The viewer learns early on that Nina struggles with several issues, including obsessions with dancing and perfectionism, as well as an eating disorder. Additionally, Nina lives with her mother who also displays elements of mental illness, including narcissistic personality and depressive features.
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.
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 a rendition of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, Nina takes the double role of the White (Odette) and Black Swans (Odile) with Mila Kunis' Lily serving as an alternate dancer. With fears of being replaced by Lily, Nina descends into madness which is perfectly exemplified by the open-ended finale.
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!)
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.
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 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.
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. The effect of Nina Sayers's schizophrenia is aggressive behavior.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But speaking as a psychiatrist, Lamberti said the film did not accurately depict schizophrenia, as has been widely speculated, but "does present a reasonable portrait of psychosis."
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. Based on Halmi et. al (2005) this eating disorder has relationship with perfectionism and also obsesive- compulsive personality disorder.
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.
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.
In Black Swan, we see extreme emotional enmeshment: the mother is not allowing her daughter to be a separate individual, instead she sees Nina as a reflection of herself (wanting her to pursue same career) and someone who exists to meet the mother's own needs.
As her madness peaks, there is a conflation of Nina's alter ego with Lily, which shows that in Nina's mind, Lily is the black swan that she herself is trying to become.
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.
black swan event, high-impact event that is difficult to predict under normal circumstances but that in retrospect appears to have been inevitable. A black swan event is unexpected and therefore difficult to prepare for but is often rationalized with the benefit of hindsight as having been unavoidable.
(at around 1h 22 mins) In Winona Ryder's final scene in the movie, where she is in the hospital with metal bars in her legs following her catastrophic accident and Nina returns the items she stole from Beth's room, Beth appears to go insane and stab herself graphically in the face right in front of Nina.
According to Malaspina, Nina's affliction is most consistent with a severely neurotic, obsessive-compulsive patient with features of a borderline personality disorder who suffers from “mini-psychotic episodes.”
