Black Swan Has Elements Of Body Horror Subtle elements like the scratches on Nina's back and the prolonged damage to her feet represent the scary reality of being a ballerina, but the movie also slowly ratchets up the body horror as things go on.
Violence: 4/5- Self Harm. Bloody realistic injury detail. Mangled feet, broken nails. A woman stabs another woman with glass, not much blood, but it's present.
Parents need to know that this dark gothic thriller centers on a dancer (played by Natalie Portman) who's so obsessed with perfection that she's obliterated by it. Her pursuit is tragic, filled with self-mutilation and fear -- all of it intense material that may prove too much for younger viewers. Expect many…
While the film dramatizes the unveiling of Nina's illness, it presents some reasonably accurate elements of first-break psychosis. Black Swan clearly highlights the first-hand perspective of individuals with psychosis and their interpretation of reality.
Her (and her mothers) obsession with success and perfection slowly drives her to madness, and it is that descent into madness that we find the horror elements in this movie, because it gets truly horrifying, and I include it in my list of some of the finest horror ever made.
It is more violent and disturbing than sexual. A woman masturbates; she's clothed, but it's clearly implied. A woman performs a sex act on another woman (viewers don't see body parts, but there's no mistaking what position they're in). A woman makes out with a bunch of men in a drugged haze.
Darren Aronofsky decided to shoot Black Swan on Super 16 mm cameras to avoid giving it a glossy look. He gave the film a grainy visual style and a muted color palette, which was similar to the look of his previous film, The Wrestler.
Nina's disordered relationship with her roommate mother Erica, played by Barbara Hershey, sets the stage for Nina's psychological breakdown. Erica is narcissistic, spending all of her time painting pictures of herself and completely infringing on Nina's space and well-being.
The night before she is set to perform, Nina becomes convinced that Lily is going to take her place. Her paranoia and mental strain cause her to hallucinate that she's physically turning into the role of Odile, the Black Swan, complete with red eyes and black feathers protruding from bird-like skin.
NOT REAL: Therefore, Lilly and Nina did not have actual sex (we know this because after sex, Lilly said something to Nina about being a ‘Good girl’ and then tried to smother her.
Can child stars go on to credible careers? With her Ivy League credentials and a performance in Black Swan that's put her in line for an Oscar, Natalie Portman proves it can be done... At 29, Natalie Portman has already been in the business a long time.
Synopsis. The movie opens as Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), a young ballerina in her mid twenties, is dancing the prologue to Swan Lake. Swan Lake is a ballet in which a princess is turned into the White Swan and can only be turned back if a man swears eternal fidelity to her.
How long did Natalie Portman train for Black Swan?
Portman and Kunis started training six months before the start of filming in order to attain a body type and muscle tone more similar to those of professional dancers. Portman worked out for five hours a day, doing ballet, cross-training, and swimming. A few months closer to filming, she began choreography training.
After the 83rd Academy Awards, where Portman won Best Actress for her performance in the film as a ballerina, controversy arose over how much credit for the dancing in the film was being given to her and how much to her "dance double", American Ballet Theatre soloist Sarah Lane.
In the movie, it's VERY strongly suggested that Nina is a virgin, and that she lies at one point when the director asks about the men she's slept with. The scene in the film where the director asks her if she's had sex is not in the script.
What's more, if Aronofsky didn't copy Perfect Blue in 2000, he certainly did in 2010 with the release of Black Swan, a film that almost reflects Kon's movie beat-for-beat.
Lily was the evil twin and the director of the play was the prince, Lily was seducing the director (Thomas) but Nina becomes the black swan and seduces him but ended up killing herself to finally free herself from the constant burden she puts on herself to be perfect all the time.
Natalie Portman has transformed herself for many film roles, but nothing was as grueling as her Black Swan makeover. The actress shed an astonishing 20lbs from her already slight frame to play a ballerina in the 2011 film and admitted it put such a toll on her body that she thought she was going to die.
Rachel Loewy, assistant adjunct professor of psychiatry at UC San Francisco, agrees that Nina's troubles could be consistent with a borderline personality disorder (in which a person has difficulty setting proper boundaries between herself and others) rather than a full-blown psychosis.
"I made the decision to cut Nina's mom, not because I don't like the character, but we really wanted to push the idea of Usnavi and Nina as they grew up together...and they're taking different paths," Hudes said (via Variety). "Her path is to leave the community, and his path is to stay in the community.
When she returns the things she took from Beth's (Winona Ryder) dressing room, the shoe knife becomes a weapon of self-harm, as Beth repeatedly stabs herself in the face. Again, there is no confirmation whether this is imagined or actually happened but the theory that it is part of Nina's psychosis certainly adds up.
But, the most unique trait of these swans, and the one that earned them their name, is their black coloring. Adult black swans have feathers that are almost all black, with the exception of their white wing tips. These white wing feathers are visible when they are flying.
“Black Swan” is no less grandiose in scope, but instead of putting humanity at stake, a single individual's destruction is portrayed. Aronofsky chose to present us a picture that manages to reach us in a profound way; he even subdued madness to show us its very essence.
