nina’s shadow. The first scene when they meet is in the subway; Nina thinks she sees herself, but she actually sees Lilly leaving the subway. In the scene Nina is dressed in a light pink coat and a white scarf. Lilly is dressed in black and gray. Early in the film the dichotomy and symbol of black and white is presented, and it is used throughout the rest film. Lilly is always dressed in black clothing when Nina is wearing white and pink. The black and white symbol is used in countless of films and other media to represent good and evil, or simply opposites. The film uses the dichotomy to represent the conscious and unconscious parts of a person’s psyche. In almost every scene where Lilly appears Nina sees herself for a couple of frames, she is projecting her anxiety and fears unto Lilly.
Nina is an innocent and sheltered girl. Growing up under the tight control of her mother, Nina is unable to tap into her more sexual and seductive nature. The production design in Nina’s room is meant to give the feeling of childlike innocence. It is the only setting in the film where the color scheme is filled with warm tones of pink. The rest of the film’s look in its sets is cold and unsettling; bathed in black and white and hues of gray. Nina is pressured to become a great ballerina, unlike her mother who failed, so she strives to dance every ballet step to perfection. Whereas Lilly is much more carefree and seductive; her moves are described in the film as, “imprecise but effortless.” Nina struggles to dance the black swan when Lilly seems to be made for the part. In turn Nina grows resentful and wary of Lilly.
Thomas, Nina’s animus, is presented as aggressive and demanding. He disturbingly forces himself on Nina under the guise of helping her. Thomas’ actions towards Nina are always aggressive, leaving Nina to feel submissive towards him and even attracted to him. In the scene where he dances with Nina he kisses her, touches her breasts, and feels her intimately then abruptly leaves and tells her she should be seducing him, not the other way around. The only moment Nina is aggressive towards him early in the film is when she bites him. The black and white symbolism is also used in the relationship between Nina and Thomas. Thomas’ wardrobe always has elements of black.
At the end of the film Nina is finally able to accept her shadow and animus, reaching individuation right before she dies. Nina conquers her shadow in the dressing room when she presumably stabs Lilly. The film uses match-cuts on action and special effects to switch between Nina and Lilly in the black swan costume. When Nina finally stabs Lilly and declares that it’s her turn she goes on to give the performance of her career as the black swan. VXF effects are used to create the rash on her skin to cover her upper body, and they eventually transform to quills. As she dances the black swan feathers are added to her body until they cover it entirely. By the end of the dance she has full swan wings symbolizing her inner transformation.
As soon as she steps off the stage she conquers her animus by passionately kissing and seducing Thomas in front of the rest of the dancers. After Nina realizes that she had stabbed herself she accepts her death and finds peace in it. Nina danced perfectly and she knew she did, her slow fall as the camera dollies into her face shows her completely peaceful. She is no longer suffering to reach perfection because she let herself go and reached it, accepting her shadow and animus.
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
dededos
2087
theartofmadeline
baratheonpilled
turnnoffyourmind
