Strangled in Satin: Black Swan

Black Swan opens with the prologue of Swan Lake, the world-famous ballet giving the film its name, its central production, and its haunted storyline. The ballet boasts maidens of pure white and heathen black, a prince, a warlock laden with temptation; and the film’s pirouetting New Yorkers take after these figures more than a little, even if they want to leave the feathers and spells on the stage.  In the prologue, Nina (Natalie Portman) is the white-tulle-clad princess, dancing with otherworldly grace. Her en pointe feet seem to dart through their closeup like a frightened animal, cutting off the beauty of her sweeping arms and twirling skirt, leaving us only with the unsettling. This sets the tone for the whole film. There is a fear and a darkness to Swan Lake, a fear and a darkness to ballet, a fear and a darkness to this woman, a fear and a darkness to the world. Everything is in what doesn’t meet your eyes. Peel back Nina’s skin (you don’t even have to, she does that herself) and you will find more than you ever knew this film could be, festering and transfixing.

So, the skin story (if you will) is this: Nina is chosen as the Swan Queen for her ballet company’s production of Swan Lake, headed over by the devious Thomas (Vincent Cassel). He does not let her forget how difficult it is to be both the black and the white swans; her demure purity and fearful perfectionism are flawless White Swan, but the sensuality and malice of the Black Swan needs her to live in a paradox; she must let go of her panicked standards in order for the character to be perfect. Consumed by this fear, Nina sees threats in everyone: her overbearing mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), the company’s jaded former lead soloist Beth (Winona Ryder), and most of all, a new soloist Lily (Mila Kunis), whose free spirit and passion perfectly embodies the Black Swan haunting Nina’s world. Slowly then chaotically, it unravels.

Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John McLaughlin create a well-oiled and tied-together screenplay; one any less so would have meant one too many beautiful disasters. On top of visuals, performances and atmospheres that spin out of sway; any less careful construction of the story and its words would have made the film only incoherent if charismatic turmoil; instead of a smashed chandelier of crystal-clear ingenious motivations, lovely in its fright. Thomas’ lectures about passion and character certainly ring loud and clear; his note about the Black Swan’s series of turns is particularly strong: “The fouettes should be like a spider spinning her web!” Black swan, black widow, black heart. The buried hatred of mother-living-through daughter between Erica and Nina is also well-mapped.

Wiring these crystals into the masterpiece ready to drop are an exceptionally committed cast, all playing into not just a character but an entire enigma, a smoking whirlpool of emotions and passions, whether restrained or loose. On the latter side is Mila Kunis; with impressive body-mind communication for someone not a ballerina; to deliver the “freedom of movement” for Thomas to note as being beautifully free and sensual. The man himself is smarmy and interesting at once (shame how those traits tend to coincide), emotionally and sexually abusive yet as hypnotizing as any Svengali, damn Cassel. Ryder easily plays both a human bitterness and the disintegrating unreal witch of Nina’s psychosis; and Hershey’s soul-crushing mother is more nightmare fuel than anything else in a film full of horror.

The, Swan Queen, as she says, is Natalie Portman. The film belongs to her. From the little-girl-soft voice to the facial expression my mother characterized as ‘constantly strained’, Nina is a china doll, frozen with winsomeness, moving only to dance even prettier… or convulse with tears, barely breathing, as she realizes she can’t even trust her own mind. Portman, unlike her character, can handle being both the china doll and the silvered witch; her black swan takes her into an otherworldly serpentine evil. She doesn’t look like the same person.

Now – onto treats for the aesthetes! Clint Mansell reworks the iconic Swan Lake ballet into a nightmare; it’s the melodramatic tragedy of Nina’s mind. The stunning and somehow visceral ballet tutus (less nursery rhyme, more Brothers Grimm) were a collaboration between Amy Westcott and the Mulleavy Sisters of Rodarte. As for the universe of Therese DePrez’s production design shot by Matthew Libatique, is beggars belief. They somehow conjure beauty and horror into necessity; everything is bewitching and yet never overwrought (save perhaps the office and home of Thomas; which are full of more black-and-white décor than a Tim Burton parody.) Their visuals have the same invitation as the story; an invitation to keep gazing, to find what is hidden: the symbols, scares, the doubles, the terrible beauty. Pointe shoes are torn, ‘whore’ painted in lipstick, ribs protruding from a blush-pink leotard, a tutu soaked in blood – everywhere is the lesson that allure holds hands with horror.

The cameras, whether still or dancing too, always make a staged kind of beauty, grey and bricked yet somehow bright, open or closed, an unease of some invisible ill in the place. Onstage, Nina is being lifted, turning and dancing around, obeying her relentless mind, and Libatique follows her surrounded by this chaos, as though she is the storm’s eye and the storm at the same time. Mirrors haunt every shot with their constant judgement, constant images of what you are or should be, a constant chase to be the perfection that does not exist… the archetypal magic mirror? DePrez’s use of colour is another insidious spell – constant grey tones are the cross between the black and white that Nina needs, representing how she lives trying to negotiate both. Besides, the sinful black, virginal white and femininity-defining pink constructing every environment mean a charming simplicity loaded with meaning, for everyone’s eyes. The film’s descent into the thrilling stage yields well-crafted shocks of blood, hallucination and sanity.

This is not just a ballet movie, not just a girl’s movie, and not just that thriller either – but it could work as all of those. We could see every one of the film’s pirouettes from a different angle. It never spins just one way, and its brilliance becomes more and more evident the more you brave the insanity and pretension of analysis, and allow it to invade your mind. There is more to ballet, more to Nina, more to her mind, more to everything. The reflections over the shoulder, the stories within the stories, the labyrinth of madness. Darren Aronofsky is the real Svengali, balancing the work from all sides to make his chandelier shine, before smashing it so fully.

This is the rare film in which its selected invitational universe and genre – the one that invites audiences, the one that creates the magic of images and sound and setting, the one staged for a camera – melds perfectly with the emotions and threads of concept, its characters, all enabling each other and knotted like gnarled tree limbs, growing together; the beauty and magic of the film’s weaving process intrinsic to all it makes you feel and think, linked like spells of expression to perfectly haunt us at every moment, with every power. That’s witchwork. Who knew a ballerina would be such a perfect person to see fall apart? But then again, they never want to fall. All this impossibility and hidden brilliance is the film’s appeal, its intensity, its layers, its I-can’t-look-way-ness.

The demands of ballet seem like a snowglobe world, but even women who’ve never danced know of ballet; it’s beauty and elegance and demands and the weight of its history as producing otherworldly pedestaled figures of beauty and impossible perfection. Just one specific traditional feminine pursuit can reflect the whole world for women. A split-second scene of Nina being sexually harassed on the subway tells you that this is a film whose blood runs with the reality of womanhood. The universal echoes in their specific. This is an undoubtedly feminist picture; of a young woman (even with ballet being the theme and representative universe) crumbling under everything she is supposed to be or not be. Thomas is the voice of masculinity’s paradox; the cause of her insecurity yet also telling her to let go. It is almost impossible to tell which he ‘really’ is. He is the Prince of Double Standards, of Hypocrisy, of the impossibility of being a woman now. You must be beautiful, but not beautiful enough to get you into trouble; or you must not be irritating in your worries and ‘let go’ when told, but also keep a firm line on all the rules you must remember. More to the point, Thomas (while an asshole) doesn’t seem to realize how damaging he is. Same as nearly everyone in society having no clue of the poison their lungs have learned to filter, what they call normal oxygen as it slowly kills.

The ballet creates a world and an interest and an aesthetic and a process for audiences to enjoy seeing into, attracting their intrigued gaze; but the darkness they would run from is all there, lurking between barres and pianos and pointe shoes. They send up seeing into that too, the twisted mind of any human, all under the illusion that they’re here for stage lights. The rose has its thorn.

Sexuality is thankfully pursued in this film, rather than MPAA’d back to its shadowy corner. It is so much a part of dance as sensuous movement, and yet seemingly absent from traditional ballet as well as the images of women that say they must be beautiful and yet no sexually aggressive; ready to receive sexuality and service it, but not be searching or pleasured themselves. These images have bled from fairies to princesses to ballerina through history, their weight on Nina’s fragile shoulders. Enter Prince Thomas to embody all the trouble. I hope the people (*cough* frat boys) who went to this film to see Natalie Portman kiss Mila Kunis found themselves twisted inside by such a beautiful cinematic world made of such poisonous politics. Same with old people who boast about their ballet attendance – yes, all of you, this kind of horror exists in all your worlds. Pink tights, ribbons and tulle can hold together the cracking porcelain doll of a woman too perfect for too long. And then maybe all she smashes could be as beautiful.