Blackest Swan

There has been too much talk about The Black Swan starring Natalie Portman and directed by Darren Aronowsky. Brilliant acting, they say. Academy Award quality, they say. Complex themes, they say. 

Pshaw. I found the movie uncomfortably absurd; I thought it ugly and meaningless. Ostensibly, the film is about Nina’s obsession with the part of the Swan Queen in the new production of Swan Lake, but really it is about her obsession with the Black Swan: sexual, passionate, and alluring. The film is about her terrifying and violent transformation from the White Swan into the Black Swan; a necessity her director demands she must make for the principal role. Of course, in the process the director attempts to bed her and teach her sexuality—all, of course, in the service of the performance.  Why she is given the role in the first place given that she lacks the character to properly dance the part the film never attempts to answer. Nina moves through the world fantasizing about sex and sexual encounters, but her repressed psyche prevents her from acting on her Desires, and her domineering (and resentful) mother keeps her out of engagement in any world but that of formal ballet. How she ultimately achieves this transformation is suggested by her doppelgangers. The first is an aging ballerina whom she is replacing in the role. Denied the role, the veteran walks out of the reception and into traffic—permanently crippling her legs and disfiguring her face and body. Nina makes several visits to the hospital room but confronts only violence and ugliness. She can offer there no sympathy and she receives none. 

Her second alter ego is another young dancer, Lily, who tries in honest friendship to offer Nina some release from the tensions of the dance. This second dancer is sexual, passionate and alive, which is why Nina is both attracted and repelled by her. Indeed, on the one hand Nina fantasizes an erotic encounter with her, but also in her fantasy kills her to protect her role in the ballet. Of course, it is not Lily that Nina murders but herself. Finally, I guess, sexuality, passion and allure are necessary and destructive. One can perform but not live under their influence. 

Oh, the reviewers say that in the film none of the characters are who they claim to be, or at least cannot be trusted to be so, but I say ‘pshaw.’ The motives of the characters were all too obvious—and the plot all too predictable. I was appalled by the violence and befuddled by the plot. Who cared, finally? There was nothing about any of the characters that intrigued me. 

I wonder if it is the romantic portrait of obsession coupled with the violence that accompanies this obsession that makes this movie attractive to the public. We are a polarized society—a society obsessed with its own ideologies—and from those extreme positions take shots intended at elimination at the opposition. From this derives much of the extreme violence in our society. The violence that stems from our obsessions are romanticized and legitimated. And films such as Black Swan make obsession seem productive even though it be destructive. Nina’s final words describing her performance as ‘perfect’ speak to the value of her obsessions destructive though they be to Nina. Black Swan is a dark film suitable for these dark, dark times, and there is nothing redemptive in the film. I felt soiled when I left the theater, as I feel soiled when I have to listen to our politicians, hear the news or read the newspapers, or when I overhear the violent chatter of the crowd in the next booth at the restaurant.