Truth of humanity and a remarkable understanding of perfection

Rating: 10/10 (2 April 2011)

Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman)is an outstanding ballet dancer who has been achieved the significant character white swan in "Swan Lake" and the new character in the performance black swan at the same time. The strong desire of hers of having to get both of these roles contains a carrying of Nina's mothers high expectation in Nina,and meanwhile, this expectation also has stressed Nina out at a level. In Nina's real life, she is a perfect good girl to her mother, at a deeper level, she is perfect in her real life under the moral level of society. In the show, when she is asked to play black swan, she finds herself has nothing in common with this character. However, the desire of playing it making her in a position that she has to push herself to get the character. When she is struggling with these contradictions, another character in the movie Lily caught her attention. Her couch told Nina that Lily is a natural black swan. Ever since Lily appears in her life, her normal and "perfect" life hits a crossroad, and this brings her inner contradiction to the maximum level.
Natalie Portman's acting in this movie is too brilliant to be described by words. During the movie I feel my every single nerve and my entire motion goes up and down alone her expressions.
"Perfection is not only about control, it is also about letting it go."The coach told Nina. Morally, most of people would consider Nina as a perfectly good girl and Lily is a bad girl in dark side. As Nina's mother said:"Where is my good girl?" Nina's mother is almost a control freak that she even willing to control Nina's desire of eating. In the movie, the mother got really angry when Nina refuse to eat the cake right way when she asks her to. When Nina tries to get the character black swan, her mother shows a lot of disappointment about her trying of "letting go". However, on the other side, Nina is trying to make her mother happy and proud by achieving both white swan and black swan. In order to play both of the characters, Nina has to be not so moral as she used to be and she mentally divide herself into two extremely opposite personalities switching between these two roles.
At the end of the movie and the show "Swan Lake", at the backstage, Nina sees herself as Lily in the mirror, and she tried to kill Lily in order to keep her role to play black swan. It ended up that it's all her hallucination when she saw herself bleeding. At the ending of "Swan Lake", the white swan dies, at the same time, Nina is dying. But all she is thinking about is perfection at the last moment.The only thing she said last is "It's perfect. It's perfect." The pure morally perfection is not even a perfection in this movie.