Black Swan (2010) - by Faro

The jittery camera that spends most of the film perched just behind Natalie Portman’s razor sharp shoulders instills us with a profound sense of dread and paranoia that mirrors the emotional state of her character. As we watch her, we fear what she fears. That someone is always just about to pounce on her. Perhaps it is the evil Von Rothbart, perhaps it is her stultifying mother, perhaps it is her lascivious teacher, perhaps it is her decadent rival, perhaps it is her critical audience of which we are a part… but of course it is actually just herself that she fears, and with good reason. Peering over her own shoulder, whispering defeat and deprecation into her own ear, stoking the fire of obsessive perfection that burns like a chemical fire in her belly and eats away at all that is integrated and balanced inside of her. The acrid smoke of that toxic fire clouds her mind, and she is maddened by the constant irritation of it, so she scratches and scratches and scratches at her milk-white paper-fragile skin till she bleeds with hate and envy and fury and it covers her hands and her eyes and she can no longer sense what is real and what is fear and what is sex and what is power.

In the end she achieves the perfection that she desired. There is no longer anyone over her shoulder. The camera comes round to the front and puts her face directly in the center as the thunderous applause radiates like crystalline light thru her skin. She is perfect, she is innocent and wise, the virgin and the whore, she is whole… even if that whole is just a violent juxtaposition of dichotomies that leaves a ragged wound at their juncture.

When we are not obsessed, but rather have the opportunity for calm reflection, we know that art is about struggle and confusion as much as eventual creation. We know that artistic objects are a distinct structure and moment in time as a result of that process. For the obsessive, perfection can only be found when there are no loose ends, no frayed edges, no degradations, no decline… the moment must happen exactly as planned and then end as the curtain falls. Following this logic it is best for the object to also end in that moment, to be a perfect object of art for a moment and then to disappear amidst the applause. This is the danger of caring only for the perfection, rather than loving the struggle that strives to create it. The danger of denying the hot pulpy mess of life for the sharp ice of precision. Yet before we judge her, remember that this is the kind of self-destruction that we always applaud. And remember that she is smiling as the screen goes white…