Black Swan by Darren Arronofsky is an excellent and perhaps unparalleled take on Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder, perfectly portrayed by the character, Nina Sawyers, and the happenings around her.
The childhood narcissistic abuse, the abject “baby-fication” of the victim by the abusive emotionally-dead parent mimics reality, perfectly, for many unfortunate souls. The movie is a treatise on all the symptoms and pathology portrayed by Borderline Personality. Hallucinations of the present and confabulations of past events, bending the very fabric of reality for the victim, Nina Sawyers, is what psychologists around the world would cite as a textbook case.
The imminent “othering” of Sawyers and the desperate machinations of the abusive mother to prevent the eventual break-off tells so much through so little and so subtle, about the tremendous daily struggles of the NPD victim.
As with the majority of the cases – the “false-ego” self and the real self is locked in a self-destructive, and in this case, a fatal struggle to prevail. The story and the plot seems to provide such a wonderful break from reality for the viewer, the viewer being totally unaware of the abject and “manic” switching which really flails individuals with this affliction – which, unfortunately most of the times, destroys the white swan and brings forth “The Black Swan”.
I would request all movie buffs re-watch The Black Swan OR understand and become aware of NPD and BPD.