Black Swan; Half a Grapefruit and a Poached Egg

It went perfect. It was perfect.

Black Swan (2010)

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Had I seen this before: Yes

I know it’s been a fairly extended break since my last post but now I can say with some confidence that the cycle of me thinking no one wants to read my silly bullshit right now → me noticing that I am actively seeking out other people’s silly bullshit is about four months, so here we are! I wouldn’t say the current state of things has me wishing for the sweet release of death (if anything my priorities have shifted almost entirely to out-living my enemies), but I am perhaps feeling more intrigued by the sweet release of utterly surrendering to lunacy than usual. As such, this month’s theme is: March Madness (i.e. Slow Descents Into). This won’t be my first foray into the people-unravelling genre (see: Pearl, The Lighthouse, The Witch, The Haunting, Caddyshack) but it will be the first time I’m keeping my eye out for pointers on how to achieve my own blessed alternate reality.

In terms of filmmakers, Darren Aranofsky seemed like a natural starting point for this theme—along with my guy Robert Eggers, he’s one of our top “oh no this person is losing it” auteurs. I could have gone with Pi (math madness), could have gone with Requiem for a Dream (drug madness), could arguably have just re-posted my mother! write-up (intolerability of humanity madness). But when I picture a clean slide from sane to not-so-much, the figure that first springs to mind is Natalie Portman, wearing pointe shoes and grabbing both an Oscar and a future-ex-husband on the way down.

In Black Swan, Portman plays Nina, a tightly-wound ticking time bomb of a professional ballerina who is embarking hopefully on her company’s upcoming season featuring Swan Lake. From the very first scene, we learn a lot about Nina: she has just awoken from a dream that she was dancing as the White Swan, indicating that ballet occupies her mind at all times, sleeping or waking. Despite being near 30, she lives with her mother in what seems to be some degree of arrested development—the way she talks is juvenile in both form and content, and her mother Erica (Barbara Hershey) (cool character name) never addresses her as a fellow adult. Instead, she worries over a rash on her back, gives her encouragement like you would a child, and serves her today’s Eating Disorder Special for breakfast: a poached egg and half a grapefruit. “Oooooh, pretty!” Nina cooes at the fifty calories worth of grapefruit. “So pink!” Now, I say this as someone who loves grapefruit and in fact owns a set of dedicated grapefruit-segment-sawing spoons: this is truly bleak stuff.

Once in her dressing room, Nina listens sadly as the other dancers gossip bitchily about how aged and decrepit prima ballerina Beth is (Winona Ryder, who was 39 when this came out) and how much the company needs a refresh. They are interrupted by the arrival of a new dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis) who definitely does not still live with her mother. Nina, who had seen Lily earlier on the subway, is clearly intrigued by the incongruous brashness of her personality and, let’s be real, the fact that she looks like Mila Kunis. At rehearsal we meet the director Thomas (Vincent Cassel aka that French guy, you know the one). Thomas is a walking sexual harassment suit with a sweater tied around his shoulders.

During a break, Nina overhears Beth reacting very calmly and maturely to what we assume is the news that she will not be this year’s Swan Queen, and in fact is slated for retirement. Just kidding, she is fully trashing her dressing room like the actual diva she is. After Beth stomps away, Nina slips in to the dressing room and marvels at it before pocketing a tube of Beth’s lipstick.

Back in rehearsal, Nina, clad in all white and pink, dances the virginal White Swan. “If I was only casting the White Swan, she’s be yours” oozes Director Slimeball. However, he is concerned that Nina can’t pull off the darker, less controlled Black Swan. Speaking of, Lily (wearing all black, because Darren Aranofsky does not believe in subtle symbolism and I support him in this) suddenly comes in late, throwing Nina off balance and effectively ending her audition. Nina reacts to this by exerting even more control and puking up her three tablespoons of grapefruit juice in the bathroom stall. On the way home, we see Nina’s first hallucination when she passes a woman in all black in a dark alley and briefly sees her own face. The pursuit of the elusive Black Swan inside of Nina is afoot! I’m sure embracing it will only lead to positive things. Back home, Erica overbears overbearingly, tending to Nina’s toe injury, literally tucking her into bed, removing her earrings for her, and winding up a ballerina music box on her dresser. If I tried any of this on my 13-year-old she would think I had lost my mind, but some mother-daughter relationships are just built different.

Nina, desperate to make up for her slightly botched audition, slathers on the lipstick she stole from Beth and timidly approaches the director in the hopes of persuading him that she can dance both parts. He criticizes the way she obsesses over getting every move exactly right but is never able to lose herself or exhibit any passion. “I just want it to be perfect,” Nina says, helpfully elucidating the theme of the film for us. Thomas, radiating a sexual menace that is probably universal but an off-handedness about it that seems particularly French, crams his tongue down Nina’s throat against her will until she bites his lip to stop him. Annnnd…she’s got the part! Thomas decides that bite was a glimpse of the freak flag he had been waiting for Nina to fly because he is extremely professional, boss-wise.

“He picked me, Mommy,” she reports tearfully and co-dependently. “Isn’t this lady like 29?” we think to ourselves with concern. Mommy rewards her with a giant, elaborate pink cake which Nina reacts to as though it were a tray full of rattlesnakes. She’s still digesting that egg from this morning! “Fine,” snaps Erica suddenly, “then it’s garbage.” Nina hurriedly apologizes and lies that the cake looks yummy, then takes a bite with the most pained expression ever seen on a human in close proximity to cake. I start pondering what I could achieve that would earn me a large vanilla cake with strawberry frosting.

Nina moves forward with rehearsals, but is constantly being haunted by something: her own body seems to be falling apart, particularly around the finger and toenails. The rash on her back keeps getting worse. Beth appears suddenly like a jump scare, an angry and ominous vision of Nina’s own discarded future. Lily is always in the background, embodying everything warm and alive and appealing that Nina the ice queen is not. Her mother is never not hovering, suffocating, dressing and undressing her, clipping her nails, watching her sleep. And Thomas is just…being so gross. All the time, so gross.

Nina and Lily go out for the evening over the strong objections of Erica. Lily scarfs a rare cheeseburger, banters sexily with everyone, and offers Nina a pill of what I believe was still called ecstasy in 2010. Nina resists but eventually takes the pill and lightly flirts with 2025 Oscar nominee Sebastian Stan. Once she’s rolling though, Nina only has eyes for Lily, and eventually they return to Nina’s apartment and enthusiastically hook up after a screaming, slapping fight with Erica. In the morning, Nina wakes up late, with no Lily and a seething, silent Erica. When Nina confronts Lily about abandoning her that morning, Lily has no idea what she’s talking about because whoooooooooops that hookup only happened in Nina’s mind. Now, a lot of tough things happen to Nina in this movie including a significant degree of body horror but her crush laughing in her face about the fact that she had a very realistic fantasy about her is easily the worst. I would rather every fingernail I have fall off into a bloody pile at my gnarled ballet feet.

Nina’s hallucinations start ticking up at an increasing rate. Her reflection doesn’t always reflect what she’s doing. Art on the wall seems to come alive. She sees Lily and Thomas having sex—or does she? She sees Beth go crazy and stab herself repeatedly with a nail file…or does she? Wait, why is she later holding a bloody nail file? Eventually, the inevitable: black feathers start emerging from the rash on Nina’s back.

By opening night, both the physical manifestations of swandom and Nina’s glimpses of her own face everywhere are near constant. During a break, Lily confronts her mockingly in her dressing room until Nina shoves her into the mirror and eventually stabs her in the gut with one of the shards. Obviously, the show must go on, no matter whose corpse you have to drag into the bathroom first, and go on it does, as Nina’s eyes turn red and her skin explodes into gooseflesh and then feathers. The timid, porcelain girl is gone forever, but there is still the matter of the murder victim stashed in her dressing room. She shoves a towel against the door to stop the pool of blood and begins to change into her final White Swan form. To say she is surprised when a very much alive Lily knocks on the door to compliment her would be an understatement. So who did she stab?

Ah, well, unfortunately that would be herself. She pulls the shard of glass from her stomach and wipes away her tears, ready for her final, triumphant swan dive. The audience explodes and the rest of the company surround her in support as the blood stain expands across her abdomen. “What did you do??” demands Thomas. But Nina is ecstatic, because she has finally achieved her only goal: “It was perfect.” Everything fades to white, and the Max streaming service suggests that I might also like I, Tonya.

Flavor of madness: Obsessive perfectionism

Closed captioning that lets you know things are going downhill: ECHOED, DISTORTED WOMAN’S LAUGHTER

Is this a Jacob’s Ladder scenario: Not quite but it gets pretty close at the end there

Is this preferable to our current reality: It was a gruesome path to get there but physically becoming a bird seems sick as hell

Half a Grapefruit and a Poached Egg

So pink! I had this as a mid-morning snack after an actual breakfast.

Up next: Let’s. Drink. Some. Milkshakes!