Fighting the double

Rating: 9/10 (12 December 2010)

The pervasive theme in this film is the struggle one has with their own shadow... It becomes clear that Nina is trying to embody the puritanical mode of being, yet disavowing her dark side.. but the latter provides an overwhelming resistance as time passes, showing itself in sublimated manners, as it tries to free itself. Clawing away at her skin consistently is an indication of this destructive force trying desperately to find liberation. Now, the dance she engages in with this figure takes on interesting contours. The child being seen as the symptom of its parents casts a stronger light on the mother figure, who cries as she paints, who castrated herself in order to obey some greater calling in life, who smacks the daughter who tries to defuse herself from the imposing phallic mother (phallic yet castrated, creating a weird amalgam). If fusion is the tendency, is the norm, can one imposing object be replaced with another? Nina grapples with the notion of fusion or destruction of her double, a self-confident sexualized version of herself; the scene where Nina engages in sexual acts with "Lily" represents the sought-for incestuous bond with her own split off part it could be looked at as her reintegrating herself with her mother, but in a much more psychically-accepting manner, since true incest would be intolerable. The hallucinatory and delusional undertones color the film in a manner which may preclude any definitive interpretations. In a mind-boggling final act, the white swan is enticed by her own darkness, murders the split-off double, allowing fusion of her pure and her destructive/sexual parts when this occurs, it is clear which part predominates, the black swan astounding the spectators with her seductive guise. Reality becomes unbearable, it is made clear Nina, in trying to destroy her primitive projection, was in truth attacking self in fantasy and reality, and she ran back to her psychic haven, which she was familiar with thus the white swan reemerges the autistic self does not regard the outside world, she is pervaded by persecutory internal objects, and she must devise an illusory beautiful self and commit the ultimate sacrifice in order to die the "perfect" death fantasy is consummated, she rids herself in all ways of the lethal forces inside her, but to do so is to die once again as a fused being, in denial of her shadow.