Movie Review – “Black Swan”

Movie: Black Swan

Rating: êêê           

Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a ballerina in a New York City ballet company whose life is completely consumed with dance. She lives with her obsessive former ballerina mother Erica Sayers (Erica Hershey) who exerts a suffocating control over her and blames her for the end of her own ballet career. When artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) decides to replace prima ballerina Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder) for the opening production of their new season, Swan Lake he must pick from his many talented dancers in the company. Nina sees Beth having a breakdown in her dressing room and leaves. Nina wanting so badly to be like her sneaks in and steals her perfume, earrings, a nail file and a tube of Beth’s lipstick.

Nina isn’t his first choice because she is too perfect and tells her the position has been given to someone else. She shyly says ok and begins to leave. Before she can Thomas slams the door and asks her why she gives up so easily and pulls her into a passionate kiss. Upset by his unwanted advance she bites him he realizes she does have what it takes.

Leroy tries everything to make her a more polished dancer and not so mechanical and precise by slowly opening her up and making her more sensual and bring out that fight she has inside he witnessed in his office. Nina has competition though: a new dancer from San Francisco, Lily (Mila Kunis), who impresses Leroy as well.

Swan Lake requires a dancer who can play both the White Swan representing innocence and grace, and the Black Swan, who represents guile and sensuality. Nina fits the White Swan role perfectly but Lily is the personification of the Black Swan. As the two young dancers expand their rivalry into a twisted friendship, Nina begins to get more in touch with her dark side - a recklessness that threatens to destroy her.

Over the next several days, the stress of the role get to Nina. She begins seeing a darker version of herself in random passers-by. When Nina's mother is helping her dress for bed she sees scratches on Nina's back.. Nina says it’s a rash and her mother becomes angry and hints that Nina hasn't scratched herself like this since she was younger.

The next day as the dances are practicing one of them runs in, crying hysterically. She runs to the teacher who comforts her and asks what happened. She says Beth is in the hospital after an accident when she got hit by a passing car. Later, Nina is sitting at the edge of a fountain with Thomas and he tells her he believes that Beth threw herself into oncoming traffic.

She goes to practice and still cannot get the passion of the Black Swan into her performance and Thomas is frustrated by her dancing and leaves her in the studio. Lily happens to be nearby and offers Nina a shoulder to cry on as a supportive friend.

The next day, Thomas asks Nina if she needs time off after a comment from Lily that he should take it easy on her. Nina berates Lily for telling Thomas that she'd been crying. Lily says she was just trying to help. Nina tells her she doesn't need the help and Lily walks away irritated.

That night Lily comes to Nina’s house to apologize and invites her out. At first Nina refuses but finally accepts to rebel against her mother. Nina and Lily go out but Nina is so uptight that Lily offers her a pill to relax, saying it would only last a few hours. Nina at first turns it down but is reassured by Lily that the pills will only last a few hours and downs her glass. The two have a crazy, drugged night of clubbing with two guys. Nina finds herself hooking up with a man in a bathroom and rushes to leave and Lily runs to catch up with her.

They both return to Nina’s where they have a night of passionate and intimate sex. Lily begins to orally pleasure Nina and she sees Lily morph into herself and then back to Lily, which scares her. Lily doesn't stop and the two continue to have sex before Lily says, "innocent girl" before morphing back into dark Nina, who raises a pillow to smother her. Nina wakes up the next morning with a hangover-like headache to find Lily gone and realizes she is late for rehearsal.

When Nina arrives at the ballet studio, she finds Lily in her costume, practicing her routine with the rest of the troupe. Nina claims she says she was only filling in because Thomas had asked her to. Nina then questions Lily about why she left her house the night before, and Lily claims she went home to her place with Tom where they spent the night, and that last time she saw Nina was at the club.

A little later, Nina is being fitted for her Swan costume.Lily walks in and says Thomas made Lily Nina's alternate. Enraged and afraid, Nina finds Thomas and begs him not to make Lily her alternate, convinced that Lily is trying to steal the role from her. He tells her that the only person trying to sabotage Nina is "Nina".

In a fit of hysteria, Nina goes to the hospital to find Beth sitting motionless in a wheelchair, now a mere shadow of the woman she used to be. Nina quietly places a note and the items she stole on the table when Beth suddenly stirs and grabs Nina's arm. Beth is angry and asks what Nina is doing, and then she looks down and sees the items on the table. She asks Nina in an amused but irritated voice why she stole from her. Nina says she just wanted to be perfect like Beth

As Beth looks at the items and grabs the the nail file. She continues to say she's nothing as she suddenly stabs herself in the face with the file repeatedly. Nina finally grabs the nail file from Beth's hand and runs fearfully from the room to the elevator. As she gets in the elevator, she drops the bloody nail file.

Nina returns home, dashing hysterically into the kitchen to wash her hands which are covered in Beth's blood. She calls down the hall for her mother’s studio.  As she peers in, she imagines her mother's paintings moving and talking to her. She runs in and starts tearing everything down until her mother walks in asks what she's doing. Nina runs past her mother to her bedroom, with Erica close behind. As she tries to reach Nina, Nina slams the door on her hand, breaking it. Nina barricades herself inside. As Nina stands there, her skin begins to shift and take on a bird like texture, her eyes start to turn red, and her knee joints violently invert to the same shape as a bird. The hallucination disorients Nina and she falls and hits her head on a bed post which knocks her out.

She nearly misses her opening performance when her mother tried to protect her from her delusions by locking her in her bedroom and arrives just in time. She finds Lily in costume talking to Thomas in the hall, prepared to take the stage. Nina confidently tells Thomas that she is ready to perform with Lily asking what's going on behind her. Thomas follows her into her dressing room and says that he's already told Lily shell be performing. Nina says if she doesn't take the stage then the company will be marred with controversy, after Beth's incident. Thomas looks slightly amused and impressed at her audacity and tells her to get ready.

Nina goes on and is just as timid and rigid in her performance as she was during rehearsals. During a lift, she loses her concentration which causes the lead male to drop her center stage. Thomas enraged asks what the hell that was all about. Nina's inner diva comes out and she blames it on the dance partner. When she enters her dressing room, Lily is sitting at her dressing table putting on makeup. She taunts Nina and they begin to fight. Lily morphs into Nina off and on as Nina struggles against her. Nina pushes Lily into the same full-length mirror Beth destroyed and it shatters. As the fight escalates further, Nina grabs a piece of the mirror and stabs Lily in the chest. Unsure of what to do, Nina hides the bleeding body in her bathroom and then puts on the Black Swan's makeup. She takes the stage and begins to dance with passionate abandon. As she dances she begins to physically transform into a large Black Swan on stage. She dances the part better than ever and the crowd is amazed, giving her a standing ovation as the piece ends.

Nina runs off stage and, in front of everyone, kisses Thomas passionately after finally seducing him with her movements. He smiles and tells her to go back out for a second bow. After leaving the stage again, Nina goes into her dressing room to change for the next act and realizes the blood is starting to pour out from under the bathroom door. Nina places a towel over the growing pool of blood and then hears a knock at the door. When she opens the door... Lily is standing there. She apologizes for how things turned out between them and congratulates Nina on her amazing performance as the Black Swan. Nina is shocked and bewildered as Lily smiles and walks away. Nina turns around and removes the towel to find there is no blood. She turns to look at the broken mirror pieces from the smashed mirror still on the floor then suddenly moves her hand to her abdomen. She's bleeding, and she reaches into the wound and pulls out a broken shard of glass. (In her unhinged and delusional mind, Nina had stabbed herself before the Black Swan dance, imagining it was Lily). Despite her wound, she dresses for her final act as the White Swan. Nina dances the second act beautifully, which entrances the audience so that they don't see the small stain of blood growing in the mid-section of her white costume.

In the final scene of the last act, the White Swan goes to the top of a large structure to commit suicide. Nina does this with grace, looks down at the suitors below, and then turns and falls in slow motion onto the mattress below as her mother sits in the audience, smiling and crying. When the curtain falls, Thomas is overjoyed and newly infatuated with Nina. He is smiling in adoration as he kneels to congratulate her, a crowd of ballerinas gathering around the star. Nina doesn't speak, but instead just smiles and listens to the praise. Lily suddenly gasps - the first to notice the immense blood stain forming on Nina's costume. Someone calls for help, and Thomas frantically asks her, "What did you do?!" Nina calmly and quietly utters, "I was perfect". The crowd continues to roar with applause as Nina dies and the screen slowly fades to white....