Black Swan - Ivan Koerniawan - Fakultas Psikologi

“The only person standing in your way is you”. That’s one memorable and motivational quote coming from a movie that tells a story about a ballet dancer with a disorder. This movie is great, I was so immersed in the movie when I watched it. It makes me feel like I go through, and I feel like I know what the main protagonist went through.

Nina (Natalie Portman) is an only daughter who has passion for ballet. She dances in a company and she just got to replace an old dancer who’s been in the company for a long time. There’s a new play called swan lake but with a twist. And she got chosen as the main role. She was so excited and so pressured by the fact that she wasn’t seen as good enough for the role as the owner. Her boss keeps on pressuring her with mockery and tells her to be more “passionate” and to “let go”. He keeps on sexually assault her by forcing a kiss and asking about her sexual life. The pressure keeps building up as her mother is being protective and so easily angered. The pressure hits her as she starts to see things that aren’t actually there. She becomes so anxious easily. One day she meets lily, a new dancer that’s to liking of the owner. They had conflicts and Lily apologized and spent a night out together. Things get wild and they went home to Nina’s house and they make out. The morning, Nina overslept and rushed to the theater and confronted Lily about Lily not waking Nina up only to find out the Lily didn’t actually slept over in Nina’s place. The story ended with Nina barely failed the play. The plot is just unpredictable as Nina becomes so unstable in the end of the story to the point that I don’t even know whether can make it on the play or not.

The act was so beautiful, I found out that Natalie Portman had learnt ballet before she was enrolled for the movie which make her acting as a ballet dancer even more gracious. And Mila Kunis’ part was perfect either. Mila has been playing characters that are easy-going and free and tend to have naughty and kinky personalities, Mila just got the perfect play for the role.

In my opinion as a psychology student, Nina is experiencing Schizophrenia based on the fact in the movie that she’s having a really terrible hallucination she barely able to tell the difference between the reality and hallucination. Another thing is the fact that she is so tense and anxious about the role that her attitude start to change in which she hurts her mom that cares for her and becomes so aggressive and arrogant on her friend that said that she might not be able to play the role.

No wonder this movie got some prestigious awards. Words can’t just describe how amazing this movie is. I think a rating of 8/10 by imdb is just not good enough to score this movie. This movie is a MUST WATCH for those who wants to understand the point of view of someone who have schizophrenic disorder.