Due to the ubiquity of social networking, I have, for the past few weeks, heard many references to a film called "Black Swan", which seemed to be an important movie, and one that people liked, although not without some controversy. I knew nothing about the movie, and since I rarely watch movies, I thought that it would be yet another phenomenon that would blip on my cultural radar and then fade away. But a friend wanted to see it, and so I ended up seeing it, in a small, cramped arthouse cinema. When I went in, all I knew was that the poster had a scary face of Natalie Portman, and I think my lack of foreknowledge made it a much more enjoyable film. I would suggest that anyone going to view it do so with as little preparation as possible, which also means you should stop reading right now.
One of the results of my lack of preparation was the fact that I was unaware of what genre of film I was watching as the movie begin. Something that I was still unaware of after I had finished, and which is still a subject of debate. The film opens with Nina, played by Portman, getting ready for a performance at the New York City ballet company where she is a dancer. Nina is an incredibly hard working dancer, who is well practiced and technically proficient, but lacks the artistry and passion to be a prima ballerina. Her ballet company is putting on a performance of Swan Lake, and the director wishes to cast one dancer in the roles of both the White Swan and the Black Swan. He believes that Nina can play the innocent White Swan, but lacks the passion to play the Black Swan. Her main competition for the part is Lily, played by Mila Kunis, a dancer whose dancing and personal life is more spontaneous than Nina's.
So for perhaps the first hour of the film, I thought that the movie might be heading into quite abysmal chick flick territory, being the story of a repressed girl with various abusive adults (such as her lecherous director and smothering mother) crushing her delicate self. And then there is a single scene that seems to head into horror movie territory, which is then revealed to be an anomaly. Which is then revealed not to be. From about the halfway point until the end of the movie, there is a series of bait and switches where the audience is left wondering if they are watching a realistic psychological portrait of a young woman with mental issues...or something that is about to break out into a full-fledged horror movie.
As Nina begins to embrace the Shadow side of her personality, there is also a series of scenes involving sex and drugs that gained some notoriety for the film. The masturbation scene (abruptly and hilariously interrupted) and the (possibly? probably? definitely?) hallucinated sex scene between her and Lily are both good scenes, but the movie doesn't depend on their sexual explicitness to capture the audience.
The most impressive thing about the movie is that it probably communicates the most horror with the least gore possible. A person who is prepped and ready to see a horror movie will take great and disgusting scenes in stride, because they have categorized it as being different from waking life. However, while we still think we are watching a realistic movie, seeing someone rip at their cuticle is shocking and cringe worthy. During the climax of the movie, the eerieness of some of the scenes is shocking in a way that gore could never be.
One of my biggest questions about the movie is what type of message is being communicated in the climax. Although many different people have different views on what the movie was "about", to me it was primarily a movie about confronting the "Shadow" part of the personality, about realizing that fear, anger, lust and ambition are emotions we all have inside ourselves. I thought the movie was very accurate in depicting a world where, despite a surface changing of mores, women are still expected to be basically asexual and passive. So Nina's embracing of her Shadow is, as is suggested in the film, what frees her from the prison she has placed around herself, and also what releases her artistic ability. And yet, it can only due that by destroying her Self, and (perhaps) physically wounding her a great deal. Of course, a film where Nina realized she had these darker impulses, and then managed to integrate them into her personality to become a healthy, well-adjusted adult would have been a much, much duller film, but I also find it somewhat unfortunate that the film suggests that the only way that women can admit lust and desire into their lives is in a frenzy of self-destruction.