24: Black Swan

When I first heard about this film, I was convinced that it was produced for me personally. The film just sounded too good to be true: Darren Aronofsky writing and directing a horror movie, a sister piece to The Wrestler. A film heavily inspired by the apartments trilogy of Roman Polanski, but also featuring stylistic influences from David Cronenberg and Dario Argento. A film with an absolutely amazing orchestral score, starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, and they have sex. Nothing could have kept my from this film. Absolutely nothing. It didn't disappoint.

Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a ballerina completely focused on perfecting her craft. She dedicates every hour of every day to being perfect at what she does. She has full control of her graceful movements at all times, and she is all set to play as the lead in Swan Lake. The problem is that Swan Lake is about losing control. She not only has to play as the graceful white swan, but as a very sexual and passionate black swan. Between her devotion to her craft, and her mother infantalizing her, she has no real idea what to do.

This isn't so much a film about a character growing up as a character realizing she grew up a long time ago and just never dealt with it. Her instructor keeps trying to force her to “lose herself” in the role (or have sex with her. It is disturbingly difficult to tell the difference between the two. He's probably trying to do both, actually). In an attempt to show her the way, he introduces her to Lily, who dances the black swan perfectly. Under Lily's “guidance,” Nina goes out and gets hammered, something she never would have done before.

In my eyes, this film is about repression and the malleability of identity. Nina thinks she knows who she is, but once people start trying to pressure her, parts of herself she didn't know existed started coming out. A repeating image in the film is Nina looking in the mirror to see herself as Lily, or to see Lily as her. To her, Lily represents all those aspects of her that are out of her control. Nina thinks of herself becoming a different person because she can't accept that those thing are a part of her. In the end, this leads her to blaming others for her behavior. She becomes paranoid, convinced Lily is going to steal her role. In the end, she starts hallucinating. She loses her grip on reality.

Once the hallucinations start, the film goes from a somewhat unsettling drama to a full on horror film. It's hard to describe most of the imagery, and to try would ruin the effect. Nina sees all of her worst fears paraded in front of her, and we're right there with her. She has no idea what is real or what is imagined, or what is half-imagined but really happened. It winds up feeling very much like the the works of Roman Polanski. People are almost definitely plotting against Nina, and Nina is almost definitely paranoid and delusional, but there is always the question of which events fall into which camp. In some cases, we never find out.