Black Swan / 8.0 / Christina

‘Black Swan’ is an experience that will stay with you— whether you like it or not. In the vein of Darren Aronofsky’s break-through works, Pi  and Requiem for a Dream, psychological disintegration and descent is his domain and here he delivers 108 unflinching minutes of it. Set in the stereotypically glamorous world of ballet, ‘Black Swan’ tells of a ballerina’s casting in the ultimate role and subsequently her ultimate undoing.

From beginning to end, Natalie Portman’s Nina Sayers suffers the extremes of  psychological and emotional torment in more varieties than you can count. You can say that it’s split personality, but then here comes the mommy issues, add to that competitive pressures, throw in some problems with sexuality while you’re at it and there goes the girl. ‘Black Swan’ is a cornucopia of neuroses that would have seemed cheap if it weren’t for the exquisite performance by Natalie Portman who utterly consumed herself to portray Nina. No longer is she ‘Natalie-Portman-playing-a-bald-headed-British-girl’ or ‘Natalie-Portman-playing-a-free-spirited-stripper’; for once I was completely convinced that she was the tremulous Nina, perpetually on the verge of breakdown. 

And down she went. Readers beware, spoilers ahead. Leave while you can and that’s the same advice I’d give if you’re not up for Nina’s gruesome journey. Aronofsky never shies away from the grime and gristle. Every element of the film served the singular purpose of thrilling, shocking and drilling his themes home. Duality is emphasised over and over in the form of black and white costuming and reflections in mirrors littered throughout the scenes. Aronofsky’s use of tracking shots binds us to Nina’s experience and then he expertly cuts to a wide shot to drop us back to sanity. The eerie sounds which was used to perfection in Requiem for a Dream return to haunt a new nightmare and we hear each creak and crack of bones, pointe shoes and trauma. This completely visceral experience is topped off with a mesmerising score that ushers us into the story, deeper into Nina’s harrowed mind. Aronofsky is an expert storyteller, adept at manipulating all the resources at hand. Including you.

His story has so many layers that I don’t even know where to begin. Symbolism is heaped onto every aspect of the story, revealed in every frame, so much so that it is overwhelming and almost stifling. But that’s good, because that’s what he wanted. The key themes are hardly subtle. The story of Swan Lake is repeatedly told. A pure, innocent princess is bewitched into becoming a swan and would have had true love with a prince if it were not for the appearance of an evil doppelganger. The doppelganger theme emphasises the inevitability of her doom, as encountering one’s doppelganger has traditionally been associated with death. With ballet dancers often being selected for their physical similarity, Aronofsky also plays off the distinctive features of ballet to enhance his story. Albeit that this is the ugliest side of ballet, a showcase of the fundamentals of what makes ballet possible but what we choose to ignore in order to see beauty through cruelty.

Yet at the heart of it all, underneath these connected themes is deep, unadulterated psychology. Freudian psychology dictates that the mind is made up of the id, ego, and super-ego. Whilst the id is the source of a relentless drive to seek pleasure (hello, libido), the super-ego opposes it as a perfectionistic moralising force to keep these desires suppressed. The ego mediates between the two extremes and the external world to keep all parties in check, creating the basis of who we are. And there. That’s the problem with Nina Sayers. She has no ego. As white swan she is pure super-ego and as the black twin she is id supreme. The chaotic fluctuation between the two culminates in her demise. With all this going on, she never had a chance.

Perfection, the idealised dream and our human inability to contain it is the DNA of Darren Aronofsky’s movies. In the closing shots, with Nina’s last line, a scene from the Bible’s Old Testament came to mind. In Exodus 33, Moses audaciously asks God to show him His glory. This is the pinnacle of perfection: the eternal, all-powerful God in pure form. Goodness in pure form. Light in pure form. Love in pure form. God agrees to reveal some, but warns that no one can see His face, for they would not be able to survive it. In his own way, this is Aronofsky’s preoccupation. His characters repeatedly strive for perfection, which in each case seems to be within reach, but they each fail and fall to disintegration. He calls into question this driving force of humanity. Is our unabating desire for perfection actually hubris? Can perfection actually be achieved? Can we ever master it? 

As far as I can tell, Darren Aronofsky doesn’t seem to think so.