Black Swan

Like Tales from the Crypt, only not.
By Jeff Webb

For Christmas this year, I received the complete series of “Tales from the Crypt” on DVD. As such, I’ve been spending the past few days plowing my way through the episodes. For anybody familiar with the program, you know the basic formula: a man or a woman (usually played by a famous actor) meets his/her demise in a terrible situation often brought about by his/her ambition and greed, the tale of their demise told with both violence and a large dose of gallows humor. Accepting this formula, then, one might just as easily assume “Black Swan” is a “Tales from the Crypt” episode, albeit just ninety minutes longer than the typical half-hour.

The story is simple. Nina, played by Natalie Portman, is selected to play both the white and black swan in her ballet company’s production of “Swan Lake.” She has the innocence part down pat, but in trying to reach the dark part of her soul for the black swan, she struggles, ultimately finding herself consumed by the “evil forces pulling at her,” as one character in the movie says. And though this all sounds dark and foreboding—as well it is—the movie also offers moments of almost absurd comedy, from a random old man masturbating on the subway to Nina waking up one morning and touching herself, unaware until the last second that her mother is sitting in the corner of the bedroom, asleep. In “Tales from the Crypt,” comedy runs wild, suggesting an absurd universe, and, though the comedy is more spread out in “Black Swan,” its effect might be the same: that with all the crying and suffering Nina goes through, there is still something darkly funny about the proceedings, about her pain, suggesting, perhaps, that we all live in a world where God doesn’t help or hurt us, but, worse yet, just simply laughs at us and our struggle to be good. After all, it is Nina’s obsession—and ultimate futility—with being perfect that leads to her downfall. We cannot ever be perfect. To think so is, well, absurd.

Director Darren Aronofsky’s last feature, 2008’s “The Wrestler,” also shared this sort of absurdist comedy, as well as similar themes. However, with “the Wrestler,” the Ram’s tragedy is a result of his own stubbornness, his unwillingness to give up the spotlight. With “Black Swan,” Nina—who does refuse to accept imperfection—is trapped in this lifestyle by many forces: her overbearing mother, her overbearing director, and, most noteworthy, her own troubled mind. From the beginning of the film to the end of the film, the story takes place in Nina’s mind, Aronofsky always keeping the camera close to her face, letting us know it is all revolving around her and because of her. Yes, Nina does dig her own grave, but, at the same time, she really has no escape to begin with. She’s trapped from the beginning, a pessimistic thought that wasn’t present in “The Wrestler” or Aronofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream,” movies where characters are also doomed but doomed, nonetheless, because they refuse to change. Nina is never given the option to refuse. Again, she lives in a cruel universe. Try as she might to improve, she’ll never find any sort of comfort.

Fitting, then, that “Black Swan” is not truly a “Tales from the Crypt” episode, for with the show each episode begins and ends with a humorous segment featuring the wise-cracking Cryptkeeper. It is always a way to remind the viewer that, despite how dark an episode’s ending might be, the show is, in the end, just a form of fun entertainment. “Black Swan,” in the end, offers no such relief. It does not want to remind the audience that it is just a movie, a form of entertainment. It only wants to remind us that the world we live in is probably a world we don’t want to live in. Aronofsky holds a mirror to our pain, but he offers no prescription because, like Nina’s own psychosis, there is ultimately no cure.