Black Swan: The Price of Perfection

By Katia

Before you read this piece, there WILL be spoilers if you haven’t seen the film. This is your warning. In this piece, we’ll be exploring the further logic and analysis of Black Swan. 

What Does it take to be perfect? At what point does perfection turn intoxicating?  My first watch of Black Swan was horrifying. I was genuinely horrified at this film. Black Swan is a terrifyingly stunning film. Watching this film, you are exposed to a intense passion. Nina is obsessed. She wants nothing more than to be the perfect “Swan”. Although we see this strive for perfection, her constant efforts to practice and perfect, we know there is an underlying sense of impending disaster and failure. While she is obsessed with the role, her superior is telling her to be authentic. 

Authenticity in portraying the Swan Queen/Black Swan is something that is extremely difficult to achieve for Nina. In my opinion, there was no way Nina was going to portray the role she had envisioned without giving in to her delusion, paranoia, and obsession. She can’t be authentic. There are far too many impacting influences on her life that sway her in a lost direction. Her mother, wants her to be a perfect dancer, living out her lost dream, a dream she lost when she had to raise Nina. Her instructor and director Thomas also wants this perfection, but with a further sense of authenticity with the role. Her fellow ballerina Lily, is her competition, yet becomes her friend. This friendship is confusing yet influential on Nina. Not only is she a subject of Nina’s illustrious hallucinations, but she seems so influence her actions in a negative sense. The scene in which Lily pressures Nina into drinking, doing drugs, and partying is so out of her character by perception of the audience, but do we truly know who Nina is? Although she has all these intruding influences on her, is Nina’s biggest obstacle herself?

Throughout the film, there seems to be reoccurring shots of the back of Nina’s head while she’s walking or standing or dancing. I see a connection to these shots and Nina letting her hallucinations and paranoia getting in the way of her dream. As Thomas says to her, “The only person standing in your way is you.”. While there were still many people straying her from her dream and her sanity, Nina’s downfall is brought upon her by herself. Although, this isn’t necessarily a downfall for her. 

In a delusion, she stabbed who she thought was her friend/enemy with a shard from the broken mirror in her dressing room, but in reality, she stabbed herself. In her final performance, she falls back on the mattress, bleeding out from her stomach and utters this, “I felt it. Perfect. It was Perfect.”. Nina knows she is dying, but she also knows she achieved her dream. She was the perfect Swan. She is dying, yet she is content. She was focused on nothing else but her dream. She found perfection.

As always, film is subjective, everyone has their own interpretations of the meaning of a film. Black Swan is such an illustrious film, from the outside, it seems like a complicated film to understand, but really, it comes full circle in the end. The story is brilliant and it’s creative elements amplify the film all the more perplexing and encapsulating. The film has intensity in every act. If you want to fear mirrors for the rest of your life, watch Black Swan.