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SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
There’s a lot of talent both in front
of and behind the camera in the psychological thriller mother! Written and directed by Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream), the movie follows a woman (Jennifer Lawrence)
and her husband (Javier Bardem) who live a peaceful life in a country home.
Lawrence’s character works on refurbishing the house while her husband, a poet,
tries to glean new inspiration from their peaceful surroundings. Unfortunately,
their quiet solitude is broken by the arrival of new, unexpected guests (Ed
Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer) whose presence threatens to unleash chaos in their
home.
mother! is many things, but one thing
it is not is the movie promised in
the film’s marketing. The promotional materials (including one trailer that
debuted in theaters before It last
weekend) position the movie primarily as a horror film—albeit one with a
distinct, mystifying style. And while mother!
is eerie, darkly humorous, and occasionally horrifying, it would be hard to
characterize it as a horror film.
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It has much more in common with
drug-addled Requiem for a Dream—disorienting
hysteria, namely—than it does with 2017’s other scary flicks. Frankly, it’s
kind of an acid trip. All this to say: I don’t think this a movie most people
are going to like, especially if they aren’t mentally prepared for what’s
coming. It’s certainly not a movie I ever plan to watch again.
Having made that point, I do think the movie is a success from a
filmmaking perspective. mother! is
well made, and although it may leave many audience members dumbfounded, its
nightmarish, psychedelic descent into madness is chock full of fascinating
imagery and imbedded meaning.
BEWARE: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS
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Creepy is a word that amply describes
the atmosphere of this movie. There are a lot of things which contribute to that
feeling: a complete lack of musical score, tense performances from a stellar
cast, and direction that stays anxiously close to Lawrence from start to
finish, to name a few. The chilly demeanor extends even to character
development: we know very little about these people, and what we learn over the
course of the film comes through osmosis.
Even if mother! isn’t a horror film in a straightforward sense, it
certainly evokes some qualities borrowed from horror greats of the past. With
the titular mother bearing a child awaited by a sinister cult, the movie bears
obvious resemblance to Rosemary’s Baby,
but it feels more like The Shining;
both films share a quick descent from domestic isolation into a terrifying
world of sinister, cacophonous forces.
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| photo courtesy of cinemavine.com |
And much like Kubrick’s masterpiece,
there’s a lot going on here that defies simple interpretation. As with any
enigmatic piece of film, it would be easy to read too much into it or to apply
an explanation where it doesn’t belong… but nevertheless, I’ll try and tease
out a few of the themes/motifs that are at work.
SEXUALITY/SEXISM
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Despite having a cozy relationship with
her husband (who goes by “Him” in the script), Mother quickly finds herself the
object of unwanted sexual attention. The first guest, Man, hardly acknowledges
her—but still manages to comment on her appearance. When Woman arrives on the
scene, she too views Mother in sexual terms, postulating about whether or not
she is sufficiently appealing to Him and laying hints about motherhood as a
necessary step in securing their future relationship. Comments about Mother’s
appearance and sexuality continue throughout the film, but the ultimate insult
comes, of course, when not only her sexuality but its product—her child—becomes
a commodity for everyone to take on their own terms. (Importantly, that child
is created after Mother and Him finally have sex despite her initial refusals.)
The impact here seems to be that to most everyone, Mother has no value apart
from her sexuality and sexual capacity. She’s a mother and nothing else.
ART/CREATION
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One way to view the film as a cohesive
whole is to frame it as a statement about art and artmakers. mother! has a lot to say about art,
seeing as Him spends the entire first act waiting for inspiration to strike. In
his artistic endeavor, his relationship with Mother becomes an unfortunate
casualty—whereas his relationship with adoring fans becomes an almost
drug-like, obsessive outlet. In this reading, the movie makes a statement about
the cost that artistic expression demands from creatives and those they care
about. Even after it requires the ultimate sacrifice (a heart, life itself),
the process begins all over again, taking and taking in a perpetual, apparently
destructive cycle.
PUBLIC VS PRIVATE LIFE
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Another way to read the strain that
develops as a result of Him’s demanding lifestyle is as a commentary on the
difficulty of balancing public and private life in today’s world (especially
considering the advent of social media). What begins as inviting a few guests
into the privacy of their home quickly escalates into an uncontrollable influx
of people into their personal world. Maintaining boundaries is obviously
difficult for a public figure (Him is, after all, a well-known poet), but he
seems unwilling to stem the flow of onlookers; he has become addicted to the
attention. His fixation comes at the expense of his private world with Mother,
which he fails to protect. At the extreme, he even becomes determined to expose
one of the most intimate moments of life—precious time with his and Mother’s
newborn child, the beginning of their larger family—to the waiting crowd.
FAMILY VS WILL
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| photo courtesy of movieweb.com |
There are two main families in mother!, Mother and Him’s and Man and
Woman’s. Maintaining unity proves challenging for both families: Man and Woman’s
sons fight to the death, and Him breaks the familial bond by taking his child
out to the cult. In both cases, the fundamental conflict arises between the
need to protect and uphold the family and the will of the patriarch. For Man
and Woman, it’s a literal “will,” intended to broker peace, that pushes the
family to the breaking point. For Him and Mother, it’s Him’s ever-present force
of will, which continually estranges Him from Mother and eventually results in
his choice to let the crowd see their son (which, importantly, overrides Mother’s
own will and leads to the child’s death). In this respect the movie is critical
of the patriarch’s dominating will, which serves self-interest but alienates
and destroys relationships.
RELIGION AND BLOOD
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| photo courtesy of digitalspy.com |
Darren Aronofsky previously directed Noah (2014), so it’s unsurprising to see
religious themes crop up again in his work. Here the
biblical metaphors emerge fast and furious. For the sake of brevity I’m not
going to detail all the biblical references, but suffice it to say that the
movie offers a (rather pessimistic) outline of the entire biblical narrative,
both Old and New Testaments. The allusions aren’t exactly subtle, and they
become crystal clear when, at the movie’s conclusion, Him identifies himself as
“I am I,” an overt reference to the Judeo-Christian deity.
The movie also makes use of several
broader biblical themes, including sacrifice, judgment, and the symbolic value
of blood. Notably, mother! uses these
ideas to paint an overarching negative picture of God and divine justice. Life,
the movie seems to say, is simply fuel for creation, expendable and essentially
disposable. Mother herself, who may symbolize some sort of life-giving force or
energy (or perhaps just humankind as a race), is used up by Him and recycled.
She takes a while to realize and protest this profound injustice, but her
doubts begin to creep in as soon as their guests commit murder on their property,
a deed which haunts her for the remainder of the screen time. As in Scripture, the
metaphorical Abel’s blood cries out for justice, but unlike the Scriptural
account, it is answered not by God but by Mother, whose wrath unleashes devastating
fire on the household and its occupants. It goes without saying that the
resultant picture of the human-divine relationship is a markedly bleak one.
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| photo courtesy of indiewire.com |
I can't believe there's no music at all?!
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