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.
Lily wants to be the best dancer in the company, and she sees the new production of Swan Lake as her chance to show off her passion. The only thing getting in her way is her colleague Nina, the prissy perfectionist who's managed to captivate Thomas Leroy, the company's director. Interests… having fun.
It is unknown whether this drug use is linked to her psychotic symptoms, but this incident leads to further visual hallucinations involving Lily and defiant behavior against her mother. As the film progresses, Nina completes her transformation into the Swan Queen.
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.
Ambiguity and Duality: The relationship between Nina and Lily is also characterized by ambiguity and duality. As the film progresses, it becomes unclear whether Lily is a real person or a figment of Nina's imagination. Lily may represent Nina's alter ego or a projection of her desires and fears [2].
Nina says they're nothing but a rash and her mother becomes angry and hints that Nina hasn't scratched herself like this since she was younger, and she thought Nina was over this. Nina tries to brush her off but her mother grabs her hand and takes her to the bathroom to cut her fingernails with scissors.
In the evening, Lily came to Nina's apartment and ask her to go for a dinner to make up the mistake that Lily did, after some arguing with her mother Nina left with Lily, feeling that Nina must feel lighten up a bit, Lily ask her for a drink, and she put one pill of drug to Nina's glass, eventually Nina saw what Lily ...
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. Not real!)
She is anxious, moody, and temperamental. Nina is fixated on the romantic tragedy of Swan Lake and she ultimately kills herself in tribute to it. However, while Nina is clearly and explicitly suffering from mental illness, many of her symptoms are considered standard for an elite ballerina at the height of her career.
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.
The final twist reveals that Nina had hallucinated Lily's death and instead stabbed herself in the abdomen. However, given the artist she is, she continues performing the ballet's final act as a dying Odette, landing on a mattress with thunderous applause.
In both of these scenes, Lily is a near-physical manifestation of the growing duality inside Nina's mind, specifically of the persona that will allow her to portray the Black Swan.
1 Answer. So much of Black Swan is left open for interpretation. I always thought that Nina perceived Lily as a threat in all aspects of her life. Lily removing her panties just reiterates the point that Lily has no inhibitions and Nina has several.
In particular, Nina's relationship with Erica feels incredibly abusive and restrictive. As the film progresses, the foundations of this precarious mother-daughter bond begin to crumble precipitously.
The nightclub scene is all in red light, so are the sex fantasy scenes and the scenes where Nina is becoming the black swan. Even her eyes turn red, a symbolic color of madness, passion, danger.
Lily hugs Nina before Nina completely closes the door. Nina then turns around and looks at Lily, locking their eyes with even more sexual hunger than before. Nina then rushes to Lily and starts passionately french kissing with her.
Nina's increasing neuroses are manifested in a bizarre, unconscious kind of self-mutilation. Repeatedly she picks at the skin around her fingernails and scratches her back viciously. She has awful hallucinations in which she sees herself tearing bloody strips of skin away from her fingers.
Undone by Erica's haranguing, Nina impulsively goes to a bar with Lily, where she's persuaded to take a disinhibiting drug that Lily insists will just relax her and only last for two hours, “most.”Tempted by her desire to be free of her mother, and by Thomas's insistence that she “touch herself” as homework to help her ...
Aronofsky clearly enriches the film with a storyline that points to Nina's first psychotic break, likely triggered by a combination of her genetic heritability, childhood experience of abuse, age, and the heightened environmental stress placed upon her as principal ballerina.
It isn't clear if it is real or if Nina was the one who did it — the latter is more likely. 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.
These tics, such as skin picking and nail biting, often appear during times of stress as a method to center oneself. This is one of the most explicit instances that illustrate Nina's own difficulties with OCD, due to the sights of the scratches and the verbal confirmation from her mother.
There are two ways to view the ending of Black Swan: Nina only thought that she killed Lily and actually stabbed herself... or Nina has imagined the entire thing and is still alive. Both make sense within the context of the movie and audiences are divided about what the end means.
The broken mirror symbolizes that she is no longer a victim to the black swan and that she is in control of its dark power. As the corruption of the Black Swan effected her mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, the transformation attributed to her fall as the White Swan that was completely diminished.
