Black Swan is a glimpse into a world where everything is strictly black and white: the rigidity of dance, the institution of a performance troupe, the brusque NYC, the stark white and black color schemes. There is no comprehension of emotion, no place for red in this world collapsing into itself with the realization of monochromatism.

But there is a meta pleasure, in viewing a committed vision into a narrow, tragic (indeed, tragically narrow) world. Like the realization that which color is irrelevant in a world where the revelant fact is the realizing the schismatic nature of the world, the film is simultaneously a part of and a culmination of the prior elements in Aronofsky’s canon.