Black Swan

I think Darren Aronofsky’s latest psychosexual drama is a type of cinematic metaphor for the shamanic crisis, and Natalie Portman’s character is the initiate. She starts off as a very shy and timid woman. Her voice is very soft and wispy; kind of like a barely audible melody coming from a forlorn flute. She strives for mechanical perfection for herself and for her mother, an ex-ballerina who lives vicariously through her. In order for her to fully become the “black swan,” the shadowy and unbridled character in the ballet, something has to give. For a lack of a better term, Natalie Portman’s character has to “let go”. A catharsis must come.

As the film develops, the audience gets the distinct impression that Natalie Portman’s emaciated character is an inveterate scratcher. This scratching, for the most part, takes place while she is asleep. Symbolically, this scratching must represent the forces of the psychological shadow impinging upon the chrysalis of the persona. I guess some would argue that it is merely a nervous disorder. What I’m saying is the scratching is emblematic of Portman’s unconscious, but slowly surfacing, need for wholeness. (The shadow and the persona must be made one in the crucible of the self. All alchemical progress depends upon the marriage of perceived opposites.)

If the scratching isn’t symbolic of the shamanic crisis, then the hallucinations surely are. The aspects of her psyche that aren’t integrated attack her repeatedly throughout the film. Her jeering reflection mocks her in the dance studio. She hallucinates a steamy sexual encounter with Mila Kunis’ hedonistic character. She even kills Kunis’ chimera with a shard of glass while in the throes of a cathartic hallucination near the climax of the film. All of these hallucinations point towards an impending and inevitable collision between elements in her psyche that were once thought to be antithetical.

When she emerges from her dressing room as the black swan, after she stabs herself while battling the darker elements of her mind, the hallucinations stop. She fully embodies the dark unconscious at that moment. She is fully alive. She is dangerous, sexually and shamanically. Kali is present in her red eyes.

A must see film.