History WMG / BlackSwan

The girl had just taken ''ectasy'', for one thing, and on top of all of Nina's issues and worries, drugs are never a good recipe for seeing things clearly. Also, after Nina "came to" and ran out of the club, it probably wouldn't be logical that Lily would be able to find her so quickly.

When Nina returns home, Erica never addresses Lily and says nothing like "get the hell out of my house".

More people have died during the Legion's [[TrainingFromHell training process then any other military unit in the world]]. He applied the [[DrillSergeantNasty same ideals]] on the ballerinas that he trained.

I just saw the movie once, so I'm not sure if there's much evidence for this. Erica doesn't interact with anybody but Nina, doesn't ever leave her apartment except for a short shot of her in the audience. Nina isn't ever let in, she always unlocks the door herself. Her scene shooing Lily out of the apartment could be interpreted as Nina answering the door twice to a *real* Lily, or all Nina. She never wakes Nina when she oversleeps, and she's wearing the same thing in every scene she's in. After Nina and Lily's "sex" scene, I think I remember her waking up in her own bed. The only thing I can't account for is calling in sick to the performance.

Ballet is full of harsh and often unrealistic body expectations. Dancers often work themselves to exhaustion or worse, the life expectancy for even the best of careers is often terribly short, eating disorders are all but (explicitly) encouraged, and minorities are pretty much non-existent in the big name companies. The director saw all this happening and decided to make a commentary on it... and it's not exactly flattering.

In fact, it's the story of an attempted inception. When dream entering technology first appeared started, it was a very risky, tenuous business. The only way scientists could explore dreams was to create new personas for themselves - SugarAndIcePersonality Dr. Chiba became [[ManicPixieDreamGirl Paprika,]] to start.\\
This is the story of an American scientist, Nina, trying to build her dream persona - and she manifests as a ballet dancer, because she loves ballet, and always wanted to dance ballet as a child, but she's a [[TechnicianVersusPerformer stiff, methodical, regulated one]], because she's become used to living a [[MeasuringTheMarigolds methodical scientist's life.]] But to Thomas (a more experienced dream enterer, a scientist who dreams he's a Frenchman for reasons yet undisclosed to the general public), that's not enough. Nina's got to fully connect with her Id for her to be successful, in his view. So it's a shared dream between the two of them - with possibly a couple of other people, but the point is, everyone in the film who's trying to hurt Nina actually ''is,'' because they're Projections of Thomas' subconscious. \\
Problem is, Thomas has gotten too much in touch with his ''own'' Id. As he's in control of the dream, he also is lusting after Nina, and Nina is having difficulty handling her own sexual desires/problems. As the dream progresses and gets out of hand, Nina is forced to confront her own childhood traumas and sexual repression, and finally - in an inadvertent gesture that only makes sense to Creator/OscarWilde - she finds a way to die in the dream. She dances a perfect, amazing Black Swan, and then dies, waking up, leaving Thomas and his sick world behind.

Beth was a famous ballerina who got into a car accident and received a permanent injury on her leg. Her career is ''ruined'' and she has no-one to blame but herself, so she invented the story of a girl named Nina Sayers who honed in on her territory- just so she'd have someone to be mad at... Nina never existed.

Before Lily made the trek from San Francisco to New York, she did some extra research on the other soloists (easy enough in this day and age) to see who is her biggest competition. She knew that Nina was probably it, and upon arriving, discovered that she was going to be easier to break than she thought. Lily interrupted Nina's audition on purpose, was the one who wrote "Whore" on the bathroom wall, and was lying about not spending the night with Nina, etc. None of this was to drive Nina to suicide or anything, but it was just to get her stressed out enough to make major mistakes, miss performances, etc. Listen to how Lily cries out "She was supposed to be sick!" when Nina shows up at the performance after all. Things did ''not'' go according to plan. However, [[EvenEvilHasStandards Lily is genuine]] when she offers her congratulations during Nina's performance, and when she sees Nina's injuries at the end, she is horrified that her ruse went so far.

Besides offering her Ecstasy in the nightclub, what did Lily actually do to her? She's very well meaning nice and even sticks up for Nina when she notes her distress. I think she feels really bad for her and sees how repressed she is and offers up her friendship because of these reasons.

Every time Lilly tries to get Nina to stop performing {{Theater/Swan Lake}}, she's really doing it to save Nina from the brink of insanity. However, when Lilly had her first breakdown she never had anybody else protecting her from it, and didn't ever realize that Nina's going even more insane. When Lilly freaks out at her being sick, she isn't mad but scared for Nina's safety. and when Lily congratulates Nina in the dressing room, she thinks that Nina may have finally gotten a hold of herself.

Beth and Thomas obviously had a very intimate relationship, possibly very crucial to her getting the role of lead dancer. Thomas kicking her out of the company would be her opportune moment to bring forth sexual harrassment charges against him. Luckily for him, she winds up in the hospital, badly injured, mentally unsound, and potentially suicidal. If she tried to press charges now, who would believe her?

* This one's too good not to be intentional. Nina steals the red lipstick from Beth only a few scenes before, and then we see her decide to wear it when she goes to ask Thomas for the part. Thomas kisses her, she gets the part, and she feels like a whore. Later, she enters the bathroom alone so she can call her mother, and perhaps sees the lipstick in her handbag when reaching for her phone. She's reminded that she'd wore it with the intent of influencing Thomas, and labels her reflection accordingly. Also note that Nina very briefly glances at the mirror just before making the call.

During his first speech, Thomas Leroy says that he wants to do a revolutionnary modern version of the Swan Lake, and I think the film actually is that version.

Here one of the creative touch of the movie is on the casting of the black swan. In the beginning all leads to think it's Lily (Nina's darker twin in many ways, and she even sleeps with the prince... maybe), but it seems to actually be Dark!Nina herself, who takes a kiss from Thomas in the end.

Nina slowly goes insane, and develops at least some psychotic tendencies- plus how awesome a villian name would "the Black Swan" be? She may or may not have swan related VoluntaryShapeshifting powers.

Okay this may be stretching it a bit but think about it, the movie lays it all in front of us, the white swan and black swan are [[ActingForTwo played by the same ballerina]], but the white swan is supposed to be pure- while the black swan is ''nothing'' like the white swan! This comes up several time throughout the movie- and Nina at the end of the movie [[TheHeroDies kills herself]]. The white swan and black swan are [[SplitAtBirth different personalities]] who can't coexist within the same body- and thus a conflict of whoever is in control takes place! Should she stay the black swan or the white swan, the white swan hates the black swan- because she steals everything away from her... So Nina responds by killing her, thus killing herself, [[FridgeBrilliance just like the white swan in the original ballet]]!

# Despite his interest in doing a radically different version of Swan Lake and his conviction that Nina and Lily perfectly embody the Odette and Odille respectiely, the director never considers splitting the role in two, which is commonly done.

# Lily's interest in Nina is one sided and out of nowhere; we never see a real friendship between them, only Lily showing up and dragging Nina into various questionable activites.
# Like Erica, the director also refers to Lily as "nobody" at one point in the film ("nobody's trying to steal your role").
# The director's obsessive interest in bringing out the black swan in Nina would make more sense if he'd actually seen some Black Swan potential in Nina's dancing; if Lily's actions are actually Nina's, then it would imply Nina's Black Swan is frustratingly inconsistant, not flat out hopeless.

# Lily is cast Nina's understudy improbably late into the production. Veronica was the actual understudy from the beginning.

According to Natalie Portman, Darren Aronofsky chose the placement of the blood on Nina's dress to make it resemble menstruation, so that it would symbolize [[ComingOfAgeStory Nina becoming a woman]]. As someone noted above, it seems unrealistic Nina could've danced the whole second and third act (if we accept that Nina stabbed herself at the exact moment when she imagined stabbing Lily) without anyone noticing the bleeding. Also, it seems too convenient that the wound only starts bleeding heavily when the White Swan dies. Therefore, the wound either doesn't exist or is much smaller than what Nina thought. (Just like she imagined tearing the skin off her finger and causing a big wound, when in reality it was just bleeding a little.) So Nina doesn't die in the end.

Nina is at constant conflict with her superego, who says she should always remain in control, and her id, who says she should give in to her carnal desires. The superego in the movie is her mom, and the id is Lily. Nina is afraid that Lily, who is more in touch with her base instincts, is better at the role of the Black Swan, which is all about the id. That's why she externalizes her own id to Lily, imagining having sex with her, and fears Lily is trying to steal the role of the Black Swan from her. The mother, on the other hand, is constantly trying to control Nina, and in the end she even tries to stop her playing the Swan Princess, because she thinks Nina is losing her mind due to her role. The mother, therefore, is the superego, always keeping Nina in control and not letting her lose herself to her instincts. Because Nina has externalized both her superego and her id, she cannot grow up. She remains a little girl who can't take control of her own life or become a sexual being; that is, she cannot become an adult woman.

In order to grow up Nina needs to accept her superego and id as internal to her, and symbolically "kill" their external representations. She first does this to the mother, attacking her and saying she is moving out. (Significantly, she attacks her hands. The mother in the movie is sort of a puppetmaster, and she uses her hands to paint pictures of Nina, thus recreating Nina in the way she wants her to be. Breaking the mother's fingers is a symbolic attack against her control.) Then she does it to Lily, stabbing her. Only after she has done these things can she fully become the Swan Princess. It's important to notice that after Nina has stopped externalizing parts of her own psyche to other people, the mother and Lily are no longer her "enemies". Lily comes to Nina's room to praise her performance as the Black Swan (the role Nina feared she would steal from her), and her mother is seen in the audience, looking ecstatically at Nina's performance of the role she previously feared would consume her daughter. This means Nina's superego and id have become part of her, and they're not represented by other people anymore. She has finally become a grown-up woman, and this is symbolized by the blood on her dress, resembling menstrual blood. Nina doesn't die in the end of the movie, but is reborn as a mature human being, as someone who can reconciliate her need for control and desire to let it go.

Everything happens more or less as the movie shows from Nina perspective. The weird things are hallucinations, triggered by extasis, sleep deprivation and stress. The movie shows how Nina matures. At the start, Nina is a insecure ballet dancer, with mommy issues, a childish and insecure young woman. The movie shows how she externalize their fears and hopes relating to be an adult, in a alucinatory doppelganger, and later projects it all onto Lilly. Finally, after the murder hallucination, Nina embraces her "dark side" (or, maybe, a sexual unrepressed identity) and come into adulthood, or perfection, integrating both sides in herself. At the end of the movie, she simply faints due exhaustion, and the blood was another hallucination- meaning their nirvana was like deathwish.

Nina is bulimic, compulsively picks at her skin, and hallucinates from early on in the film. Her mother may be overwhelmed, frustrated, and scared at what is happening with her daughter, but she isn't unhealthily controlling; she's taking care of her mentally ill daughter to the best of her ability. Nina's bedroom door doesn't have a lock because Nina is prone to self harm. Her mother clips her nails because people who compulsively pick sometimes seriously injure themselves (alluded to in some of Nina's more gory hallucinations). Rather than pushing her daughter to go for the biggest roles in typical StageMom style, Erica actually tries to talk her daughter out of competing for the Swan Queen, concerned about the amount of stress the role will put on her unstable daughter -- rightfully, as it turns out. She's only overbearing from Nina's point of view, and that's because Nina believes she can take care of herself when in reality, she requires a guardian.

Beth is what Nina will become when she gets older: bitter, clingy, still mentally imbalanced.

The world of professional ballet looks nothing like what we see in the movie because it isn't one: it's a ballet school, Thomas is an instructor, and the ''Swan Queen'' production is a one-night performance by students. That's why she has a little girl's room, that's why she's only now discovering her sexuality, that's why she's able to land the top spot in a highly competitive ballet despite being timid and meek, that's why her mother coddles her like a child, and that's why she's expected to dance both roles without that being considered overly taxing or potentially harmful: she's probably only fourteen or fifteen years old. Nina ''imagines'' her ballet school as a professional company because it is the only thing her mother allows her to do with her life; she doesn't go to school or have friends, and her relationship with Lily is perfectly normal (if extreme) teenaged rebellion and experimentation. This would mean that part of the reason why Erica was reluctant to let her daughter go out; she is underage.

With Nina, he saw a girl who was easy to take advantage of, but not experienced nor enthusiastic sexually. In giving her the dual role of the swans, Thomas is killing two birds with one stone: shaping her into a more suitable dancer for the role, and preparing her for his relationship with her. He purposely abuses her verbally and sexually to cause a high stress level in her, hoping one day she'll snap. He just hadn't intended it to be so soon, before he could actually do anything with her.

His motive is to cover his own tracks. It's strongly implied that he seeks out sexual favors in return for giving dancers lead roles. The stress always gets to them, one way or another, and they snap. The authorities are less likely to believe the sexual harrassment accusations if they're mixed amongst the ramblings of emotionally unstable suicidals.

Really I don't feel like Lily is ever mean spirited at any point, and always seems very supportive. She just seems like an amazingly nice, very genuine girl who wants to help Nina. Nina and her probably would make really good friends, with Lily helping her come out of her shell if it wasn't for the fact that Nina's pretty paranoid and decides Lily's after her. Lily didn't have to take such interest in her and try to to talk to her in the bathroom and she certainly didn't have to comfort her after her sexual harassment from the director. She even takes Nina's whole sex delusion pretty well, just teasing her about it and not even being weirded out or being cruel. The only point in the movie where we see(rather hear) anything mean from her torwards Nina is when Nina is half crazy and getting ready for the show, so that may have been hallucinated. Unless Lily is a master manipulator and damn good actress, I'm pretty sure she wasn't just playing to take Nina's role.

Every time Lilly tries to get Nina to stop performing {{Theater/Swan Lake}}, she's really doing it to save Nina from the brink of insanity. However, when Lilly had her first breakdown she never had anybody else protecting her from it, and didn't ever realize that Nina's going [[UpToEleven even more insane]]. When Lilly freaks out at her being sick, she isn't mad but scared for Nina's safety. and when Lily congratulates Nina in the dressing room, she thinks that Nina may have finally gotten a hold of herself.

[[WMG: The enrite movie takes place in Film/TheMatrix.]]

Before Lily made the trek from San Francisco to New York, she did some extra research on the other soloists (easy enough in this day and age) to see who is her biggest competition. She knew that Nina was probably it, and upon arriving, discovered that she was going to be easier to break than she thought. Lily interrupted Nina's audition on purpose, was the one who wrote "Whore" on the bathroom wall, and was lying about not spending the night with Nina, etc. None of this was to drive Nina to suicide or anything, but it was just to get her stressed out enough to make major mistakes, miss performances, etc. Listen to how Lily cries out "She was supposed to be sick!" when Nina shows up at the performance after all. Things did ''not'' go according to plan. However, [[EvilEvilHasStandards Lily is genuine]] when she offers her congratulations during Nina's performance, and when she sees Nina's injuries at the end, she is horrified that her ruse went so far.

2. It wasn't consensual. Nina was either outright raped, or coerced into sex by someone with authority over her. Nina still feels ashamed, despite it not being her fault, and it's possible she never told anyone about it, so most people assume her discomfort with sexuality is solely a result of immaturity and/or being frigid, hence why people think she's a virgin. The perpetrator was likely an instructor or teacher, or maybe even her [[IncestSubtext own mother]] -- hell, it's even possible it was Thomas, which adds another, nastier, darker layer to the scene where he asks if she's a virgin. Considering his frequent sexual assaults towards her, and possibly other dancers, it's not impossible. It's also possible Nina was very young at the time (anywhere from pre-pubescent to a young teen), and ''couldn't'' consent, and depending on ''how'' young she was, maybe not even understand how sex and consent works. If she never told anyone, she'd probably still have a ''lot'' of issues from it. Or maybe she ''did'' tell, and that's part of the reason why Erica is ''so'' smothering and overprotective.

[[WMG:The entire story is taking place in Beth's mind.]]

Beth was a famous ballerina who got into a car accident and received a permanent injury on her leg. Her career is ruined and she has noone to blame but herself, so she invented the story of a girl named Nina Sayers who honed in on her territory so she'd have someone to be mad at. Nina never existed.

Before Lily made the trek from San Francisco to New York, she did some research on the other soloists (easy enough in this day and age) to see who is her biggest competition. She knew that Nina was probably it, and upon arriving, discovered that she was going to be easier to break than she thought. Lily interrupted Nina's audition on purpose, was the one who wrote "Whore" on the bathroom wall, and was lying about not spending the night with Nina, etc. None of this was to drive Nina to suicide or anything, but it was simply to get her stressed out enough to make major mistakes, miss performances, etc. Listen to how Lily cries out "She was supposed to be sick!" when Nina shows up at the performance after all. Things did not go according to plan. However, Lily is genuine when she offers her congratulations during the performance, and when she sees Nina's injuries at the end, she is horrified that her ruse went so far.

[[WMG: Lily has gone through the same mental breakdown as Nina]]
Every time she tries to get Nina to stop performing, she's really doing it to save her from the brink of insanity. However, when she had her breakdown she never had anybody protecting her, and didn't realize that Nina's going even more insane. When she freaks out at her being sick, she isn't mad but scared for her. and when Lily congratulates Nina in the dressing room, she thinks that Nina may have finally gotten a hold of herself.

Note the shadow near the end.
* You mean the part where it shows Nina completely normal and that the shadowing was only a visual effect for the audience of the ballet and that she was hallucinating becoming a swan?

Okay this may be stretching it a bit but think about it, the movie lays it all in front of us, the white swan and black swan are played by the same ballerina, but the white swan is supposed to be pure while the black swan is nothing like the white swan. This comes up several time throughout the movie and Nina at the end of the movie kills herself. The white swan and black swan are different personalities who can't coexist within the same body and thus a conflict who is in control takes place. Should she stay the black swan or the white swan, the white swan hates the black swan because she steals everything away from her, so Nina responds by killing her, thus killing herself, like the white swan in the original ballet.

According to Natalie Portman, Darren Aronofsky chose the placement of the blood on Nina's dress to make it resemble menstruation, so that it would symbolize Nina becoming a woman. As someone noted above, it seems unrealistic Nina could've danced the whole second and third act (if we accept that Nina stabbed herself at the exact moment when she imagined stabbing Lily) without anyone noticing the bleeding. Also, it seems too convenient that the wound only starts bleeding heavily when the White Swan dies. Therefore, the wound either doesn't exist or is much smaller than what Nina thought. (Just like she imagined tearing the skin off her finger and causing a big wound, when in reality it was just bleeding a little.) So Nina doesn't die in the end.

Everything happens more or less as the movie shows from Nina perspective. The weird things are hallucinations, triggered by extasis, sleep deprivation and stress. The movie shows how Nina grow ups. At the start, Nina is a insecure ballet dancer, with mommy issues, a childish and insecure young woman. The movie shows how she externalize their fears and hopes relating to be an adult, in a alucinatory doppelganger, and later project it into a Lilly. Finally, after the murder hallucination, Nina embraces her "dark side" (or, maybe, a sexual unrepressed identity) and come into adulthood, or perfection, integrating both sides in herself. At the end of the movie, she simply faints due exhaustion, and the blood are another hallucination meaning their nirvana like deathwish.

* Alternately...

[[WMG: ''Black Swan'' actually takes place in the universe as ''{{Inception}}'' - and ''{{Paprika}}'']]

Problem is, Thomas has gotten too much in touch with his ''own'' Id. As he's in control of the dream, he also is lusting after Nina, and Nina is having difficulty handling her own sexual desires/problems. As the dream progresses and gets out of hand, Nina is forced to confront her own childhood traumas and sexual repression, and finally - in an inadvertent gesture that only makes sense to OscarWilde - she finds a way to die in the dream. She dances a perfect, amazing Black Swan, and then dies, waking up, leaving Thomas and his sick world behind.

# Lily is first introduced when Nina is first asked to dance the black swan (during her audition).

The only time they really kiss is backstage after Nina dances the black swan, her confidence at an all-time high and her recklessness unchecked.