Аuthor: Isabayeva Madina
Editor: Umerzakova Aigerim
In 1980 the psychologist David Burns described such an interesting and relevant concept for our time as perfectionism - the desire for perfection and the tendency to set high personal standards. Every day, especially in the twenty-first century, there are more and more perfectionists in the world. Such lust in society is becoming a new problem for humanity, and more than once, directors and producers of films have resorted to the idea of showing this dilemma in cinemas. Perhaps one great example for such a demonstration was Darren Aranofsky's Black Swan. The director has created one of the best films of recent years, weaving together seemingly impossible psychedelic and auteur threads into a surprisingly viewable canvas. This is evidenced by Swan's impressive box office receipts in the U.S., and all sorts of awards and nominations from professional and amateur associations and film academies.
Anyway, this movie is not about ballet at all. What does it mean to be perfect in everyone's life? How achievable is perfection these days? Let's deal with the rather tempting questions together.
"Yesterday I had an amazing dream..." is quite a perfect start for a psychoanalytic dissection. Black Swan is quite an interesting film in terms of making a diagnosis and revealing the symptoms of the main character's illness. In the outward form of revealing his view of the individual spiritual life of a person, Aronofsky created the story of the ballerina Nina.
The plot revolves around a production of Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake by a prestigious New York company. The production requires a ballerina to play the innocent and fragile White Swan, for which Nina's character is perfect, but she must also play the dark, seductive and evil Black Swan, whose qualities are best embodied by another ballerina, Lily. To secure her role as the white swan, Nina must enter the character and reveal her deepest underlying feelings of anger, hatred, aggression, and passion, which gradually lead to her own downfall. From here, one notices the complicity in the protagonist's perfect performance.
Perfectionism is now seen as a complex phenomenon in which people, in relation to themselves and others, set high standards that go far beyond what is achievable or even reasonable. In doing so, people strive hard and tirelessly to make enormous efforts for impossible goals and define their own value or the value of others only in terms of success and achievement. It should be noted that in many cases perfectionism does have a useful meaning because it encourages people to work hard and grow personally. Psychology distinguishes between positive (adaptive) perfectionism and negative (pathological, neurotic) perfectionism. The key difference between these two categories is that with pathological perfectionism, a person denies reality, while a person with a healthy life position accepts it. The person with pathological perfectionism expects his path to any goal to be straight and free of obstacles. When the perfectionist encounters setbacks and obstacles on the path of life, he or she experiences deep disappointment and depression. The film is beautifully shot and shows us that perfect perfection can only be achieved by dying. Which is exactly what Nina does.
Nina's character points to her mental disorder, which on closer examination can be identified as schizophrenia. Nina seems to develop the illness because of the problems she faces from her mother, her feelings of inferiority from Lily, and her director's sexual advances toward her, along with her eating disorders and anxiety.
Nina is increasingly portrayed as a black swan in her character, which destroys her with each passing day. It is metaphorical that the character achieves artistic perfection because of the psychological and physical problems that can be faced. According to director Darren Aronofsky, "The film can be seen as a poetic metaphor for the birth of the artist, that is, as a visual representation of Nina's mental odyssey to achieving artistic perfection and the price one pays for it.
While the film does an excellent job of portraying the terror associated with psychosis, it has received a great deal of artistic license. Nina has too many psychological problems. She shows elements of an anxiety disorder with obsessive-compulsive behavior. She also exhibits self-destructive behavior and some signs of an eating disorder. The heroine is addicted to substance abuse and has psychotic disorders, if not outright psychosis. The case could also be made for a personality disorder. It is extremely unlikely that all of these elements could coexist in one person, especially someone acting as a ballerina at such a high level.
Despite this particular criticism, the film does a fantastic job of portraying the struggle with severe psychological illness. Black Swan is a profound and compelling story with outstanding acting and cinematography. The intertwining of this psychodrama with the story of Swan Lake can only be described as brilliant.
