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.
It's excessive and psychologically imprecise, coarse where it should be refined and too much like a David Cronenberg horror movie in places where restraint and intellectual rigor are called for. Black Swan is a stage door melodrama putting new spins on cliches as old as "All About Eve" (and maybe Adam).
Black Swan is a dark psychological horror film that delves into the world of ballet, mental health, and the price of success. The intense pressure and obsession for perfection leads the main character, Nina, into a state of hallucinations and mental strain.
“I really just wanted to walk out,” says Sara Mearns, remembering when she saw Black Swan in theaters. Like Nina, Mearns is a principal dancer at New York City Ballet. “Everything that she was going through was completely wrong and opposite of what I had gone through and what I think every ballerina goes through.”
The BBFCinsight for Black Swan notes that it 'Contains strong sex, strong language and bloody images'. The expanded version gives further information on these issues. Black Swan was passed at the same category for its DVD release, and selected for the 2011 National Schools Film Week.
Let's Talk About the BLACKSWAN Fatou and Leia Bullying Allegations
What mental disorder does the girl in 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.
Subtle elements like the scratches on Nina's back and the prolonged damage to her feet represent the scary reality of being a ballerina, but the movie also slowly ratchets up the body horror as things go on.
Can child stars go on to credible careers? With her Ivy League credentials and a performance in Black Swan that's put her in line for an Oscar, Natalie Portman proves it can be done... At 29, Natalie Portman has already been in the business a long time.
Soon after the L.A.-based Kunis was cast in "Black Swan," the film's choreographer, Benjamin Millepied, contacted the Los Angeles Ballet's artistic directors and asked if they could provide Kunis with ballet training. Instead of taking on the task themselves, they recommended Blacker for the assignment.
Swan Lake doesn't end well. Thinking she is his Odette, Prince Siegfried swears his love for Odile, both destroying his future with the Swan Queen and dooming her to death. In most productions, the prince, distraught, commits suicide by jumping into the lake.
Nina's disordered relationship with her roommate mother Erica, played by Barbara Hershey, sets the stage for Nina's psychological breakdown. Erica is narcissistic, spending all of her time painting pictures of herself and completely infringing on Nina's space and well-being.
It is, though, far from being the whole truth. The “Black Swan” screenplay has surely been prompted by a number of dancers' memoirs — Gelsey Kirkland's 1986 best seller, “Dancing on My Grave,” is just the most famous — to convey its neurotic version of the internal life of ballet.
However, mirrors also reveal Nina's hallucinations and delusions, as she sees herself as a swan, a monster, or someone else. Mirrors also represent Nina's rivalry with Lily, who is her mirror image in many ways. Lily is everything that Nina wants to be but also fears to become.
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.
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.
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.
Kunis had never had any previous experience in ballet, but trained for three months in order to "fake it." Kunis acknowledges that she got "crazy thin," as Stern puts it, weighing about 95 pounds. "I didn't starve myself," Kunis, who's 5' 4," stresses. "I did do it in the healthiest way possible.
Did Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis lose weight for Black Swan?
Already lean, Kunis dropped 20 pounds in order to play Natalie Portman's ballerina frenemy in "Black Swan." At 95 pounds, Kunis says "I was muscles, like a little brick house, but skin and bones." Unfortunately, when she gained the weight back, Kunis says it ended up in completely different places.
How much dancing did Natalie Portman really do in Black Swan?
In a written statement, "Black Swan" director Darren Aronofsky said, "Here is the reality. I had my editor count shots. There are 139 dance shots in the film -- 111 are Natalie Portman untouched. Twenty-eight are her dance double 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.
The 39-year-old actress - who plays the supporting role of ageing ballet dancer Beth MacIntyre in the Darren Aronofsky-directed project - found being nasty to its lead star Natalie Portman tough because she knew how much she had worked to perfect the role of psychologically-troubled Nina.
Portman has two of her own children with her husband, Benjamin Millepied; Aleph and Amalia. Natalie Portman doesn't think children should work in Hollywood. "I feel it was almost an accident of luck that I was not harmed, also combined with very overprotective, wonderful parents," Portman explained.
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.
An example of a lateral sprain appears to occur in “Black Swan” when Nina is practicing her choreography on the tips of her toes, rolls her ankle out and hears a “pop” noise. Pain and swelling in the ankle also occur at this point.
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.
