It's a film that's almost entirely propped up by Natalie Portman's solo performance. The movie isn't perfect, but Natalie's performance is almost perfect. In the film, Nina, played by Natalie, is a well-behaved girl who likes to pursue perfection in everything, and is the undisputed candidate of the White Swan Princess in the ballet company. However, under the "careful care" of her mother who pursued perfection to the point of being sickly, Nina's spiritual world was already very fragile and full of struggles. Finally, under the stimulation of the dance director Thomas and competitor Lily, the black swan in Nina's heart gradually became more and more powerful, and finally killed the original Nina, the beautiful white swan. When Nina burns her soul on the stage and interprets the most perfect black swan, she is also dancing her own white swan. The movie depicts the whole process of the black swan awakening little by little in Nina's heart in a very nuanced way. First of all, the dream at the beginning of the movie shows that Nina is still a white swan who yearns for perfection, but she is very unconfident. Later, Nina accidentally discovered the scratches on her back, which was the first step to break her perfection, which also indicates that Nina has been struggling in her heart for a long time, and the black swan has always existed. With the intensification of various contradictions in the film and the deliberate induction of the dance director, Nina began to have hallucinations, such as tearing her skin, or blood dripping into the bathtub. This can be seen as a tear in her consciousness, the black swan in her heart trying to break free from Nina's seemingly perfect surface. This kind of tearing at the level of consciousness also brings real pain, but it does not see the real appearance of the wound. In the various subsequent conflicts, envy, jealousy, suspicion and hatred corrode Nina's inner protective wall a little bit. On the night when Nina pinched her mother's finger with the door, the conflict intensified and approached the climax. Another one in her heart gradually broke through the cage in Nina's heart. Various characteristics of black swans began to appear in Nina's surface consciousness. Nina's consciousness Almost devoured by the other self, even the self she saw in the mirror was no longer a human figure, but a black swan with red eyes, black feathers and bird legs. However, at this time, the black swan's occupation of Nina's consciousness has not yet reached its peak. On the day of the performance, when Nina clashed with her imaginary Lily in the dressing room and inserted "Lily" with a broken lens, she actually killed the original self. At this time, Nina finally lost Control, let the black swan completely occupy his soul, however, the original white swan has also been killed and will never come back. In the last performance, the black swan's eyes full of evil and murderousness were captivating, and the pride and arrogant temperament pervaded Nina's body has made us completely unable to find the shadow of the fragile little girl back then.
The film as a whole is not perfect. The editing and switching of many shots are very abrupt, it seems that a story is forced to cut into another scene before it is finished. And the story itself seems to be a little thin if it is only supported by an actor's psychological splitting process. However, Portman's interpretation of the complex psychological change process of this character is quite wonderful, and I believe this film can bring a new breakthrough to her career.
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Black Swan reviews
