Black Swan

I have been waiting for a while to write about Aronovsky’s latest film, the Black Swan, for several reasons. The first of which is that I wanted a lot of other people to see it so that my reading audience, no matter how small in reality it is, at least saw the previews for the film. With that being out of the way and the movie performing exceptionally well in the market for a rather high brow art film, as the critics have come to call it, my next reservation was with writing a post. I have yet to learn how to type on this bloody computer. Honestly I am a hunt and peck typist. On a conventional keyboard, I type a bit quicker and not using my pointer fingers the entire time, but on the netbook, it is much more difficult for me. By the way, I am very rapid hunt and peck and I don’t have to look at the keyboard so don’t judge me!
The final and most important reason why I have neglected in writing about the film was that I needed time to process it. Why?
My first reaction to the film was that it was either brilliant or the kitschiest piece of film I had seen in a long time. Then my Heraclitus/ Derridian/ Hegelian background said, no, no, there must a unity of opposites or there is a play between the differences or there is some synthesis of the two that surpasses them both. Maybe. First, we must analyze the ground upon which either claim stands and the consider this third leg of the equation.

Kitsch. This movie is simply a film that explores the tired cliché of art as destruction and self-deception. I think Tony Scott of the New York Times put it best when he started to write about how the dichotomy of the white and black swan in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the ballet which gives the film its name and its plot , leads itself to the Apollonian and Dionysian duality that have come to represent art and creative powers. The apollonian with its order and form represents the White, virginal and innocent swan, as well as Natalie Portman’s character. The Dionysian with its out of control power, lust and sexuality is embodied by Mila Kunis’ character. One ballerina(and the prima ballerina at that) must embody both characters. There must be one who makes the change, the metamorphosis from white to black. Let us mediate her before we go forward into the second nuance of the kitsch. This idea of art is ancient and well worn. Art destroys you, you must free yourself, creativity is wild power, a power that no one can handle. Tried and true. A very Romantic notion of the artist, a Romanticism that seems to follow us still.
To the white swan. Here again with have the deeply Freudian notion of the overbearing and jealous mother. The mother of Portman’s character is a failed ballerina, is the typical overbearing mother that attempts to control every aspect of her daughter’s life. This includes removing all the locks from the doors and even sleeping in the room with her daughter (which leads to a rather funny scene later in the movie). Portman is a little girl in her home, surrounded by dolls and pink and the prescence of her mother.
Kunis shatters this notion. She is the perfect Black swan. Technically not very strong; nowhere near Portman—but she has passion and oozes sex. She and Portman go out one night, Portman lets loose and indulges in her, well self. Her we go with a good girl goes bad and grows up. Tried and true plot line.
So we have the plot of Swan Lake which drives the movie, Apollonian and Dionysian view of creative power as ultimate self destruction, Good girl goes bad and indulges in her passion, then of course the idea of the ballet company and the intrigue caused by aging ballerinas, obsession with beauty, the lecherous appeitie of the director, backstabbing up and comers…and the boring story lines continue.
But here is where the brilliance comes in. We have a ballerina, aging, too, we forget that Portman is 29 and ballet doesn’t leave young women with a long shelf life. Her body is flawless yet a skeleton. The art itself is killing her. Muscles begin to fail her (a cramped diaphragm!!) her toes begin to go together. She finally becomes her art quite literally. She believes herself so. Paranoia and lost passion become her. Portman, and I mean Portman becomes the art just as the character becomes the art. I agree with Tony on this point, we look at Portman, the lines on her face, we hear the last lines of her character and realize that she became her character. The movie with all its flaws and cliché showed that the life and art of characters and artists, whenever shown on screen seem to fall into the metafiction moment. Without breaking the fourth wall, and subtly, the movie reveals what we give ourselves. Outside of all the clichés, the movie is a movie that shows our own obsessions with art and our ideas of art. Here is where the power of the movie lies. It made me think long and hard because it was a reflection on a reflection, or maybe a reflection of a reflection. It is this view that makes criticism difficult. We are trapped in a web of our own fictions about art as we try to pull the strings of the knot of our own creation.

So where are we? I don’t know what I think. I would watch it. Good and Evil, sex, scandal, ballet, art, Nietzschean overtones and all. I don’t know upon which mind I stand in this movie. Maybe I will tarry in the middle.