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Black Swan

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Black Swan
Reaction Paper on the film, “Black Swan”
Anonymous

The movie, Black Swan, is about Nina, a ballerina whose life is consumed with dance. At the beginning of the film, the company where she belongs to is preparing to open the season with Swan Lake. Like any other ballet dances, Swan Lake has a story - it is about a pure and sweet girl trapped in a swan’s body and the only way to break the spell is true love.

Nina lands the role of the Swan Queen – but, the role of the Swan Queen requires a dancer who can play both the White and the Black Swan. The White Swan is an epitome of control, grace, and innocence. Contrary, the Black Swan requires the dancer to dance freely and lose inhibition. The two roles are complete opposites of one another; thus, this becomes the dilemma of the heroine. The leading actress played a role of a ballerina who trained and danced classical ballet all her life. Therefore, she has been perfecting moves that require precision, grace, and control – due to this, she fitted the role of the White Swan perfectly. Unfortunately, she had a hard time personifying the role of the Black Swan.

Nina portrayed the difficult life of a ballerina. She has been training and dancing all her life with one goal in mind – to be the lead dancer of a production. The difficult lifestyle of ballerinas were depicted in certain scenes. There was a scene in the movie showing how minimal her food intake is during breakfast – this implies that ballerinas maintain a strict diet in order to achieve the typical dancer’s slender physique. Additionally, a scene showed how ballet shoes are adjusted to perfectly fit the dancer’s feet; the scene was followed by a clip where dancers where literally dancing on the tips of their toes. The film also depicted the struggles of dancers; the competitive nature of dancers leads to desperation – in the film, the dancers would do anything to land a leading role.

For the highly disciplined Nina, losing control is an unfamiliar

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