Post #2 Black Swan

When I saw this movie a couple of weeks ago, I remember walking back to my car thinking what a great reason to have a blog-- the opportunity to talk about Black Swan. I mentally asked myself how such a post would start ... Here goes that first thought.

No I am not crazy, but "I get" crazy. That's how Black swan made me feel. No, it's not about ballet or art, though it relates to them in the sense of how we associate their expression with our concept of perfection.

If you've ever "observed'' yourself on the verge of a meltdown or a break from your "normal" you, you might be able to understand Natalie Portman's character's frail grip to reality. I've had many such experiences, not now but as a teenager and young adult. Going into psychoanalysis that first time was not just for the heck of it. I was in dire need of it. Like Natalie's young ballerina, we tend to be so secretive and we have a highly developed sense of what we think is shameful that --at least I never did-- we never dare step out of our tortured psyches.

Natalie's Nina is so intense, hypervigilant and hypercritical that it's truly painful to watch her go through so much that just might be resolved with a good talk. But all around her are all so self-involved that they have no eyes but for their own needs, that it seems evident we will not witness a happy ending. I realized that Portman truly embodied Nina's tormented soul when I saw her become the Black Swan-- her body needed no words to let us know what perfection in art can look like, even if we have to lose ouselves to achieve it. As I said, no I ain't crazy, but I get crazy.