Black Swan

I remember watching Black Swan with a group of friends at about the age of 13, I was traumatized to be honest I don’t think the film was made for 13 year olds, at the age I didn’t appreciate the thought and the depth of the narrative, however watching this now as a 17 year old I’m stunned by the cinematography, the narrative, the character development and the discussion of a mental illness within vivid imagery.

One of the shots that I think is the most compelling to me is the bathroom scene where we first see her pluck a feather out of her back and to the audience we believe that this is what happened she truly did pull out a feather and when her mother appears we are confused as to why she doesn’t believe her daughter however as the film progress we understand that this is a hallucination a vivid image that she can touch and feel to her those feathers are really there as she becomes the character in her ballet.

 

 

Nina who is the main character is in a constant battle for perfection she wants to be the best however her immaturity stops this from happening and the battle between her inner child and the maturity she wants to become however we see external objectifications such as her mother trying to stop her from becoming a women whereas Lily is trying to help her reach her maturity.

 

we explore many different themes through Black Swan but the one that we never realise unless we analyse the film is that all these afflictions are made by herself. Nina is in fact very self centred, the whole film is portrayals of how she views the characters rather than how the character are themselves. this concept is something I very extremely interesting the thought that we can show a whole film through the eyes of one person and never truly realise amazes me these tiny clues we are fed is clever and something that I want to incorporate into my own production, rather than having a simplistic storyline with no depth I want to make sure that my storyline can be explored it can pass of different meanings that others can annotate.

The main message of this film in my opinion is that we are the ones who stop ourselves from achieving perfection and once we let ourselves go we can find that within us.. I would love for Maere to have its own message that’s underlying but can be seen throughout the short film and the viewers walk away probably very confused but understand the message conveyed through the art of film.

One of the most significant ways that this film has contributed to the creation of my short film is through one particular piece of imagery – feathers. Feathers will be incorporated into the mise-en-scene of the short film, a white feather suggests Auroras purity and innocence whereas a black feather suggests her dark impure side, having this piece of visual imagery clarifies to the viewer who is the protagonist and who is the antagonist, but it also allows the viewer to read in to the short film and drawn there own analysis.