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Films

Black Swan

Dharmender Dhillon watches Dionysus dance with Apollo. WARNING: Contains a plot spoiler.

“One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I, v.

I particularly enjoyed the Nietzschean interpretations of There Will Be Blood (Issue 74) and The Departed (Issue 65) in previous Philosophy Now film columns. So upon seeing Darren Aronofsky’s film Black Swan recently, I felt compelled to produce a Nietzsche-inspired piece myself.

Aronofsky’s haunting creation captivated me not only because of its spectacle as an aesthetically-powerful movie, but also for the resonance that it had with my own area of study. Thus my reading of the film is predominantly informed by the content of my Master’s dissertation, which focused on the philosophy of Nietzsche, with particular reference to Nietzsche’s belief that language fails to render the cosmic symbolism of music.

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