BLACK SWAN

Acclaimed director Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 psychological thriller Black Swan includes some key scenes which are worthy of close textual analysis. To do this I shall give a short summary of the plot, followed by an examination of elements contained in these scenes such as camera shots, lighting, mise-en-scene and sound.

Black Swan is the story of a young ballerina named Nina, played by Natalie Portman, whose life is solely dedicated to her dancing profession to the point where she is being driven mad with paranoia and hallucinations. When the director of her the dance company Nina belongs to decides to stage a new production, an updated version of Swan Lake, Nina is desperate to play the lead role of the swan queen. However this role demands the chosen dancer to have the ability to embody the white swan whilst also dancing the part of the black swan. Her director, Thomas, insistently tells Nina that she is perfect for the role of the white swan but to enable her to capture the essence of the black swan she must ‘lose herself’ in the role, something she finds extremely hard to do due to her shy and oppressed nature. Although Nina finally proves herself worthy of the role, she has competition from a new dancer. Lily is free-spirited and sensual, the perfect fit for to dance the black swan. Lily eventually helps to bring out the dark side in Nina, but Nina tortures herself over the fear that she could be replaced. As her personality becomes darker, and her mental problems escalate, she stabs herself in the stomach with a piece of shattered glass during her a break in her opening performance, having mistaken her own reflection for Lily. Whilst being applauded for her sensational final performance of the evening, Nina falls to her death, her last words being: “I’m perfect.”

The first scene which I shall analyse occurs roughly fifteen minutes into the film. Nina is at home where she lives with her mother, Erica, who is consoling Nina in her bedroom after she performed badly at an audition then cut her toes practicing. It is clear from the narrative that Erica is an extremely controlling and suffocating mother, herself a failed ballerina, and this is the first scene in the film which points to the fact that the reasoning behind Nina’s paranoid nature is due to her mother’s attitude. This is also emphasised through the mise-en-scene, which Timothy J. Corrigan refers to as “All those properties of a cinematic image that exist independently of camera position, camera movement and editing…Mise-en-scene includes lighting, costumes, sets, the quality of the acting, and other shapes and characters in the scene.” These elements are an important factor in this scene as the setting of Nina’s bedroom gives us an insight into this way in which her mother controls her. The entire room is co-ordinated in pale pink and white, a symbol of the fragile, virginal character Nina is. The walls are covered in pink and white butterflies, the bed sheets are also pink, Nina wears white pyjamas and the room is full of pink and white teddy bears. While stroking her daughter’s hair, Erica also opens a musical jewellery box which contains a spinning ballerina to the music of Swan Lake. This soft music again hints towards the need for perfection Nina feels. Nina also lies facing away from her mother as she speaks, as further confirmation of her feelings of repression.

The second scene which will undergo exploration occurs when Lily arrives at Nina’s door and invites her out, to which Nina agrees, in continuation from the previous scene mentioned, as an act of rebellion against Erica. The two go to a bar, where Lily puts a pill into Nina’s drink, lowering her inhibitions, and gives the viewer their first glimpse of Nina’s dark side, that of the black swan. As the pair dance in a darkened nightclub, red strobe lights flash, a stark contrast to the pale colours which are such a large part of Nina’s life. These flashes are interspersed with a few quick shots of the image of the black swan, a sign that she is undergoing a transformation. The music playing in the background is loud techno music, which also contradicts the music used throughout the rest of the film, which is scored by Clint Mansell and includes work from the original Swan Lake, but with the addition of Mansell’s signature string instrumentals. These sounds create suspense, tension and a heightened sense of fear to the film, however the inclusion of these contradicting sounds in the club highlight the different side to Nina. As she dances her movements are much more relaxed than the tense posture we are used to seeing, another indicator of her metamorphosis, and again another contrast to the Nina we have come to know. Also in this scene, Erica is constantly calling her phone, although she does not answer, but the fact is that her ringtone is, again, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake theme. Whether or not this ringtone is specifically assigned to her mother is unknown, but it can be viewed as a reference to her home life, and how far away she is from that at this moment.

The technical elements employed by Aronofsky in these scenes have helped him achieve an artistically driven masterpiece, so much so that it has received recognition in the form of many Academy Award nominations, in categories such as best picture and best achievement in direction, as well as a best actress nomination for Natalie Portman. This is well deserved as Portman has taken on a tasking role and created something wonderful. Jeremy G. Butler comments that in previous decades audiences have perceived actors and actresses as “simply the body that held the character’s place on screen. It was the character’s position within a narrative structure that mattered, not the star’s embodiment of the character.” In this case I find this statement to be false, as it would be difficult to imagine this film without her, and is a perfect fit for a film which relies so heavily on the embodiment of one character.

Therefore, in the above analysis, techniques such as editing, sound, lighting and mise-en-scene have been examined to show how these specific scenes inaugurate and conclude uncertainty in the narrative of the Hollywood film Black Swan.