The credits roll into an ambiguous ending...and for once I smile. For me, the film could not have ended any other way. It was an allegory of Artistic Ecstasy. I was committed and the embers were stoked to flame. And so the conversation began...
“I get the premise of dying for one's art, or the battle with one's self to rise to the next level...but this notion of not knowing what was the nightmare or the reality...this aspect, I don't quite see the point,” T.
“But that is the point. How do you completely transcend your/their expectations with your art, if you don't lose yourself to point that you no longer recognize your surroundings? How can you kill the voices, doubt, and fear – if you're not crawling out of your skin, and essentially loosing your mind,” me. (I'm not quoting T. and I verbatim – I meant to say the latter, and I paraphrased the former.)
The movie is Black Swan, but I am not here to offer a critique of the film or Natalie Portman's (brilliant) performance. The focus is on the thoughts and feelings thus inspired by the film...or the conversation if you will.
The strobe of scenes flickering between drug induced paranoia and foggy blurbs of reality were the foreshadowing moments leading up to the main character's tango with nirvana. To achieve an ecstatic frenzy that equivocates a shaman's divination of the spirit one has to go into the darkness and battle the demons of one's soul. When the fear and loathing are conquered one is ready to ascend. It is a manic cycle of soaring to the greatest of heights, only after crashing to the floor of the deepest abyss.
Ecstasy as defined is: (greek ~ ecstasis ~ a being put out of its place) A state of being overpowered by emotion, as by joy/grief/passion.
Under the seduction of the Muse one looses touch with the immediate world around them. Its falling in the rabbit hole, charging through the looking glass, or a technicolor dream coat. The senses are heightened and a metamorphosis is taking place. The world stays the same, but as you are changing, so does your perception of it. Thus everything and nothing is real. Its a Passion Play in the most basic sense. Rapture/Death/Resurrection and they engage you in a harmonious climax.
Enduring the rapture one experiences an abandoned gasp as it leaves the lips, a radiating gaze, and a fire that consumes one heart/soul/mind. There is a level of leaving one's body and soaring to another plane of cosmic consciousness that is at once both emboldening and utterly terrifying. But in order to reach such heights a piece of you must die, and a pound of flesh must be acquired in payment. This experience gives birth to the perfect word, note, or stroke.
The empty canvas becomes someone's Starry Night – the blank page A Tempest or a Moonlit Sonata – Strings are picked, stroked, plucked until the notes transport one All Along the Watch Tower to Europa.
Once one has has looked into the face of God there is no question that the world will never look the same again. Art is Divination. It gives the soul a voice. It is the reflection of the heart. It is the picture of a beautiful mind. To be bestowed with the gift of creative expression is to flit on the edge of madness. Some lose their footing and become lost in the free fall, while others remain giving birth to dancing stars.
Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan was less about ballerinas and Swan Lake, and more about the agony/ecstasy of letting go. The over the shoulder shots gave the viewer a first hand account of the plight of an artist. It was in a word – perfect.
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