Black Swan (2010) || Between Ambition And Delusion For A Perfection Of Role

Black Swan is a psychological thriller film starring Natalie Portman who plays Nina Sayer. This film tells about the other side of the life of a ballerina with hallucinatory disorders due to the pressure she faces to get a role which she thinks is the pinnacle of perfection as a ballerina. An effort that is not easy, until she is willing to break through the boundaries for a role that all dancers really want.

The film Black Swan premiered in September 2010 at the Venice film festival, then officially released to broadcast in theaters widely in December 2010. The script about Black Swan was previously written by Andres Heinz, then made a big screen film by director Darren Aronofsky. Black Swan was produced by Mike Medavoy, Arnold W. Messer, Brian Oliver and Scott Franklin. And starring several well-known artists, including Natalie Portman (Nina Sayers), Mila Kunis (Lily), Vincent Cassel (Thomas Leroy), Barbara Hershey (Erica Sayers), Winona Ryder (Beth MacIntyre), etc.

Stunning acting from all roles, interesting storylines, and quality cinematography, this film got five nominations at the 2011 Academy Awards. Among them are the best film nominations, best director, best actress, best cinematography and best film editing, and best actor. for the Natalie Portman performance.

The Black Swan film received controversy and blockages in several countries such as Barbados, several states in the Middle East, Indonesia, etc. This film, which does present several sex scenes, lesbian scenes and violence, has made the government in several countries ban it because it is not in accordance with culture and there is the use of harsh words and some unusual scenes. In the screening in Latvia, there was even a targedi shooting against an audience who was noisy at the time of the film screening and was busy being discussed so that film viewers in the world were increasingly curious about the film that underlie the murder case. Apart from the various controversies, in Rotten Tomatoes, the film Black Swan gets a rating of 87 percent, and on IMDb with a rating of 8/10 with a metascore of 79. Black Swan is very interesting to watch as an education for us about mental health awareness.

Synopsis

The story focuses on the figure of Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), a teenager, and a dancer at a New York ballet studio, who prepares for years performance titled Swan Lake Tchaikovsky. Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), the artistic director of the New York ballet studio, informs all ballerinas that there will be a big annual performance with the theme of Swan Lake Tchaikovsky and will be holding auditions to find this phenomenal role. Thomas Leroy wants to make a different look on this stage, a ballerina who can play a dual role as a white swan with soft, graceful and black swan characters with sensual, powerful, dark, evil, and seductive characteristics. The new dancer who plays the swan queen will later replace the previous ballerina she stopped, namely Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder).

Auditions began, character search for both roles. Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), who has dedicated her life as a dancer, tries to do her best to get elected. But the director considers that Nina is only able to animate one character in white swan, not in black swan. Nina did not give up, she tried to continue to convince Thomas that she was capable of the role of black swan. For the sake of her ambition, Nina is desperate to steal Beth's (old role of swan queen) belongings such as lipstick, perfume and other small items. Everything was done so that she was as perfect as Beth. She even tried to tease Thomas with her sexy appearance until Thomas forcibly kissed her. From this incident, Nina finally got the role of Swan Queen. A dancer who had previously been selected for the role even accused Nina as a whore who used improper means to get the role.

The election of Nina as Swan Queen was greeted with a welcoming party as well as releasing the retirement of beloved ballerina Beth MacIntyre. Practice after practice begins for the performance. Thomas, who wants a perfect role to make Nina feel depressed, all of this has an impact on her psychological condition so that she experiences hallucinations and has high delusions all the time. Nina's psychological disturbances make her unable to exercise self-control, always haunted by evil thoughts that demand her perfect dual roles as white swan and black swan.

The role with these two opposing characters makes Nina try to demand perfection in herself which is destructive. Her attitude becomes instantaneous and temperamental. It makes Nina mother, Erica played by (Barbara Hershey) is worried to the point of being overprotective of Nina.

Coupled with the presence of a ballerina from San Francisco, Lily (Mila Kunis), also adds to the intrigue of the story. Conflicts within Nina begin to occur, and consider everyone as enemies in the blanket who are ready to take her role. The tension increased when Lily as a backup dancer to play Swan Queen was considered more capable of animating the 2 characters of the ballet movement by Thomas compared to Nina. This forces Nina to train even harder regardless of the time and conditions. Even since then he began to experience a series of psychological disorders. Her fear of failing to portray the role of Swan Queen is perfectly reflected in the emotions, wounds and injuries she endured during practice.

Actually, the thing that hinders Nina's strength from achieving her goals is herself, Nina seems to have a multiple personality that involuntarily changes in her hallucinations.

"Black Swan" in my view

This film is very interesting to watch, very significant with the current condition where mental health issues are crucial to become a concern for us all. Regarding an expectation that is not accompanied by good psychological management, it will destroy ourselves and even become a killer for both physical and psychological consciousness.

This 108-minute film, is able to make us not realize that all the events that Nina experiences in each scene are only part of hallucinations and delusions until everything is answered at the end of the story where Nina turns out to be stabbing herself who is mistaken for Lily (Mila Kunis), her friend of a ballet dancer, that's Nina think , Lily really wanted to take the role of Swan Queen. The last time when Nina really died at the same time as the end of the play where Black Swan also died, this is a dramatic story. We unconsciously fall into the trap of a story that is very manipulative and full of multiple interpretations.

Nina Sayer's role made me feel firsthand the internal torment, the psychological conflict within Nina. Many films have presented visualizations of stories about psychological thrillers before, but in Black Swan Aronofsky manages to convey an impression of pain through a storyline that is not boring when we watch it.[]