Kite

Last night my favorite non-snuggling movie buddy and I went to see Black Swan. Despite the fact that I'd read two reviews of the movie, it wasn't at all what I expected. I'd heard it was campy, and that made me think it would be hard to feel that the characters were real and get pulled into the movie.

Au contraire -- it was super intense -- and I was definitely pulled in -- so much so that I winced and hid my eyes on multiple occasions when the bloody, gruesome aspects of the movie were onscreen. At dinner afterward, my friend described it to our adorable server as a horror movie. It was, in some ways; it was also an exploration of psychosis. It was hard to tell what was actually happening in the movie and what was a psychotic episode -- by design -- until the director clued us in during the next scene.

Some of the psychotic episodes were terrifying and some were just plain hot. As I said to my pal after the movie: "If I go crazy, I want it to involve a beautiful woman going down on me and not watching another woman stab herself in the face repeatedly with a letter opener!" (Yes, both were scenes in the movie, and it was more obvious during the letter opener scene that it wasn't supposed to be real.)

The movie was also about the fact that perfection is not about control, but surrender; passion involves both light and bite; and claiming oneself involves leaving the womb. These same themes are beautifully explored in this song:

Floating and fighting, like a kite on a string

Till you cut through my tether and changed everything

From the sky you looked small, but I loved you the same

So I darted back quickly to spell out your name

And when they say that I'm just a terrible kite

You'll tell them you're proud of my marvelous flight

At the start of the film, the dancer's mother overpowers her and treats her like a little girl, and as a result, she is too good - virginal -- uncorrupted, but also dispassionate.

Don't hide yourself inside till I'm old

O my dear you're a threat to the bad we all see

I'm beside myself for the touch of your lips

Or the grace of your eyes that can see good in me

But without her goodness, she wouldn't have been picked in the first place, and without her mother's support, she might not have been able to sustain the harsh world of high-level dance performance. Even when depicted in such an extreme fashion in a movie like this, nothing is all good or all bad -- it's more a matter of the dancer needing to find all the parts of herself in the midst of it all. And it's when she grows up and claims her sexuality that we can better feel her power...