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.
Throughout the movie Nina “discovers” scratches and bleeding on her body seemingly derived from self-injury. However, it is difficult to tell which injuries are real and which are not throughout the film. As the stress and anxiety increase, Nina begins having psychotic breaks.
As seen in figure 8.2, Nina supposedly bleeds to death as a result of a wound in her abdomen that she caused by stabbing herself with a mirror shard in her changing room before dancing the part of the sensuous black swan. Erika stabs herself with a kitchen knife in the final scene of the film.
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.
Additionally, Nina lives with her mother who also displays elements of mental illness, including narcissistic personality and depressive features. The film progresses as Nina becomes increasingly engrossed in her role as the Swan Queen.
Black Swan (2010) - Dance of the White Swan Scene (5/5) | Movieclips
What mental illness did Black Swan have?
Accuracy of Portrayal
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.
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 is a teenaged girl, and she is being sexually abused by Thomas and her mother. The world of professional ballet looks nothing like what we see in the movie because it isn't one: it's a ballet school, Thomas is an instructor, and the Swan Queen production is a one-night performance by students.
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.
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 Black Swan explained that, while killing her own doppelgänger, Nina fatally injured herself in the process. Earlier scenes also revealed scratch marks on Nina's back after her hallucinations showed a pattern of self-harm.
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.
The two fight, breaking a mirror. Nina stabs her doppelgänger with a large shard of glass from the mirror, killing her. The body reverts to Lily. Nina hides the corpse in the bathroom and takes the stage, dancing flawlessly as Odile and seemingly turns into a black swan, her arms covered in feathers.
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.
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." "People tend to be scared of things they don't understand," he said.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
In Black Swan, when Nina visits the previous main dancer, Beth, in hospital, she stabs her face with the nail file, but then Nina sees herself in her. And when Nina runs out, she sees the file in her own bloody hands.
It has now been revealed that Ricky Mitchell, also aged 12, is the father of Lily's baby. Lily ended up telling Ricky the news after she was worried that one of her angry family members would go to him first.
A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight.
