We went to see Black Swan yesterday and I can't get it out of my mind today. I'd been wanting to see it for some time, particularly after Natalie Portman won the Golden Globe award for her starring role in it. I knew it would be dark and it didn't disappoint. At times a very difficult movie to watch, it was however an excellent study of an obsessive mind coming undone. Natalie Portman definitely deserves to win many awards for this role as she played it brilliantly, evoking all manner of emotion in the viewer.
One of the aspects of the movie I particularly appreciated, thanks to great directing and editing, was how difficult it was as a viewer to know what was 'real' and what was fantasy in the character's mind. She kept popping in and out of delusion right from the beginning and we watched as she rather quickly lost any hold she had on 'sanity'. It reminds me of how deluded we all are and don't know it. How much we impose and project onto life's circumstances and call it reality, all the while being completely unaware of what's really going on. Paradoxically, I could also feel the power of her single mindedness in achieving what she came here to do. In the end, it's all as it was meant to be, both in the movie and in our lives. The darkness in us may well be the very thing we came to experience. Or it may be something else all together.
There is no blanket concept of light or dark that could conceivably cover all the possibilities of experience in life. We aren't all here to be/do/feel/experience the same thing, make the same discoveries or come to the same conclusions. I've noticed even the 'enlightened' do not agree 100% yet have shared experiences of being undone or awakening or being completely disillusioned. I can't help thinking that what we generally consider to be insanity sure beats living lives of quiet desperation which I suspect is more prevalent than lives of passionate involvement. And yet, this too is as it should be.
Life truly is a wonder.
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