walking in the wind
made of sand, yet
i am.

swim through life as a duck
swims through the river
experiencing every current
and not getting wet

and in silence, reflecting
you show me
my own self.

then one moment, you realize
the mask you put on every day
won’t come off
the mask has become your face.
what is your reality?

- x - x - x -

but you still breathe the same air
wake up to the same sunshine

The film starts with an efficiently executed survey of the cliches of ballet: Nina (Portman), the young New York ballerina, lives with her mother, and lives out her mother’s dreams as she gets selected in an audition for the lead role in a new staging of Swan Lake. Her mother was once a ballerina too, but then she had Nina instead. In penance, Nina must live as her “sweet girl” in a pink room full of stuffed toys and breakfast on grapefruit. Ballerina toes bleed in gruesome close-up; the artistic director, suitably arrogant and French (Vincent Cassel as Thomas Leroy), gropes and kisses Nina. Beth (Winona Ryder), the previous star, now apparently too old, has been retired and is jealous.

Swan Lake, the ballet, has a plot as superficial or deep as you want it to be, like many works of classical ballet and opera. Princess Odette is cursed by an evil sorcerer and turned into the White Swan; she can be freed from this curse by true love, on cue arrives Prince Siegfried. Several distractions later, as the prince is about to declare his love and free Odette from the curse, he is seduced by an impostor, the sorcerer’s daughter, Odile: the Black Swan. The White Swan appears, but it’s now too late; cursed forever to remain a swan, she drowns herself. The prince, deceived and despairing, joins her.

The film eschews the ballet’s character names, preferring the colours that fill its visual palette (along with blood-red). This makes sense, as the new production requires Nina to play the role of both White and Black Swans. This frigid, pure, virginal, “sweet girl” does the White Swan justice. Thomas thinks she is technically perfect (a concept illustrated in this clip by the Bolshoi); but Nina needs more sensuality and seduction to play the Black Swan. “Homework assignment: touch yourself” Thomas advises, and the groping, in this light, could be seen as pedagogical.

The Black Swan is not merely passionate, she is Evil; less seductress than succubus. As we realize this, the plot of the film seems to merge with Swan Lake itself, turning brilliantly insane. In what one might call involuntary method acting on steroids, Nina sees the spirit of the Black Swan all around her, in the form of Beth, her own mother, and Lily. Played by Mila Kunis, Lily is Nina’s alternate, a sensual, seductive (and to Nina’s eyes, Evil) ballerina visiting from San Francisco. Nina’s visions, which we are invited to share and find bewitching, irresistible, seep through the film in drops of blood and black feather barbs, as she tries or is compelled by some unknown force (”the only person standing in your way is you”, says Thomas) to live out her dream role. By the third act of the ballet’s opening night, Nina emerges as the Black Swan in a thrilling performance to a roaring audience: her transformation is complete.

She has become a true dancer; she is able to morph into the White Swan for the final act without much difficulty. But the ballet and the film come to a close in a shattering climax that the viewer knows, by now, is inevitable. It is the only ending that can render this performance of life and art, in Nina’s words, “perfect”.