mother!

[Roderick]

Alright, let's talk about mother!, the new Darren Aronofsky film. Which I at first was hesitant to see, because I had heard people being shocked and upset about it, and I generally dislike upsetting films. Then again, Aronofsky is responsible for one of my favorite films, The Fountain, so I felt I had to at least give it a try. With some trepidation I entered the cinema yesterday, ready to quite possibly walk out at the sight of - well, I had already spoiled myself for the big shock at the end, which was the only way I could ever steel myself to watch it. I was prepared.

 

Then it turns out to be a comedy. Well, probably not deliberately so. I facetiously texted this to a movie-loving friend:

 

mother! - a comedy film about how introverted people feel at crowded parties

 

I appreciate mother!. I want to see it again. It's not a good film per se, it's kind of a big mess. By which I mean: some performances are so good, some are so bad, and the whole thing feels like a big budget student film trying to be Meaningful(TM). It is serious about shocking you and disturbing you, but the reason it's a comedy is because of Jennifer Lawrence. I have nothing against her, but she is almost comically miscast in what is essentially a really difficult part. Her character is constantly reacting to what other people do, keeping her feelings inside, or freaking out. But when Lawrence gazes at the camera blankly, unlike say Javier Bardem, there's nothing there. Nothing happening. And when she's screaming, she unfortunately tends to lose her voice and all that comes out is awkward squeals. You need someone there that you believe has so much inner turmoil going on inside when all they do is stare in front of them.

 

I feel sorry for the actress, but part of the reason mother! made me laugh out loud multiple times is how un-sorry I felt for the character. And it's unfair too. Lawrence has to go up against awesome actors like Ed Harris, Bardem and Michelle Pfeiffer, who each get to play characters that are alive and joyful and weird in ways that Lawrence's is not. So begins a game where she is taunted over and over by these horrible home invaders. And it's often hilarious because Lawrence cares so deeply about all of it. 'Hey! You can't come in here!' is her signature line. 'Don't sit on that sink, it's not secured.' In contrast to Bardem, who is hilariously shrugging everything off. 'It's just stuff, we can buy new!' he says. He keeps apologizing, even when, well, the end thing happens.

 

The end. It's pandemonium taken a little too far. The movie kinda lost me there for a while, as the house devolves into a warzone and a church. It was more fun when the whole thing was about social micro-transgressions wrought upon an ever-suffering Lawrence. Then again, when it happens, it's so suggestive and bizarre that I was more marvelling at its weirdness than grossed out. It's not gross, not really.

 

I feel little need to delve into the symbolism of the film, in the way that I needed to figure out what was going on in The Fountain. mother! is so on the nose with everything it does, it robs itself of mystery, strangely. There's even a throbbing heart in the house shrivelling up and I swear that is straight out of my own graduation film at art school. I almost couldn't believe I saw Aronofsky do it in his film. So, yeah, it's really not his best film, or even 'good'. But there's so much in there that's worth seeing. Harris and Pfeiffer and Bardem! Superb whenever they're on. You'll laugh, if you've got my inclinations.

[Ben X]

I just saw it an hour ago, and wow it's intense.

 

I disagree with your assessment of J-Law's performance - I think it was pretty perfectly pitched for a character we had to believe would let most of this shit happen; she's played inner turmoil well in other roles, I don't think that's what she was going for here. I found her performance more engaging than Pfeiffer's.

 

The symbolism was certainly very on the nose, I agree. It enhanced the medieval poetry feel, though, so I'll give it a break.

 

I'd also recommend seeing it, ideally at the cinema, even if I can't promise you won't hate it.

 

(For Aronofsky context, I loved Pi, Requiem For A Dream and The Wrestler; I liked The Fountain on first viewing then loved it on second viewing; I wasn't much for Black Swan.)

[TychoCelchuuu]

It was very deliberately comedic, although not because of Lawrence's performance. The comedy is the absurdity of all these people showing up in her house and doing crazy stuff and her husband's reactions and so on. That sort of preposterousness, and the other crazy dream logic stuff (like the house descending into a warzone) was my favorite stuff in the film. I do feel like it'll take another viewing or two to really think through all the stuff. Everyone seems to be latching on to the Biblical stuff but to me it also seems like a movie about art and creation and muses and sexism. Throughout the film everyone treats Lawrence like shit, with the exception of Bardem, but he's the one who is ultimately the shittiest to her, because he's using her for this cycle of creation where she has to go through hell every time. She's constantly being bombarded with sexist language, being ignored and disrespected, etc. 

 

I don't think the symbolism being on the nose is a bad thing or that movies need tons of mystery to be good. I appreciate that the film is not up its own ass trying to be inscrutable. It's okay to make movies that are about things without hiding the fact that they are about things. If it doesn't take sixteen viewings and an MFA to understand your movie, that's okay with me.

 

Anyways I liked this movie a lot. I could stare at Bardem all day.

[Ben X]

Yeah, I agree with all of that. I was definitely leaning towards a patriarchy reading at one point.

[Roderick]

Oh yes, Bardem is absolutely the worst to her. He is continuously going behind her back and ignoring her wishes when he's inviting people over. Lawrence may annoyingly never dig her heels in the sand (possibly because she's so completely ineffectual at getting anyone to listen to her, which in fact does resonate with some feeling of powerlessness inside me), but her husband should absolutely take her needs and desires into account.

 

Possibly my favorite thing about mother! is how Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer suddenly become like little children after breaking Bardem's little doodad. They get apologetic and churlish and sulk.

 

Part of why I wanted to see this movie was the wildly diverging reactions to it. My friend was also highly entranced and unnerved by the film, while I was totally the only one in the theater chuckling. An elderly couple walked out during the break. These sort of divisive experiences are usually worthwhile, since they have something real on offer, something that may do something with you or not, but at least they're not unisexually appealing, committeed-to-death entertainment.

[Ben X]

Wow, your cinema still does breaks? Did that feel like a bit of respite in this film or did it come too early?

 

The last film I remember seeing with a break was Back To The Future II in 1989 (it came when Marty gets knocked out outside the Biff Tannen museum and it fades to black).

[Roderick]

It's still a thing in the Netherlands. The Pathé line of cinemas has done away with breaks, which I prefer (for movies <2hr), but Vue (formerly JT) and others still have them. It's a bit of an interruption most of the time, but you get used to it and it's nice to at least be able to go to the toilet and get some refreshments.

 

For mother! it didn't feel particularly like respite. I had steeled myself especially for the second half, so I knew I was going into heavier territory after. The films breaks up exactly in between the two major visits to the house. In the second half we (unfortunately) no longer see Harris of Pfeiffer, and it's when Lawrence gets preggers. I prefer the first half, where it's more 'death by a thousand cuts' than one big wallop of misery.

[Patrick R]

I thought mother!'s "great artist" narrative was childish and distasteful, the way it was tied into the ludicrous biblical structure eye-rolling, and Aronofsky's claims that the whole thing is supposed to be an environmental allegory laughable. Aronofsky seems to have an obsession with "perfect" art, characters reaching "perfection" and the idea that everything that happens in the wake of that quest (including, here, emotionally abusive relationships) is justified because it has to be that way for Great Art to emerge is gross. 

 

On the other hand, I think mother! is an absolute blast. You never know what's going to happen next, or what the shape or structure or reality of the film you're watching is going to end up being. I love being surprised in films and I thought I had a pretty good handle on it as a psychological thriller, but from the moment the wake slid into absolute irrationality I had a big dumb grin on my face all the way to the end, even at the end when things get violent because at that point suspension of disbelief goes right out the window. I seriously had to bite my lip to stop from laughing when

 

 they killed and ate the baby because OF COURSE that's how Aronofsky reduces the life of Jesus Christ in this batshit insane thing, the only God he understands is the wrathful uncaring one.

 

If it had a script that wasn't dumb as dirt and all the same formal choices I would be over the moon about this, but as is it was just a really good time at the theater. It's basically a version of Son of Saul that I feel less guilty about enjoying because instead of turning the Holocaust into a roller coaster ride*, this turns the Bible into a roller coaster ride. This is like one of those Bible theme parks where they try to teach kids that humans walked with dinosaurs and one of those Bible haunted houses where they try to teach kids how scary Hell is all rolled into one. But what remains is definitely the childishness.

 

Any way you slice it, seeing this in a packed multiplex is a real trip. It's this year's Antichrist. A movie that is fun to see with an audience reaction, a movie that is laudable for it's divisiveness and willingness to push the limits of good taste AND cinematic language, but one that I probably will never see again.

 

*This is reductive and there is a depth to Son of Saul that mother! can't touch, but at the same time I definitely felt ambivalent about how "exciting" I found Son of Saul. Either way, they totally operate on the same cinematic principle of "sustained close-ups of character's faces as they run through perilous situations = intense and exciting experience.

[Roderick]

Now I'm a little miffed that audiences are generally really quiet and to themselves over here. For 99,9% of movies, that's bliss, but I would've loved some shocked gasps or horrified 'well I never'-s during mother!.

[Patrick R]

Yeah, mother! broke through the running conversation problem most American audiences have just by being intense and instead there was a lot of shock, laughter, and people getting audibly pissed off at what they're watching. The climactic transgressive moment I mentioned in my spoiler tag made two different sets of couples get up and leave.

[TychoCelchuuu]

What's the difference between a set of couples and a couple? Does a set of couples contain multiple couples? How many couples? More than a couple of couples?

[Patrick R]

A gross of audience members left in disgust.

[Roderick]

See, I was denied even that. There was duality of elderly people who left, but that was in stealth mode during the break. Not even a single goddamn tantrum. To be fair, I don't think mother! especially deserves a non-silent storm-off, but it may have been my one chance.

[Problem Machine]

It's weird to me that so many people are reading it solely as religious allegory. I didn't really interpret any of it religiously -- for me it was more just like a brutal deconstruction of The Giving Tree.

Also not sure where you're getting the idea that all of the abuse is justified in the name of great art. If anything my read was that the message was about the toxic mental environment artists create for themselves, so kind of the exact opposite of that. I don't think we're meant to think that the writer is anything but a shithead by the end, but maybe that's optimistic.

[Patrick R]

I don't think it's solely a religious allegory but I think the Biblical imagery is undeniable.

 

The glass is the apple of knowledge, Adam (and later Eve) show up, destroy it, are cast out, their sons come and one kills the other, there is a great multiplication of people until eventually a flood (the broken sink) drives them out, the bisected narrative matches old and new testaments, and the stuff with the baby being devoured literally makes no sense outside of it being Christ, it ends with an Apocalypse.

 

Also if you're into artist's intent, here is Aronofsky literally explaining how he structured his movie and what he intended it to be a metaphor for.

 

I think we are meant to see the writer as a shithead but I think the fact that this film unambiguously presents the work that comes from the chaos he presents as not just great but Great and Perfect is a self-justification. Black Swan also does this, with someone destroying themselves in the name of perfection and the important thing is that there too they succeed. A lot of Aronofsky's work is about the tremendous cost of Greatness, but the fact that his characters do in fact achieve that greatness heavily implies that he just thinks that's how things are, that's what it takes to create on that level. And I think that is false and a self-justification, especially when you factor in his alleged tendency to put his actors through the wringer.

[Problem Machine]

I took any statements about the greatness and perfection of the writer's work with a grain of salt coming, as they did, from the writer -- more or less.

I think the biblical stuff is kind of boring, and choose to kind of sideline the creator's intent in favor of what the creator perhaps unintentionally ends up saying about the act of creation: That it is often callously cruel and violent and self-aggrandizing. That he apparently didn't intend to say that and is uncomfortable with it is a bit hilarious to me.

[Erkki]

I think I'm with you, Problem Machine, mostly.

 

I do get the comedy reading, but I think it was more of a really over the top Polanski's Apartment Trilogy movie - a psychological thriller. And then it finally descended into a blurry phantasmagoria, a free-for-all mayhem. I liked the movie a lot, but I do think the ending kind of betrayed what the first half was. I don't begrudge it that, but I'd like the version where this is the fourth movie in The Apartment Tetralogy.

 

Did anyone else think (during the first half at least) that the Ed Harris character was the husband's secret (to Grace) gay lover? To me that was the only way it made any sense until nothing made any sense.

 

I'm from a country where the bible is not really a thing for most people, besides the story of Jesus, so I didn't pick up the biblical stuff at all. Now that I think back, the baby was an obvious biblical reference, though, and the other things too.