You mean this?
Nina Sayers / The Swan Queen…Natalie Portman
Lily / The Black Swan…Mila Kunis
Thomas Leroy / The Gentleman…Vincent Cassel
Erica Sayers / The Queen…Barbara Hershey
Beth Mcintyre / The Dying Swan…Winona Ryder
David / The Prince…Benjamin Millepied
Veronica / Little Swan…Ksenia Solo
Galina / Little Swan…Kristina Anapau
Madeline / Little Swan…Janet Montgomery
Andrew / Suitor…Sebastian Stan
Tom / Suitor…Toby Hemingway
Sergio / Rothbart…Sergio Torrado
I did not - what was revealed?
Probably what I posted. The biggest clue that symbolism is going on is that Mila Kunis is credited as the Black Swan. In effect, I’m guessing that Black Swan is a modern-day retelling of Swan Lake as opposed to a film about a production of Swan Lake.
Having zero knowledge of Swan Lake beyond seeing this movie, I could use a little help on whether this seems to be what Arronofsky intended and how it all fits together.
That was my take on it. The credits just made it obvious.
I don’t know much about ballet, but I do know the basic plot of Swan Lake and Black Swan isn’t that close to it. There are certainly similarities, but it’s not just Swan Lake set in modern times. I was about to type out a summary of the ballet, but I don’t think I’d do a better job than Wikipedia already has. You’ll see from Wiki that the characters in Black Swan don’t precisely match up with the ballet roles listed in the credits. For instance, “The Queen” in the ballet is the prince’s mother, but Erica Sayers (Barbara Hershey) is Nina’s mother. Beth McIntyre (Winona Ryder) is listed as “The Dying Swan”, but there is no separate Dying Swan character in Swan Lake.
In reading reviews I’ve been kind of surprised by how none of the critics mention the literal identity of the “Black Swan” character (her name in the ballet is Odile). I keep seeing things like that the Black Swan is the Swan Queen Odette’s doppelganger or dark twin. It’s not that this is wrong, but in Swan Lake Odile and Odette are literally two different people. Odile is the evil sorcerer von Rothbart’s daughter. Von Rothbart uses magic to make Odile look like Odette and takes her to the ball. The prince is already in love with Odette and the swan curse can be broken if his love is true. When he proposes to Odile at the ball (thinking she’s Odette) this counts as infidelity and Odette is doomed.
ETA: The character of Lily does work pretty well as a version of Odile, since she’s a newcomer who shows up and threatens to displace Nina/Odette.
They are two different characters, but traditionally they are always played by the same ballerina, which is what the whole movie is supposed to be about - one woman having to portray both an innocent, pure maiden as well as a dark, seductive woman.
But I agree that Black Swan is a very loose interpretation of Swan Lake at best. Swan Lake is a pretty traditional fairytale with the predictable idea that a woman’s happiness is completely dependent on being rescued by the man, except in most fairytales the prince either makes the right choice or is given a second chance before the end. It’s really the prince who is the protagonist in the original story.
Yes, I know, but many of the reviews give me the impression that critics think that within the story of the ballet the Swan Queen disguises herself as a sexy Black Swan or that she’s magically transformed into the Black Swan or something.
I’m thinking now that it may make more sense to take the movie as a story about a dancer who becomes over-identified with her role during a mental breakdown.
If this were a closer retelling of Swan Lake or just a movie about a dancer performing in Swan Lake then Nina would not be so preoccupied with Lily. She might consider Lily her enemy, or at least a professional rival, but it wouldn’t make dramatic sense for her to be having hallucinations where Lily transforms into Nina’s doppelganger.
If Nina sees herself as a dancer wants to play the Swan Queen then she knows she has to be able to play the Black Swan too. That will involve getting in touch with a different side of herself. The less inhibited Lily could be a sort of mentor for her there, although she might also be competition for the lead role. However, if Nina is the Swan Queen then the Black Swan isn’t a different side of herself, she’s a totally different person – Lily – who wants to displace and thus destroy the Swan Queen. If Nina is confused about whether she’s playing the Swan Queen or actually IS the Swan Queen then it makes a certain sense for her to be confused about who the Black Swan really is and where Lily fits in. Is Lily the Black Swan, or is the Black Swan a part of Nina? Is Lily a friend, a rival, a mortal enemy, or a stand-in for a part of Nina’s own personality that she’s not sure she wants to embrace? It’s all mixed up in Nina’s mind.
That’s not what I was thinking. I was thinking more along the lines of how O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a modern day retelling of The Odyssey. (Well, modern compared to the source material, at least.) Saying that The Queen is the mother of a different character or that there is no separate “Dying Swan” character is like saying that The Cyclops isn’t a traveling salesman. That’s kinda missing the forest for the trees, y’know?
Black Swan does not strike me as being anywhere near as close to Swan Lake as even O Brother, Where Art Thou? is to The Odyssey.
No, it isn’t. Have you read a summary of Swan Lake? It’s not like I’m saying “Odette isn’t a professional ballet dancer!” In Black Swan Nina’s relationship with her mother is very important. In Swan Lake there is nothing at all about Odette’s mother, and the prince’s mother isn’t that big of a role. Nina’s mother has little in common with the Queen in the ballet except in that she’s someone’s mother. The Queen in Swan Lake is pressuring her son to grow up and get married, while Nina’s mother is apparently determined to keep her a child. If Nina’s mother is analogous to anyone in the ballet it’s probably von Rothbart, although that’s still playing pretty loose with things.
Even in broad terms the plots of Swan Lake and Black Swan bear little resemblance to each other aside from the heroines both dying at the end. There are some shared themes like the heroine feeling unhappy with her body, or a darker, sexier counterpart to the heroine showing up and threatening to displace her, but even there the two stories go in pretty different directions.
Meh. I still think you’re too focused on details, like for example comparing it to how closely O Brother, Where Art Thou? matches The Odyssey. That’s missing the point. It’s possible to retell something in broad strokes without a perfect 1:1 mapping.
Whether Aronofsky was doing this with Black Swan I can’t say, not having read even the summary of Swan Lake.
And I am saying that Black Swan does not, even in broad strokes, retell the story of Swan Lake. It just doesn’t. I’m not sure why you want to argue with me about this, since you have no idea what the story of Swan Lake actually is:
I’m not sure why the idea offends you so much. It seems pretty clear that that’s what Aronofsky was doing based on the closing credits.
Yeah, I personally thought that the movie was incredibly heavy-handed in making this clear even before the credits, which I hadn’t seen until just now. The way I read it, the second set of roles isn’t the role each actor was playing in the film in a figurative sense from the audience’s perspective, it’s the role that actor was playing from Portman’s delusional perspective. I mean, at various points the characters actually turn into their swan incarnations, which obviously wasn’t happening to make it clear that they really were those creatures.
Which is why, in my opinion, calling it a retelling of Swan Lake obscures the main theme that was being played with. It was a retelling of Swan Lake to Portman, but it wasn’t supposed to be one from an observer’s point of view.
I’m really fucking sick of the whole “is this really happening or is the person just going craaaaaaaazy” theme.
I thought the movie was okay. It was a poor man’s David Cronenberg film.
Natalie Portman was HOT though. The girl on girl action was hot, although something about it screamed “I put this in the movie to generate buzz so guys will see it.” In other words, kind of a cheap tactic. But hot.
You’re not sure why I find it annoying that you keep trying to tell me I’m wrong about a story that I know and you don’t? I think you’ve been on this board long enough to figure that out.
Most of the Black Swan performers are credited with both their character’s name and the name of the role they were playing in the production of Swan Lake within the movie.
Excuse me for not reading this as you being an expert on Swan Lake. Also, you still don’t seem to undertand the concept of a modern retelling. A laundry list of details that don’t match is missing the point entirely.
Two of the five primary players (Mila Kunis and Winona Ryder) weren’t given credit for the role they played on the stage production. While 3 of 5 technically qualifies as “most”, I think that’s misleading.
Jimmy’s explanation works for me, though.
Why are you being such a jerk about this? Maybe you’ve forgotten, but you did ASK for people who are familiar with Swan Lake to help you understand how the ballet and the movie fit together. You said you didn’t know anything about Swan Lake except what was in the movie, and I figured that my admittedly less-than-expert knowledge might be of use.
I realize that writing a few posts and linking to a Wikipedia article isn’t a great act of heroism, but when someone offers you the help that you specifically asked for it’s pretty rude to react the way you have here: refusing to look at the external information I provided, dismissing everything else I said, and repeatedly telling me that I’m wrong about a subject that you said yourself you knew almost nothing about.
You are missing MY point entirely if you think the only differences between Black Swan and Swan Lake are minor details. As I have said more than once already, even in broad terms Black Swan does not retell the story of Swan Lake. I did not expect you to just take my word for that, so I linked to a summary for you. (HazelNutCoffee also posted her own brief description.) If you’d read the Wikipedia summary and then come back with a more informed explanation of why you felt Black Swan was indeed a retelling of Swan Lake then I would have been interested to hear it. Yet for some reason you decided you’d rather spend your time telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about than take a few minutes to find out what the story of Swan Lake actually is.
That’s funny, you ignored the very similar explanation I posted yesterday. I guess I really have been wasting my time.
It’s interesting to me to think that if Lily cared to interpret her own life in Swan Lake terms then she might well see herself as the innocent Swan Queen/Odette and Nina as the wicked Black Swan/Odile. It’s difficult to say what Lily’s real intentions were, but if we exclude Nina’s delusions then there’s little evidence that Lily meant Nina any harm or was trying to steal her role. Near the end of the movie she even stops by Nina’s dressing room to congratulate her on her performance. The only bad thing we know Lily did – and it is pretty bad – is drug Nina’s drink, but she does seem to believe she’s doing Nina a favor by helping her loosen up. From Lily’s perspective it’s possible she was just trying to be friendly the entire movie. Meanwhile Nina is behaving erratically and getting angry at Lily about things that never happened.
When Nina doesn’t show up on opening night it looks like Lily is going to get her big break. Then Nina arrives at the last minute and insists that she’s still going to dance the lead role, so Lily is stuck playing Swan #3. Nina even manages to wow everyone with her interpretation of Odile, which is the only part of the role that Lily had been considered better at than Nina. Since the ONLY thing the character Odile does in all of Swan Lake is show up unexpectedly and take Odette’s place at the ball, thus dooming Odette to eternal swan-dom, Lily might understandably feel that if anyone’s the real-life Black Swan it’s Nina.
Fortunately for her own mental health, Lily seems well aware that ballet is not literally her life. And she presumably does get her big break on the next night. Whether Nina really died or not, she’s probably not going to be dancing again soon.
I suppose if we seen Swan Lake as a sort of allegory about how a woman can either be a Virgin or a Whore (oversimplified terms, I know) but she can’t be both, the overall theme of Black Swan might parallel that: Nina is destroyed because she can’t find a way for her virgin/whore sides to coexist - in seeking to discover her dark side, she goes mad. Odette is destroyed because her prince can only choose either the virgin or the whore and he chooses the whore.
I don’t know. For me, a good re-telling of a story has some kind of commentary on the original. Like Angela Carter’s re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood, where she disagrees with the idea that girls always have to be victims to primitive male sexuality. I’m not sure if Black Swan contains any sort of opinion on the themes of Swan Lake. To me, the main theme of Black Swan is that true art requires a level of commitment/brilliance that will eventually destroy the artist, while the main theme in Swan Lake is that of many fairytales - the woman must convince the man to choose her if she is to survive and see a happy ending.
Just some rambling thoughts.
Which is a simplistic and false message, proving to me that Darren Aronofsky is an overrated hack. All he ever does is crank out films with simplistic, after-school-special morals and cliched characters.