Natalie Portman is Divine

‘Black Swan’ is a psychological thriller set in a ballet company producing Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan Lake’. A tenacious ballerina, Nina, yearns to play the white swan, and embodies the virtuous and delicate nature of the role. However, she comes up short on the gloom and hedonism required to perform as its black swan counterpart. Enter, rivalry.

A new dancer, Lily, joins the production and exudes sensuality. Lily is everything, more specifically, she’s everything Nina fails to be. Nina had toiled for so long, committing herself to a life of dance and enduring all of its challenges and sacrifices. This failure of Nina’s caused her fragile hold on reality to give way to all of the pressures she wrought upon herself, with help from her overbearing mother. As fate would have it, the director makes a pass at Nina, who brushes him off. She goes on to receive the lead role. But it’s too late.

Nina’s hallucinations already have a strong foothold, and the film takes us on a truly harrowing journey, playing with a folklore concept of being haunted by a double. Nina is trailed by a doppelganger, and finds mysterious scratches on her back at one point. We near peak intensity when Nina discovers that Lily, who became her understudy, is preparing to perform in her role on opening night. Nina’s mother also tried to prevent her from performing after seeing her struggle with the hallucinations. All of their fights throughout the film culminate in that dispute. Everyone was standing in the way of what she desperately wanted. What she had worked and worked for. What she was willing to suffer for.

She fought back with an indomitable mania. Nina broke a mirror in the dressing room where Lily was preparing, and stabbed her with it. She hid Lily’s body and changed her wardrobe to perform. Nina’s performance was the most passionate and uninhibited the audience had ever seen. She reached a level of profound absorption. She was the music, the story, both swans. Absolute perfection, and only the final act left to pour more greatness into.

The audience is roused to their feet for a standing ovation to pay tribute to Nina. She is greeted at the dressing room by other cast members . . . and Lily. Alive and well, she congratulates Nina. There’s no sign of viscera or glass shards on Lily. Nina fears the worst. She hallucinated, and attacked herself. Confirming this horrible twist of fate, she pulls a shard of mirror out of her side. The final act awaits.

Nina channels the prowess she unleashed in the previous act. Her ballet character throws herself from a cliff to commit suicide, which leaves Nina on a mattress under a trapdoor. The audience is awestruck, and the finale is met with an uproar of applause. Her cast members climb into the trapdoor to congratulate her, but the celebration quickly turns to shock and horror. Nina is bleeding fast and losing consciousness faster. She says her performance was perfect, and everything fades away.

We can create our own monsters and heedlessly carry them with us. Nina’s internal conflicts lead to her projecting this strife onto other people, and inventing a new perception of reality for herself between them. Imagine pressuring yourself so much that you essentially implode. Everything happening around you could be real, or it could be an invention of your own mind to cope with all of the failure and guilt you’ve internalized and traumatized yourself with in the process. The use of a mirror is a poignant symbol in the film. They take an object that helps us see ourselves, and lend it to the main character to use in her own self-destruction at a moment when she is completely and utterly engrossed in another reality.

This film is filled with intense rivalry, death, an unhinged grip on reality, electrified parent-child relations, a ruthless pursuit of ambition, and of course, it has a bird-related title. I’m talking about ‘Pink Flamingos’ now, but it bears those incredibly striking similarities to ‘Black Swan’. If you like watching a ballerina stop at nothing to concretize her goals, then you should try watching an undefeatable drag queen conquer her objectives. Both are performers, and which adds an additional and similar layer of complexity to their respective psyches. These are unique films individually, and meld for an incredibly compelling double feature experience. ‘Black Swan’ and ‘Pink Flamingos’ will explore dark and taboo topics and leave you asking “what the fuck just happened!?” at every turn.

We meet a drag queen, Divine, who is a notorious lawbreaker. She uses a pseudonym, Babs Johnson, and resides in a trailer with her unbalanced mother, hooligan son, and an associate. The titular pink flamingos are staked in front of their abode. A tabloid has named Divine the “filthiest person alive”, a title which Divine hopes to retain. But notoriety is a fleeting struggle, especially when others vie for the same spotlight. Enter, rivalry.

Connie and Raymond Marble hear about Divine’s title and begin to covet it for themselves. Driven by claiming accolades for their own dastardly lifestyle, they plot to seize the title from Divine. They can certainly give her a run for her, undoubtedly stolen, money. The Marbles deal in kidnapping, fetal abduction, mugging via indecent exposure, supplying children with heroine, and a myriad of other terrible ploys. They hire a spy to gather information on an unaware Divine. Things get messy.

Their spy dates Divine’s son, resulting in them killing a chicken amidst a sexual escapade, and reports back to the Marbles on Divine’s pseudonym identity. The spy also shares that her birthday is around the corner. The Marbles send her an anonymous birthday gift of human feces and a declaration that Divine is no longer the “filthiest person alive”. An anonymous piece of, albeit disgusting, mail is hardly a source of truth. But Divine was preoccupied by fighting a subconscious battle. Driven by unbearable feelings of insecurity and rejection, she is provoked to seek the ultimate ruination for her correspondent. She decides to figure out who sent the gift, and kill them. Someone was trying to steal her glory. What she had worked and worked for. What she was willing to make others suffer for.

The Marbles spied on Divine’s birthday party, and despite attempting to claim the title of “filthiest people alive”, they reported the party’s debauchery to the police and head home to gloat. Meanwhile, Divine is too formidable to allow a small hindrance like law enforcement put a damper on festivities. She and her guests ripped the policemen apart with their bare hands and ate them. Through gossip, she discovered the Marbles’ treacherous efforts to dethrone her. Divine turned her intensifying need for vengeance toward their home.

Two paths of retribution took place - Divine and her son found their way into the Marbles’ home at the same time the Marbles returned to her trailer. They cursed the residence by licking all of the furniture and committing incest, while Connie and Raymond poured gasoline on the trailer and engulfed it in flames. The desperation from all sides was palpable. They recognized each others’ potential for committing the most outstanding atrocities, and feared their own inadequacies. Only one party was the true bearer of the title, and she came back to find her trailer burning to the ground. Divine’s grief and rage formed a powerful vortex of anguish, and she left immediately to find and fiercely protect her title.

The Marbles were being rejected by their cursed furniture, with chairs creating upheaval whenever they tried to be seated. They have enough time to be terrorized by the rejection of their own house before Divine appears with her son and an accomplice. Connie and Raymond are abducted and stifled with duct tape. Everyone returns to the site of the trailer, where Divine has summoned tabloid press for coverage of her impromptu mock trial with a corporeal death penalty verdict. She executes the Marbles, the tabloid press disperses, and Divine and company ponder moving out to Boise. She spots a small dog defecating nearby, and resolutely eats its poop. She knows she’s the epitome of the “filthiest person alive” title. No one can take that from her. Everything fades away.

Our monsters come from idealizing qualities about ourselves. We can become so fixated on a specific version or set of traits we want to embody, and if we find or even fear possible inadequacies, things start to spiral out of control or reason. Divine’s internal conflicts lead to her pulling everyone around her into the fight to maintain her ideal self image. The fire from her trailer being ablaze helps explore the narrative of that fight for a certain self image. At a critical point where those flames cause Divine a great deal of torment, there is a moment of self-reckoning. She must choose to let her home go and keep pursuing the part of her identity that she believes has earned that glorious title.

In conclusion, if you watch a film with a ballet setting, then follow it up with a film set in a trailer park. If 'Black Swan', then 'Pink Flamingos'. These movies have an extreme juxtaposition at first blush, which creates a fresh take on the plight of the main characters. Their grit and unbending will leads them to actualize beliefs about themselves at any cost, including the destruction of other parts of their identities or reality. Do yourself a favor and let these two distinct yet familiar bird-titled films take you on a mind-bending journey. You won't have any egrets.