Black Swan Discussion Thread

[stj]

^^^That could be. It doesn't physically work, partly because Nina stabbing anyone with a broken piece of glass without cutting her hands is impossible. That can't be conclusive because the movie just isn't made with that kind of condescension to reality. Also, by that interpretation, when Nina looks behind the towel and sees nothing, that would mean she is hallucinating the absence of blood. Technically this is possible, but the whole mad shtick is for thrills and chills. Most of all, naturally, there's the general nuttiness of someone with a mortal wound dancing a ballet, which is on par with someone really dying of tuberculosis singing.

Even more confusing in one way, is that if Nina really stabs herself while stabbing, as she thinks, Lily, then Lily is in fact just herself, as suggested above. This is confusing because a huge part of Nina's problem is her decompensating lust for Lily. We've all heard of autoeroticism but that is really stretching a concept.

I didn't understand what happened when the dancer dropped Nina. So I don't understand why everyone else would look at Nina, if they were (the choreographer suddenly goes into his first language, just to make things more confusing.) Nor do I understand why this should trigger the appearance of EvilNinaInTheGuiseOfLily. But the incident is critical to the stabbing, whoever was stabbed, in reality or only in imagination.

 

[AliciaD496]

I just saw this yesterday and wow, I've walked out of some movies feeling 'wrung out' before but this was just a whole new level of 'oh my gosh, I need to get home and process what I just saw'. That ending was just brutal. I still can't decide what ending I'd prefer, but I suppose it was left open for interpretation on purpose.

I heard an interesting theory on the imdb message board...and while I usually take the arguments there with a grain of salt this one was intriguing. There is speculation that maybe Nina's 'descent' was triggered by repressed memories of sexual abuse (or maybe even just physical and emotional abuse?) by her mother that were being brought to the fore by the push for her to become more sexual and the stress of her new position in the company. Her room was strikingly child like for a woman her age. The mention by her mother that she hadn't self harmed since she was a child and it was suddenly happening again, the mother's odd reaction to her initial refusal to eat the cake, her almost obsessive need for privacy from her mother after that point and then the whole conversation about never having a steady boyfriend yet not being a virgin which doesn't seem to suit her character.

Even if this theory isn't true the mother was downright creepy at times between her suddenly appearing out of the shadows (probably just Nina not noticing in her psychosis...but still startling) and all those paintings of Nina and her push to make Nina into something she wanted for herself around that age.

I also think like all those other delusions of her 'dark self' walking in the streets, Lily was real but not what Nina had been seeing. Perhaps as a newcomer to the the company Lily could see Nina's odd behavior more clearly than those who had been around her for several years, wasn't blinded by jealousy or pettiness like the others would be, and wanted to help but went the wrong way about it?

Anyway, intriguing movie, and I can see why Natalie won the Golden Globe, it was a pretty amazing performance.

 

[gblews]

I'm afraid that if you're certain what happened at the end, then you're the one who's confused. The ostensible ending is that she stabbed herself with a shard of glass just before the Swan Queen throws herself off the (stage) cliff, onto the offstage mattress.

My reading was that Nina stabbed herself when she hallucinated Lily taking over the role and imagined killing her with the broken mirror (not sure if it was deliberate or if it happened accidentally when she broke the mirror, since we didn't see how that part happened in objective reality). She didn't see the wound until after she'd finished the black swan part and found Lily wasn't actually dead. She'd been wearing the black costume, which hid the blood. Then she went and did the show anyway, and it wasn't until the final moments of the ballet that she succumbed to the wound.

I'm pretty sure we saw her bleeding in the dressing room after the reveal that she hadn't really killed Lily, so she had to already have been injured before she went back on stage for the finale.

I thought it was consensus that Lily was Nina...Nina's mind had broken down so much that she created her to cope with her stress and outside pressures from her mom.

I kept going back and forth on this while watching the movie, but in the end, it seemed clear that Lily was real, or, rather, there was really a girl called Lily. Granted, you can make varying arguments for how many of her scenes were hallucinations on the part of Nina (aside from the obvious stuff, like the end of their girls' night out, being stabbed to death, and getting it on with the director backstage), but she definitely was a person that existed, even if Nina mapped all of her insecurities onto her and transformed her into a boogyman.

Agreed. I never thought Lily wasn't real. Some things Lily did weren't real--like the sex scene...

Absolutely agree with both of you. The movie was dense and had a dream like quality, but pretty much everything was explained at the end.

EXCEPT -- did Nina stab Beth in the hospital with the nail file, or was Beth really stabbing herself? Keep in mind that when Nina went down in the elevator, she had the bloody file in her hands. In fact, I thought the shot in the elevator was a setup to hook us into really buying into Nina stabbing Lilly.

 

[Gaith]

The real question is, would any of the above real/not real combinations make the movie any less vapid?

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

Which is why I thought this movie was A LOT like American Psycho and Fight Club in a way.

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ Agreed. It has those elements in it. Especially "Fight Club".

 

[Professor Zoom]

^ Agreed. It has those elements in it. Especially "Fight Club".

Except Fight Club was a better movie and the twist was actually surprising. At least for me.

 

[Admiral_Young]

"Fight Club" was an amazing movie. The twist shocked me...I'll agree with you that the twist in "Black Swan" doesn't have the same impact but then I really enjoyed the film. Maybe I'm more easy to please with these kinds of films and expect less, I dunno.

 

[Skellington]

The ninth rule of Fight Club: It's generally not fair to compare other films to Fight Club.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Just saw it (and with that, it's possible I've seen all of this year's BP nominees, depending on whether 127 Hours makes it). I'm of two minds; purely in terms of delivering audience-jump moments, it's quite effective (Aronofsky employs all the standard bits, from scare chords to people appearing randomly, about as effectively as anyone has recently). The film is quite sleek, and it's amazing how good it looks given its small budget (though, thinking back, there really aren't that many sets).

At the same time, it's also really shallow. Portman gives a tremendous performance, both physically and depicting a very expressive (but ultimately kind of one-note) character; but Nina is a collection of dollar-store psychological issues, and, compared to something like Aronofsky's The Wrestler, there's not really much insight into her.

 

[stj]

The real question is, would any of the above real/not real combinations make the movie any less vapid?

It's quite emotional, with lots of scare moments, if you can disengage your mind. So I don't know that I would call it "vapid." But I would agree that the questions about what's real don't add a thing, and one up you, and say that they undermine any real intensity. For instance, the notion that Nina is stabbing herself as Lily may rationalize the mechanics of the death. But, stabbing "Lily" means she's rejecting her dark side, which is supposed to be what she surrenders to in order to dance the Black Swan! Such self-contradictions vitiate the theme, to the point, there is nothing to the movie but horror moments.

 

[CaptainCanada]

But, stabbing "Lily" means she's rejecting her dark side, which is supposed to be what she surrenders to in order to dance the Black Swan!

Alternately, she kills "Lily" and completes her transition to embracing the Black Swan persona herself, since she doesn't really seem to care that much that she murdered the person she thinks is her rival. "Lily" attempts to usurp her place as the Black Swan under the impression that Nina can never do it herself, and is proven wrong.

 

[Dream]

I finally saw it. This is probably my favorite Darren Aronofsky film. It was great.

I thought the entire movie felt like horror at times. It was unsettling following Nina as she slowly turned insane. I thought the music was very beautiful and it was great having the Swan Lake ballet in the background. I found the doppelgänger parts of the story to be very fascinating. Natalie Portman totally deserved her Oscar.