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.
Lily (portrayed by Mila Kunis) is the deuteragonist of the film, and Nina's rival. She is a new dancer in the ballet company, and represents the opposite of Nina's personality. She also competes with Nina for the role of 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.
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.
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 ...
While viewers are uncertain of her mother's mental illness status, the genetic factor may be present. This magnitude of stress is a precipitating factor of Nina's symptoms. Nina is in her early twenties and is socially withdrawn, two common elements in patients experiencing their first psychotic episode.
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.
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.
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!)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The mother, on the other hand, is constantly trying to control Nina, and in the end, she even tries to stop her from playing the Swan Princess because she thinks Nina is losing her mind due to her role.
As Nina walks on the sidewalk in the streets of New York City on the Upper West Side, she sees a woman wearing a black coat. The camera is behind her and we get a split second look the woman's face. Initially, we assume it is Lily, but closer inspection reveals it to be a face that is both Nina and Lily's.
Why does Nina have cuts on her back in Black Swan?
Early in the film the audience is shown a small rash on Nina's back; this has to do with a nervous tick she has developed where she scratches herself. When the mother finds that the rash has gotten worse, she strips Nina down to her underwear and pulls her into the bathroom to cut her nails.
Nina has a huge ambition to be Swan Queen; however, she still finds difficulty to play as the Black Swan. Anxiety disorder becomes one of the causes of Nina's schizophrenia. It happens when Nina always feels anxious because of her ambitions to become a Swan Queen.
After she leaves the studio, the camera cuts to a shot of a bathroom. In the bathroom there is a stall and under the stall's partition the audience sees Nina's feet and hears the sound of her vomiting.
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.
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.
Following another hallucination of seeing her face imposed on someone (Beth), Nina winds up outside of the hospital holding a bloody nail file, which is what Beth used to stab herself with.
Mirrors routinely dominate the mise en scene, suggesting that Nina's fragile self-identity is entirely contained and defined by external 'surface' reflections; she is effectively reduced to what she sees staring back at her in the mirror.
The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on a Latin expression which presumed that black swans did not exist.
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.
