My theory is that Ninas life is turning into the storyline of the White Swans in the movie. She gets the big roll which she wanted, which could symbolize the prince, but then there is Lily who comes as a threat because she is now trying to steal the role from Nina, which symbolizes the Black Swan stealing the prince. The real Lily (Nina’s mother sees her, other girls see her, Thomas fucks her, so she’s real) is just a dancer, but as Nina sees her Black Swan reflected on her, she imagines another Lily , wich is just a proyection of her Black Swan. The White Swan is pure, fragile, innocent, it symbolizes the child side of Nina.
Before Black Swan: ballet and the movies
And ballet goes on abounding in sexist, melodramatic clichés. While this remains so, “Black Swan” is the ballet movie our era deserves. How she was able to dance without any reaction to the wound could be explained as the adrenaline, and the lack of pain could be due to the sheer ignorance of her injury.
– 60 of 105 Works in Swan Queen Supernova II: Cygnus Summer Celebration
Filmmaking legend Steven Spielberg then made a remake of the film in 2021. I’m going to focus on the Spielberg film here; not because I think it’s the superior version, but because I think it’s a remake well worth watching. Some even consider it one of Spielberg’s best films in his storied career. There is an expiration date on the relationship from the beginning — Glen is leaving for America on Sunday and Russell has a birthday party to attend — but these constraints only make their affair all the more intimate.
Nina’s mother was beyond the cliche of a ballet mum – she was a psychopath. And the only people who looked like they were having a good time were the ones having sex. But if you look at the Swan Lake cast there’s no character called The Gentleman. And if you google “Swan Lake The Gentleman” you get absolutely zero responses.
Nina’s already fragile mental state descends further as the schizophrenic nature of the ballets theme draws her deeper and deeper in. At the end the viewer is left questioning whether what they saw is NoStringsAttached classic real, or the product of Nina’s increasing looser grip on reality. The end again was very cinematic in ways that it’s aligning itself with the story of sacrifice and breaking away from the clutches.
She thinks that if only she could be successful enough to support herself completely, if only she could prove to her mother that she is good enough, perhaps her mother would relinquish this leash. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen neither of those films so I can’t make comparisions, but I was so blows away by this one that I had to write something about it. And she manages to, she becomes both the Black and White Swans, reaching perfection, even though it destroys her psychicly and phisically, maybe even killing herself. But it doesn’t matter, she’s reached perfection. However, I don’t see it as a mental-health problem.
Though a mattress cushions her final landing onstage, she is left bleeding out under a roar of applause before the movie fades to white. On a production level, the performances are outstanding, especially those by Kunis and Portman. Portman, however, goes ludicrously over-the-top in the final half hour. While trying to show that the quest for artistic perfection can be destructive, the movie ultimately goes too far on every level, nearly turning into a horror film in its final stretches.
The Many Faces of ‘Black Swan,’ Deconstructed
Luckily, her daughter already had a knack for it and proved to be a much better ballerina than her. But she doesn’t allow Nina to believe that, she doesn’t let her think that she is perfect. She takes credit for things, saying at one point that Nina would have been lost without her in those initial ballet lessons. She creates a shell around her and never lets her grow out of it. She holds on to the one great thing in her life, so much so that she is ready to hold her back. It almost happens because the director threatens to replace Nina with Lily if she doesn’t do it perfectly and Lily is seducing him into getting the role as the Black Sean would do.
The difference between okay directors and let’s say “real” directors, is that real directors always try new stuff. He has style and I think he’s one of the best of his generation. When sexy new dancer Lily displays a natural ability to play the Black Swan, she threatens to take Nina’s role. Lily is the new addition to the company who turns Nina’s world upside down. Her dancing form is less controlled, she ignores no-smoking rules and has an ease that is opposite to Nina’s rigidity. In the right circumstances, they could be friends, but in this story, Lily is everything Nina fears.
This is why we have the secondary aspect of Nina’s hallucinations. And a far more sinister interpretation of the hallucinations. The Black Swan Nina who emerges from the mirror is built up to through the movie not just by the escalation of the Nina in the Mirror, but also by the subplot of Nina going through the stages of growing up. That finding is consistent with previous research linkingballet training with perfectionism. Nina’s woeful tale is an exaggerated but common fate for ballerinas. Which means Nina is representative of the whole.
At the end of it all, I didn’t contract an STI, thank God! But the guy and I never spoke again,” a senior at Florida State University said. If Nina is a narcissist, however, she is appalled by it.