Darren Aronofsky’s filmography includes endings that require multiple interpretations and the Black Swan ending is no exception. With Oscar-winner Natalie Portman playing a ballerina who strives for perfection to extreme lengths, Black Swan has been regarded as an important character study and exploration of the “tortured artist” trope. The psychological thriller delves into toxic notions of artistic brilliance and the price people pay to achieve it through Portman’s protagonist, Nina Sayers. In a rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Nina takes the double role of the White (Odette) and Black Swans (Odile) with Mila Kunis’ Lily serving as an alternate dancer.

With fears of being replaced by Lily, Nina descends into madness which is perfectly exemplified by the open-ended finale. While Black Swan ends with Nina smiling at the camera, viewers have several theories. The ending of Natalie Portman’s May December brings to mind Black Swan‘s dark conclusion that is still discussed and debated with much curiosity even more than a decade since it was released. Given that Aronofsky usually relies on allegories and surrealist sequences, even the reality of the ending is questioned as to whether the final scene actually happened or was just a delusion by the troubled protagonist.

Nina Hallucinated Killing Lily

The Movie Plays On The Duality Of The Swan Lake Role

Duality plays into Black Swan‘s horror movie vibe with Nina taking on the innocent Odette and the evil Odile. Towards the ballet’s second act, Nina seems to be faltering as Odette but with no time to waste, she rushes to the dressing room to change where she confronts her compeтιтor Lily, stabs her to death, and continues her performance as Odile. The final twist reveals that Nina had hallucinated Lily’s death and instead stabbed herself in the abdomen.

However, given the artist she is, she continues performing the ballet’s final act as a dying Odette, landing on a mattress with thunderous applause. Like other endings of Aronofsky movies, this incorporates surrealist elements as Lily’s death was a hallucination. This wouldn’t come as a surprise to viewers as the story had already dabbled in the protagonist showing similar behavior in the past. The scenes that find Nina making love with Lily and literally transforming into the play’s Black Swan bear testimony to this.

The fact that Lily transformed into Nina’s doppelgänger when the protagonist was stabbing her also adds to the screenplay’s metaphorical overtones. The moment is further foreshadowed by the earlier scenes also revealing scratch marks on Nina’s back after her hallucinations showed a pattern of self-harm.

Nina Probably Dies In The End Of Black Swan

Aronofsky Often Leaves The Fates Of His Characters Ambiguous

In the final ballet performance in Black Swan‘s ending, Nina is flawless and seems to have achieved the perfection that she has been striving for so long. However, given that her abdomen wound was still open and bleeding, she most likely succumbed to the bleeding as she fell through the air and landed on the mattress.

Even though her director Thomas and other crew members start panicking and calling an ambulance, Nina can be seen at peace as she utters, “Perfect. I was perfect.” It’s highly possible that the medical authorities arrived in time and saved her but the final fade to white might hint at her death. As a bleeding Nina looks up to the stage lights, Aronofsky establishes an uncertain fate for his protagonist.

Be it in The Fountain or mother!, Darren Aronofsky’s movies have never shied away from dabbling in religious imagery and themes. The lights falling on her, and her gazing upwards might even incorporate a descent toward heaven. Her final line and the look of satisfaction on her face possibly imply that Nina is finally content with her artistic capabilities, and it no longer matters to her whether she survives or not. The purpose of her life has now been attained in her mind.

Black Swan Is A Subversion Of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake

The Source Material Hints At Nina’s Fate

Natalie Portman’s committed performance conveys Nina’s artistic journey, but it is also effective as a subversion of the very play that she’s performing in. A ballet theater classic, Swan Lake was written by Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky and plays out as a tragic fairy tale as Prince Siegfried falls in love with Odette. However, trouble arises when an evil sorcerer transforms her into a white swan. The Prince eventually falls for the sorcerer’s daughter, Odile, who he transforms into an identical twin to Odette.

With the Prince mistakenly falling for the “Black Swan,” the “White Swan” takes her own life in grief. Many of Tchaikovsky’s story elements are referenced in the Best Picture nominee, such as Nina’s own doppelganger doubling as the evil twin. If Aronofsky’s film truly mirrors the events of Swan Lake, then Nina actually dies in the end.

Both the play and the film focus on metamorphosis as a key theme. While Odette transforms into a swan, Nina changes into the very character she was playing on stage, ironically dying in the guise of the White Swan. Odette’s sadness at being replaced by Odile is also reminiscent of Nina’s fears of Lily taking her role with her fears being manifested in her terrifying hallucinations.

Natalie Portman Was Perfect As Nina In Black Swan

Portman’s Commitment To The Role Was Necessary To Play Nina

When it comes to Natalie Portman, she put everything she had into playing the role of Nina in Black Swan, and drove herself to the edge, similar to the character she played on the screen. In the movie, Nina wanted to prove she could play the Black Swan and White Swan equally, and she pushed herself to the limit of sanity to prove she was right for the role.

Portman never drove herself to the brink of sanity to play Nina, but she did push herself hard enough to almost break. While trained in dance as a child, she said she worked two hours a day for six months to get into shape for the role of a world-class ballet dancer (via Collider).

“You don’t drink, you don’t go out with your friends, you don’t have much food, and you are constantly putting your body through extreme pain, so you get that understanding of the self-flagellation of a ballet dancer.”

Portman said that after six months, she moved her practice up to five hours a day, and then two months before filming, she was working for eight hours a day. Portman lost 20 pounds, saying ballet was an almost “obsessive-compulsive art.”

The good news is that, while working harder than ever to play this role, Portman never lost herself as Nina did in the movie, and was able to come out of it and move on in her career. It ended up worth it in the end, as Black Swan earned Portman her second of three Oscar nominations, and ended up as her only win for Best Actress.

The Real Meaning Of Black Swan’s Ending

The Movie Explores Inner Torment As Well As Toxic Relationships Surrounding Nina

Black Swan is about a tortured artist whose pursuit of perfection makes her mentally unstable. In this sense, the film is comparable to other dramas that measure the price of perfection also seen in the ending of Whiplash. In fact, the struggle for perfection and the ambiguous ending makes it a perfect companion piece to Aronofsky’s own 2008 drama The Wrestler which found Micky Rourke playing an aging wrestler attempting a comeback. With his physical capabilities burned out to the fullest, the тιтular wrestler still attempts to make a final leap in the ring, hinting at his death.

Apart from its exploration of the murky politics behind ballet productions and the physical challenges faced by ballerinas, Black Swan also serves as a strong commentary on mental illness. While films dealing with troubled artists might fetishize or even betray mental illness, Nina’s issues are shown with a level of sensitivity and concern.

Nina’s overprotective mother seems to have contributed to her body image issues and performance anxiety. With her mother’s action, a theater director who doesn’t respect personal boundaries, and her own fears of being replaced by Lily, Nina undergoes a tragic rise to artistic perfection throughout Black Swan building to an ending that would induce both awe and empathy.

Why The Black Swan Ending Was Perfect

The Final Moments Nailed The Complex Symbolism Of The Story

Black Swan was one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the 2010s, and this was as much due to the story as it was the exemplary performances of the cast (especially Natalie Portman) and the directing talents of Darren Aronofsky. From the very start, the narrative of Black Swan was a complex one, a tale that was told as much through its thematic messages and hidden metaphors as it was through the literal events happening to the characters. It’s for this reason that the ending of Black Swan was perfect, as it carried this style of storytelling through to the very last moments.

The key themes explored by Black Swan are the pursuit of perfection and the price that artists and performers pay on the journey. Having the story end with Nina’s insinuated death was, of course, the appropriate destination. However, having Nina (probably, since it’s not actually confirmed) die isn’t the key strength of the Black Swan ending. Nina’s death isn’t the stroke of genius here – it’s Nina’s reaction to it, the fact that she herself caused it, and that it culminates during the moment in Swan Lake that Odette throws herself off of a cliff.

Nina’s final words “I felt it, it was perfect” as the screen fades to white are a complete and total expression of the psychosis her pursuit of the perfect performance have caused. Nina is in a considerable amount of pain, and losing consciousness as she takes her final breaths, but for her the only thing that matters is that she managed to briefly touch the sense of total accomplishment she’d torn herself apart chasing. Had Black Swan ended with Nina simply unconscious on the mattress she plummeted into during her final scene as Odette, the moment wouldn’t have been anywhere near as impactful.

How The Black Swan Ending Was Received

The End Of Black Swan Was A Satisfactory Finale Eclipsed By Other Aspects Of The Exemplary Movie

Black Swan was received incredibly well when it released in 2010, as evidenced by its slew of accolades, including an Academy Award for Best Actress for Natalie Portman, as well as Oscar nominations for Best PIcture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing. While response to Black Swan was overwhelmingly positive, the ending is, somewhat surprisingly, an aspect that doesn’t factor too much into the praise.

That’s not to say that the ending of Black Swan wasn’t satisfying. On the contrary, the end of Black Swan was almost-universally remarked on as being incredibly fitting for the story, and part of the reason that the narrative felt so cohesive and, at the same time, incredibly disturbing in the way that every dark psychological horror should be. The movies’ central themes wouldn’t have worked had Natalie Portman’s Nina had a happy ending by the time Black Swan concluded, and many critics and viewers appreciate the ambiguity and how it ensures the film ends on a satisfyingly jarring note.

The reason the Black Swan ending doesn’t feature much in the positive responses is simply that other elements are more readily praised. Natalie Portman’s performance, for example, has been central to the majority of the Black Swan reviews. The cinematography of Matthew Libatique and Darren Aronosky’s direction have also been highlighted numerous times. When the end does get mentioned, it’s almost always in conjunction with praise for the totality of the narrative.

It’s difficult to find negative responses to Black Swan, but those critics and viewers who disliked the movie also don’t tend to single out the ending. If anything, the majority of the more critical reviews of Black Swan tend to label the movie as overhyped, which is more of a complaint about the cultural dominance of the film when it is released rather than the movie itself. All in all, the ending to Black Swan was perfect for the film, and the only reason it’s not singled out as one of the best movie finales of the 2010s is that it’s overshadowed by the talent of the cast and skill of the director in almost every review.