Nina(Natalie Portman) lives with her mother (Barbara Hershey). Her mother is an emotionally mother and suffocates herself and other people especially her daughter. It can be expressed by the makeup and lighting in the movie. Her mother tries to control her harshly, no matter what Nina eats and her nervous habit which is scratching her skin till it is bleeding.
Thomas (Vincent Cassel) who is a
Beth (Winona Ryder) was the first place of the company’s previous ballerina and Nina get her place. Beth suffers mental disorder. The character of Beth is just like Nina’s mother which annoys Nina so much.
Nina is a person like perfect and it makes her health worse and f lose her friendships. Thomas uses sexual abuse and pressure to urge, trying to get her to lose herself in the movie especially her perfection on everything and personality. However, at the end, Nina is not losing herself in the movie but is losing her sense of reality. She cannot define the real and imagination.
“A genre film is one in which the narrative pattern, or crucial aspects of that pattern, is visually recognizable as having been used similarly in onther films” (Solomon,S., 1995) The genre of Black Swan is horror. We can visually see the scared facial expression, tears, from the main character, Nina. Also, we can see the dark lightenings, and hear those sudden “Bomb” sounds.
Black Swan gives me a feeling of opera or dancing genre before watching it. But it is definitely not. The movie has beautiful and attraction scenes for people to watch it although you will be suddenly shocked and horrified by it. Lots of scared scenes such as disgusting hurts, breaking bones, bloody nails, bleeding wounds, appear in the movie. However, it is difficult for audience to define which one is real and which one is Nina’s imagination. So, you want to cover your eyes because of these terrible scenes but you will not do so. The movie is trying to present how stress and emotion can affect people. I think many people have the same pressure as the Nina. Nina is working hard for her dance to be a white swan and black swan as the same time. She has played the reality of the ballet dancers. Dancers want to be the main character in each performance. As a result, they will show their ugly features. The movie has shown the reality of the society. Some people fight for their targets. At the end, they may suffer mental disorder such as split personality like Nina in the movie, or other emotional problem. 
A very detailed summary of the film, with discussion on its genre and central message. The reflection on the impact of stress and emotion deserve our attention. In fact, psychasthenia has become more common in recent years, and mental disorder poses a great threat to our society nowadays.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you may focus on the part of discussion (and reduce the weight on summarizing the plot), to include more specific scenes (and even music, dialogues) to analyze the cultural representations of the film with more concrete examples.
I agree that Black Swan can be classified as a horror film (one of the evidence is I covered my eyes a couple of times and missed some “remarkable” scenes). At the same time, I think it also belongs to other categories such as drama, dance, and even romance. Its genre is quite hybridized which makes the film more sophisticated, and may also help attracting different types of audience.