Additionally, Nina's constant fixation on achieving perfection displays elements of an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. The movie provides no explanation of Nina's diagnosis, nor does it show her receiving treatment, which left interpretation of her mental illness to the audience.
The fifth portrayal of Nina Sayers's symptoms of schizophrenia is negative symptoms. It shows that Nina is a type of schizophrenic who is a social withdrawal. The causes of Nina Sayer's are the use of certain drugs and environment including stress and anxiety disorder.
Although symptoms would not occur as rapidly as they do in Nina Sayers in most common cases of schizophrenia, it is plausible. Therefore, Black Swan is a decent portrayal of a person's descent into paranoid schizophrenia.
What eating disorder does Nina have in Black Swan?
- She is under her mother pressure to become a perfect ballerina and her mother does not aware that Nina has problem in that ballet world. Based on the movie scenes she experiences Anorexia nervosa. The hints of this clinical condition is when she refused to eat cake that her mother have bought.
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.
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.
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.
It turns out that Nina hallucinated the fight with (and subsequent murder of) Lily, and actually stabbed herself while in the throes of a psychotic episode. But this doesn't stop Nina from performing the role she's worked so hard to attain. Bleeding, she returns to the stage to perform the last act of the show.
Destruction of the body is the basis of all horror, but Black Swan's body horror serves a dual purpose by not only freaking out the viewer but also using symbolism to represent the decline of Nina's mental state. Though it isn't as overt as most other horror films, Black Swan is no less terrifying.
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.
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 ...
Maybe she had the first one at the bar with Lilly and the two guys, because Lilly confirmed they existed the next day. 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!)
As Light notes, this alienation was undoubtedly not helped by Simone's increasingly debilitating mental illness. She was later diagnosed as bipolar. Though Simone is sparing when discussing her mental instability, she does describe her first real breakdown during a tour with Bill Cosby in 1967.
In Darren Aronofsky's 2010 film, Black Swan, the main character is a white female around the age of 21. Nina Sayers is of average height but is visibly underweight. She has rigid posture with slender limbs.
Barbara Hershey Is Riveting in 'Black Swan' as Natalie Portman's Dark, Controlling Mother. Hershey is riveting as Natalie Portman's controlling mother.
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.
There are 139 dance shots in the film. 111 are Natalie Portman untouched. 28 are her dance double Sarah Lane. If you do the math, that's 80% Natalie Portman.
In Beth, we see Nina's fascination with the company's fading female star played out against the backdrop of society's disdain for aging females. Eager to emulate Beth and feel what it's like to be in her shoes, Nina steals her lipstick, an act which foreshadows Nina "stealing" her role and her power.
While her mental health is sensationalized for shocking and dazzling visuals, the quieter moments of solitude highlight the truth of OCD presented in Black Swan.
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.
In the bathroom, after she is officially announced as the Swan Queen, Nina envisions herself pulling back her cuticle skin all the way to her knuckle. She is so nervous around others and impressing them, that her mind drifts to peeling off her skin in reaction to the stress.
Black Swan became a 2010 American psychological thriller film directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel and Mila Kunis. Its plot revolves around the true story of Nina Sayers. Production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet by a prestigious New York City company.
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.
