Winona Forever

“In choosing a script - Just instinct really. If I feel compelled, if I feel it’s something I must do then I do it.  It’s very simple really.  People think it’s a whole process but it’s either reading something and going uh..n..uh or reading something and going I have to do this.“ 

Interview in 2001

Joyce and Murray's 🤜friendship🤛 for @biffbang

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, probably the most popular ballet piece in history.

It’s plot is a classic of European sensibilities: a virginal girl falls under the spell of an evil wizard to look like a swan, and only the love of a prince can break her curse. But alas, her identical, evil seductive cousin takes over her place to get the prince to marry her. Thus, in heartbreak and betrayal the girl finds freedom in death jumping off a cliff. It’s romantic, tragic and also allows room for so many different interpretations for it’s cast. After all, we know the black swan wants to replace the white one… but what if the inverse was true?

What if a virginal ballerina, sheltered and naive, was pushed so badly to become that black swan for the sake of stardom that she lost herself to the evil wizard moving the play?

Directed by Darren Aronofsky of Requiem for a Dream(2000) fame, the film takes advantage of one of the most significant symbols for duality in western culture. An impostor by nature, the black swan may look like the princess but is ultimately a pale imitator that knows better than and holds deep resentment over it. Thus, envy, the nature of identity, and the fragility of the psyche are explored; the destructiveness of embodying something that isn’t you, your sense of reality collapsing along(and boy, does it).

And then there’s the wizard: if you have repressed sexuality as well as sheltered immaturity, then adding an unbalanced power dynamic by the lustful man who holds the baton can only result in a cruel disaster. So, in spite of the extensive and heavily criticized creative liberties about the art of ballet (like the patently absurd notion of just having one dancer to play the Swan Queen) it's discussion of the exploitative nature of how performers are treated even by their loved ones still carries merit. Elegant yet claustrophobic and obscene, it's oppressive decadence just doesn't let go.