I watch movies, like many others, mostly for entertainment purposes. When a movie comes to an end, no matter how appealing to me, I usually brush it off immediately, for I believe movies are just movies. They are meant for fun primarily.

However, Black Swan, the movie I saw recently, is an exception. The scenes lingered on in my mind. It was not that the movie was a little scary; it was not a problem for me. For one thing, until the film ended, I still could not be sure which parts in the movie were reality and which parts were just the actress’ hallucinations. More importantly, I feel very sorry and a bit sad for Nina, the lead ballerina, who died at the end of the film when she finally achieved her goal to be perfect in the role she played.

Nina is an innocent beautiful diligent but a little fragile girl. She wants to play the lead role in the famous ballet Swan Lake when the company decides to choose a new dancer as the Swan princess. Being a nice girl, plus her hard work, she dances the White Swan impeccably, for it symbolizes beauty and kindness. Naturally, it is extremely hard for her to dance the Black Swan, which symbolizes evil and debauchery.

The two parts, however, have to be played by one person. According to the story of the ballet, a princess is turned into the White Swan and can only be turned back if a man swears eternal fidelity to her. However, her bubble is burst by the Black Swan, the evil magician’s daughter, who is transformed by her father to look exactly like the White Swan. The Black Swan manages to trick and seduce the prince. Being sad and hopeless, the princess commits suicide because the prince’s infidelity has doomed her to remain a swan forever.

Facing such a great challenge, Nina is determined to play these two roles the best ever. She practices hard and devotes herself to the preparations of the performance. However, no matter how she tries, the director in charge will never be satisfied with her role of the Black Swan, saying that she hasn’t capture the sensuality of the swan. He even dances with her as a partner himself, and touches her to arouse her sexual desire. In order to get the feel of being evil and debauched, she even goes to a night club at the invitation of Lily and hooks up with a man. Despite her desperate effort, she still feels insecure, for there’s an alternative, Lily, who is always trying to steal the role from her.  

Feeling defeated in her attempt to be perfect, combined with the worsening relationship with her mom, Nina is under enormous stress. Consequently, she begins to hallucinate. Just on the day of the official performance, she hallucinates again in her dressing room and stabs herself, thinking she is stabbing Lily and eventually kills her. She takes the stage, anyway, and begins to dance with passionate abandon. She dances the part of the Black Swan better than ever and the audience is amazed, giving her a standing ovation when this piece of dance ends.

In the final act, in spite of her wound, she dances the White Swan beautifully, which entrances the audience. They are so intoxicated that they don’t see the small stain of blood growing in her mid-section of her white costume. Finally, the White Swan commits suicide, and Nina, the dancer, is also at the end of life. The last words she utters are: “I was perfect.” She dies among the roaring applause of the audience.