Before you read this , I have some SPOILERS in this post. Just as a disclaimer...
I saw Black Swan last night finally.
What I like best about the movie is that there are really no "nice" characters in it. There really is no one Nina (Played incredibly by Natalie Portman) can turn to for support. Her mother (played by Barbara Hershey) is by no means a loving mother and her "friend" Lilly (the lovely and fierce Mila Kunis) is either out to get her or Nina is just way too paranoid about that.
The fact that Nina has to dance as BOTH the Black Swan and the White Swan is an important theme in this movie. It gets at the point you make at the beginning of this post. There is certainly a darkness lurking in humanity which this movie addresses. Now, plenty of stories address that so it's nothing new exactly. But, newness isn't everything.
The Black Swan character obviously is that "darkness" and in the story of Swan Lake (which I don't know, but pieced together from watching this movie) the Black Swan fucks up the White Swan's life, driving the White Swan to kill herself when all is lost.
Nina doesn't just play the White Swan, the good swan. She plays both dark and light. The Black Swan and the white swan are both Nina. Nina's hallucinations frequently result in her either being attacked by or attacking herself.
In the beginning of the film, the ballet's director (Vincent Cassel) says to Nina "I look at you and all I see is the White Swan." But, he forces her to be both. We all have a black swan in us. The super-competition and stress and anxiety and sexual intensity of being the star of this huge ballet as well as the director's influence on Nina brings out her Black Swan.
Lilly, the ballet director and Nina's mother are, in fact, NOT her enemies in this movie. While the film has the climate of paranoia of a spy thriller with the "they're all out to get me!" thing going on, really only Nina is out to get Nina. Her mind and her body are out to get her. Other people, while they seem dangerous, are not nearly as much of a problem for Nina as the Black Swan lurking inside her.
In the end, whether Nina actually died or not is unimportant. If she did not actually kill herself, it is still symbolic of the death of "Nina" and the birth of a new identity. At the end, when everyone crowds around Nina and congratulates her on how well she danced the role, that is because she has given EVERYTHING SHE HAS to the role. She has transformed. There is no more "Nina". Just the Black and White Swan. Nina is dead. Perhaps actually dead, perhaps it's just another hallucination.
Regarding Hallucinations: We follow Nina so closely that her hallucinations might as well be real.
The one moment where I found a hallucination too flashy and where it took me a bit out of Nina's head is when her mom's paintings talk to her. That was a little much. But, that was the ONE MOMENT. For the most part, Black Swan's film making is spot-on with how it brings Nina's mindstate into reality so that there is, in effect, no reality at all. It is all in her mind and it is also all real.
That's a really good point about how Nina is for all intents and purposes dead at the end of the movie. She's been reborn as something she wasn't before. I noticed a bit of a similarity between the ambiguity of this ending and the ambiguous "did he die?" ending of "The Wrestler", which makes sense since they started out as the same movie on the drawing board.
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