Post by Kaz ~;~ on Mar 1, 2011 22:41:19 GMT -5
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Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Produced by
Ari Handel
Scott Franklin
Mike Medavoy
Arnold Messer
Brian Oliver
Screenplay by
Mark Heyman
Andres Heinz
John McLaughlin
Story by Andres Heinz
---------------------------
(Plot Summary)
Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a young dancer with a prestigious New York City Ballet company. She lives with her overbearing mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), a failed dancer turned amateur artist who tries to control much of Nina's life.
Nina's ballet company is preparing for a production of Swan Lake. The director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), has to cast a new principal dancer as the Swan Queen to replace the retiring star, Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder). The lead must be able to portray both the innocent, fragile White Swan and her darkly sensual, evil twin, the Black Swan. Nina is selected to compete for the part alongside several other dancers, including newcomer Lily (Mila Kunis). Thomas does not intend to cast Nina as the Swan Queen. When Nina visits him to request the role, he tells her that her rigid technique makes her ideal for the White Swan, but that she lacks the passion to dance the Black Swan. When he forces a kiss on her, she bites him. Thomas sees her potential and gives her the role.
Thomas presents Nina as his new star during a benefit gala during which he also announces Beth's retirement. On her way out, Nina is confronted by the intoxicated Beth. Beth accuses Nina of giving Thomas sexual favors in order to win the role of the Swan Queen, which brings Nina to tears. Thomas takes Nina to his home and interrogates her about her personal sexual experiences, leaving her very much embarrassed. He also recommends that she get in touch with her body through masturbation. The next day, while rehearsing, Nina learns that Beth jumped in front of a car the previous night, but Thomas tells her that it's not her fault and that Beth is a very dark and dramatic actress.
Nina displays a number of psychotic symptoms, including strong delusions and elaborate visual hallucinations. She begins to feel paranoid that Lily, her understudy, is determined to take the lead away from her. Thomas, meanwhile, becomes increasingly critical of Nina's "frigid" dancing as the Black Swan, and tells her that she should stop being such a perfectionist and simply lose herself in the Black Swan role.
Lily appears at Nina's door and invites her for a night out. Nina is hesitant at first but joins Lily after having an explosive argument with her mother. During the night, Lily offers Nina drugs, which lower Nina's inhibitions. We see Nina become sexually interested in not only the men at the bar, but Lily as well. Upon returning to the apartment, Nina has another fight with her mother. She barricades herself in her room and Nina hallucinates having passionate oral sex with Lily. Nina wakes up alone and late for rehearsal the next morning, and rushes to make it on time. When she enters the studio, she finds Lily dancing as the Swan Queen in her absence. Lily is applauded by the whole cast for her performance. Furious, Nina confronts Lily, and asks her why she did not wake her up in the morning. Lily states that she spent the night with a man whom she met at the club and teases Nina for fantasizing about her.
The night before the ballet's opening, Nina is rehearsing late and continues to experience strong visual hallucinations, such as her reflection acting independently of her and of Lily and Thomas having sex backstage. Before heading home, she visits Beth in the hospital. While there, she tells Beth that she sees Beth as perfect. Upon hearing this, Beth loses control of her anger and jealousy, and stabs herself in the cheek with a nail file. Beth then turns into Nina and starts yelling at her "I'm nothing!" while repeatedly stabbing herself in the face. Nina flees to the elevator with the bloodied file. She drops it and leaves the hospital in shock.
When Nina returns home, she sees herself in the kitchen with a bloody face, dressed in Beth's hospital gown. Nina runs into the bathroom and vomits. She goes into her mother's room and sees her mother's paintings speaking and mocking her, so she rips them off the wall. She also notices that the rash on her shoulder has worsened, with little black barbs poking through her skin. Nina pulls one of the barbs from her skin, and it appears to be a black feather. Nina's eyes appear to turn into reddish swan eyes and her legs violently contort into the shape of a swan's. As she tries to steady herself, she falls and knocks herself out on her bedpost.
Nina awakes the night of the opening performance, locked in her bedroom with her mother. Nina's mother tells her that she called the ballet company and informed them that Nina wasn't feeling well and will not be able to perform. After violently forcing her mother to let her leave, Nina arrives at the theater to discover that Thomas has asked Lily to dance the Swan Queen in Nina's place. Nina ignores this development, prepares for the performance and convinces Thomas that she is able to dance.
The first act goes well until Nina is distracted during a lift by a hallucination and the glare of the overhead lights. The Prince drops her. Distraught, Nina returns to her dressing room and finds Lily there, dressed in the Black Swan costume. As Lily announces her intention to play the Black Swan, she transforms into Nina herself. Nina and her duplicate wrestle. Nina shoves her duplicate into the mirror, shattering it. She grabs a shard of glass and stabs her duplicate in the stomach. Upon realizing what she has done, Nina sees that the body is Lily's. Nina hides Lily's body, returns to the stage and dances the Black Swan passionately and sensually, growing black feathers all over her body, her arms becoming black wings as she finally loses herself and transforms into a black swan. At the end of the act, she receives a standing ovation from the audience, appearing normal from their point of view. When she leaves the stage, she finds Thomas and the rest of the cast congratulating her on her stunning performance. Nina takes Thomas by surprise and kisses him with a seductive power.
Back in her dressing room preparing for the final act, the dying of the White Swan, Nina is interrupted by a knock at her door. She opens it to see Lily, who has come to congratulate her on her performance as the Black Swan. Nina realizes her fight with Lily was another hallucination, but sees the mirror is still shattered. She notices a wound on her body and realizes that she stabbed herself, not Lily. Back on stage, Nina dances passionately and seamlessly as the White Swan. In the last moments of the ballet, when the White Swan throws herself off a cliff, she spots her mother weeping in the audience. The theater erupts in thunderous applause as Nina falls. As Thomas and the rest of the cast enthusiastically congratulate her on her performance, Lily gasps in horror to see that Nina is covered in blood. Though Nina lies wounded and perhaps dying, she is content and satisfied with her performance. The film closes with Nina staring up at the stage lights while whispering "I felt it. Perfect. I was perfect," as the screen fades to white and the audience chants her name.
----------------------------
(Cast)
Mila Kunis was first approached to perform in Black Swan in 2008. She and co-star Natalie Portman spent six months training and toning their bodies before filming began.
Natalie Portman as Nina Sayers/The Swan Queen
Mila Kunis as Lily / The Black Swan
Vincent Cassel as Thomas Leroy/The Gentleman
Barbara Hershey as Erica Sayers / The Queen
Winona Ryder as Beth MacIntyre/The Dying Swan
Benjamin Millepied as David
Ksenia Solo as Veronica
Kristina Anapau as Galina
Janet Montgomery as Madeline
Sebastian Stan as Andrew
Toby Hemingway as Tom
Sergio Torrado as Sergio
(Casting)
Aronofsky first discussed with Portman the possibility of a ballet film in 2000, and he found she was interested in playing a ballet dancer. Portman explained being part of Black Swan, "I'm trying to find roles that demand more adulthood from me because you can get stuck in a very awful cute cycle as a woman in film, especially being such a small person." Portman suggested to Aronofsky that her good friend Mila Kunis would be perfect for the role. Kunis contrasted Lily with Nina, "My character is very loose... She's not as technically good as Natalie's character, but she has more passion, naturally. That's what [Nina] lacks." The female characters are directed in the Swan Lake production by Thomas Leroy, played by Cassel. He compared his character to George Balanchine, who co-founded New York City Ballet and was "a control freak, a true artist using sexuality to direct his dancers".
Portman and Kunis started training six months before the start of filming in order to attain a body type and muscle tone more similar to those of professional dancers. Portman worked out for five hours a day, doing ballet, cross-training, and swimming. A few months closer to filming, she began choreography training. Kunis engaged in cardio and Pilates, "train[ing] seven days a week, five hours, for five, six months total, and ... was put on a very strict diet of 1,200 calories a day." She lost 20 pounds from her normal weight of about 117 pounds, and reported that Portman "became smaller than I did." Kunis said, "I did ballet as a kid like every other kid does ballet. You wear a tutu and you stand on stage and you look cute and twirl. But this is very different because you can't fake it. You can't just stay in there and like pretend you know what you're doing. Your whole body has to be structured differently." Georgina Parkinson, a ballet mistress from the American Ballet Theatre, coached the actors in ballet. For certain scenes, American Ballet Theatre soloists Sarah Lane and Maria Riccetto were "dance doubles" for Portman and Kunis respectively. At other times, Kimberly Prosa serves as the body double for Portman. Aronofsky said during filming about Portman's ballet performance, "She was able to pull it off. Except for the wide shots when she has to be en pointe for a real long time, it's Natalie on screen. I haven't used her double a lot."
Benjamin Millepied, a principal dancer from New York City Ballet, debuted in Black Swan as both actor and choreographer. In addition to the soloist performances, members of the Pennsylvania Ballet were cast as the corps de ballet, backdrop for the main actors' performances. Also appearing in the film are Kristina Anapau, Toby Hemingway, Sebastian Stan,and Janet Montgomery.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Produced by
Ari Handel
Scott Franklin
Mike Medavoy
Arnold Messer
Brian Oliver
Screenplay by
Mark Heyman
Andres Heinz
John McLaughlin
Story by Andres Heinz
---------------------------
(Plot Summary)
Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a young dancer with a prestigious New York City Ballet company. She lives with her overbearing mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), a failed dancer turned amateur artist who tries to control much of Nina's life.
Nina's ballet company is preparing for a production of Swan Lake. The director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), has to cast a new principal dancer as the Swan Queen to replace the retiring star, Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder). The lead must be able to portray both the innocent, fragile White Swan and her darkly sensual, evil twin, the Black Swan. Nina is selected to compete for the part alongside several other dancers, including newcomer Lily (Mila Kunis). Thomas does not intend to cast Nina as the Swan Queen. When Nina visits him to request the role, he tells her that her rigid technique makes her ideal for the White Swan, but that she lacks the passion to dance the Black Swan. When he forces a kiss on her, she bites him. Thomas sees her potential and gives her the role.
Thomas presents Nina as his new star during a benefit gala during which he also announces Beth's retirement. On her way out, Nina is confronted by the intoxicated Beth. Beth accuses Nina of giving Thomas sexual favors in order to win the role of the Swan Queen, which brings Nina to tears. Thomas takes Nina to his home and interrogates her about her personal sexual experiences, leaving her very much embarrassed. He also recommends that she get in touch with her body through masturbation. The next day, while rehearsing, Nina learns that Beth jumped in front of a car the previous night, but Thomas tells her that it's not her fault and that Beth is a very dark and dramatic actress.
Nina displays a number of psychotic symptoms, including strong delusions and elaborate visual hallucinations. She begins to feel paranoid that Lily, her understudy, is determined to take the lead away from her. Thomas, meanwhile, becomes increasingly critical of Nina's "frigid" dancing as the Black Swan, and tells her that she should stop being such a perfectionist and simply lose herself in the Black Swan role.
Lily appears at Nina's door and invites her for a night out. Nina is hesitant at first but joins Lily after having an explosive argument with her mother. During the night, Lily offers Nina drugs, which lower Nina's inhibitions. We see Nina become sexually interested in not only the men at the bar, but Lily as well. Upon returning to the apartment, Nina has another fight with her mother. She barricades herself in her room and Nina hallucinates having passionate oral sex with Lily. Nina wakes up alone and late for rehearsal the next morning, and rushes to make it on time. When she enters the studio, she finds Lily dancing as the Swan Queen in her absence. Lily is applauded by the whole cast for her performance. Furious, Nina confronts Lily, and asks her why she did not wake her up in the morning. Lily states that she spent the night with a man whom she met at the club and teases Nina for fantasizing about her.
The night before the ballet's opening, Nina is rehearsing late and continues to experience strong visual hallucinations, such as her reflection acting independently of her and of Lily and Thomas having sex backstage. Before heading home, she visits Beth in the hospital. While there, she tells Beth that she sees Beth as perfect. Upon hearing this, Beth loses control of her anger and jealousy, and stabs herself in the cheek with a nail file. Beth then turns into Nina and starts yelling at her "I'm nothing!" while repeatedly stabbing herself in the face. Nina flees to the elevator with the bloodied file. She drops it and leaves the hospital in shock.
When Nina returns home, she sees herself in the kitchen with a bloody face, dressed in Beth's hospital gown. Nina runs into the bathroom and vomits. She goes into her mother's room and sees her mother's paintings speaking and mocking her, so she rips them off the wall. She also notices that the rash on her shoulder has worsened, with little black barbs poking through her skin. Nina pulls one of the barbs from her skin, and it appears to be a black feather. Nina's eyes appear to turn into reddish swan eyes and her legs violently contort into the shape of a swan's. As she tries to steady herself, she falls and knocks herself out on her bedpost.
Nina awakes the night of the opening performance, locked in her bedroom with her mother. Nina's mother tells her that she called the ballet company and informed them that Nina wasn't feeling well and will not be able to perform. After violently forcing her mother to let her leave, Nina arrives at the theater to discover that Thomas has asked Lily to dance the Swan Queen in Nina's place. Nina ignores this development, prepares for the performance and convinces Thomas that she is able to dance.
The first act goes well until Nina is distracted during a lift by a hallucination and the glare of the overhead lights. The Prince drops her. Distraught, Nina returns to her dressing room and finds Lily there, dressed in the Black Swan costume. As Lily announces her intention to play the Black Swan, she transforms into Nina herself. Nina and her duplicate wrestle. Nina shoves her duplicate into the mirror, shattering it. She grabs a shard of glass and stabs her duplicate in the stomach. Upon realizing what she has done, Nina sees that the body is Lily's. Nina hides Lily's body, returns to the stage and dances the Black Swan passionately and sensually, growing black feathers all over her body, her arms becoming black wings as she finally loses herself and transforms into a black swan. At the end of the act, she receives a standing ovation from the audience, appearing normal from their point of view. When she leaves the stage, she finds Thomas and the rest of the cast congratulating her on her stunning performance. Nina takes Thomas by surprise and kisses him with a seductive power.
Back in her dressing room preparing for the final act, the dying of the White Swan, Nina is interrupted by a knock at her door. She opens it to see Lily, who has come to congratulate her on her performance as the Black Swan. Nina realizes her fight with Lily was another hallucination, but sees the mirror is still shattered. She notices a wound on her body and realizes that she stabbed herself, not Lily. Back on stage, Nina dances passionately and seamlessly as the White Swan. In the last moments of the ballet, when the White Swan throws herself off a cliff, she spots her mother weeping in the audience. The theater erupts in thunderous applause as Nina falls. As Thomas and the rest of the cast enthusiastically congratulate her on her performance, Lily gasps in horror to see that Nina is covered in blood. Though Nina lies wounded and perhaps dying, she is content and satisfied with her performance. The film closes with Nina staring up at the stage lights while whispering "I felt it. Perfect. I was perfect," as the screen fades to white and the audience chants her name.
----------------------------
(Cast)
Mila Kunis was first approached to perform in Black Swan in 2008. She and co-star Natalie Portman spent six months training and toning their bodies before filming began.
Natalie Portman as Nina Sayers/The Swan Queen
Mila Kunis as Lily / The Black Swan
Vincent Cassel as Thomas Leroy/The Gentleman
Barbara Hershey as Erica Sayers / The Queen
Winona Ryder as Beth MacIntyre/The Dying Swan
Benjamin Millepied as David
Ksenia Solo as Veronica
Kristina Anapau as Galina
Janet Montgomery as Madeline
Sebastian Stan as Andrew
Toby Hemingway as Tom
Sergio Torrado as Sergio
(Casting)
Aronofsky first discussed with Portman the possibility of a ballet film in 2000, and he found she was interested in playing a ballet dancer. Portman explained being part of Black Swan, "I'm trying to find roles that demand more adulthood from me because you can get stuck in a very awful cute cycle as a woman in film, especially being such a small person." Portman suggested to Aronofsky that her good friend Mila Kunis would be perfect for the role. Kunis contrasted Lily with Nina, "My character is very loose... She's not as technically good as Natalie's character, but she has more passion, naturally. That's what [Nina] lacks." The female characters are directed in the Swan Lake production by Thomas Leroy, played by Cassel. He compared his character to George Balanchine, who co-founded New York City Ballet and was "a control freak, a true artist using sexuality to direct his dancers".
Portman and Kunis started training six months before the start of filming in order to attain a body type and muscle tone more similar to those of professional dancers. Portman worked out for five hours a day, doing ballet, cross-training, and swimming. A few months closer to filming, she began choreography training. Kunis engaged in cardio and Pilates, "train[ing] seven days a week, five hours, for five, six months total, and ... was put on a very strict diet of 1,200 calories a day." She lost 20 pounds from her normal weight of about 117 pounds, and reported that Portman "became smaller than I did." Kunis said, "I did ballet as a kid like every other kid does ballet. You wear a tutu and you stand on stage and you look cute and twirl. But this is very different because you can't fake it. You can't just stay in there and like pretend you know what you're doing. Your whole body has to be structured differently." Georgina Parkinson, a ballet mistress from the American Ballet Theatre, coached the actors in ballet. For certain scenes, American Ballet Theatre soloists Sarah Lane and Maria Riccetto were "dance doubles" for Portman and Kunis respectively. At other times, Kimberly Prosa serves as the body double for Portman. Aronofsky said during filming about Portman's ballet performance, "She was able to pull it off. Except for the wide shots when she has to be en pointe for a real long time, it's Natalie on screen. I haven't used her double a lot."
Benjamin Millepied, a principal dancer from New York City Ballet, debuted in Black Swan as both actor and choreographer. In addition to the soloist performances, members of the Pennsylvania Ballet were cast as the corps de ballet, backdrop for the main actors' performances. Also appearing in the film are Kristina Anapau, Toby Hemingway, Sebastian Stan,and Janet Montgomery.
