“Mother!” looked like a promising scary movie.
Released in 2017 amidst the renaissance of arthouse horror films, it features a powerhouse cast and a trailer that looked intriguing.
Going into the film, I was completely ignorant of the allegory that filmmaker Darren Aronofsky was intending. When the credits rolled, I thought the movie was pure garbage. Various podcasts and cinephiles much smarter than me had to explain what the real meaning of the story was.
While I appreciate the remedial tutorials I got after the fact, I think labeling it psychological horror is a mistake. Dumb folk like me might turn it on thinking it’s going to be one thing only to get a rude awakening.
Praise
Like every review of “Mother!”, I’ll start by lauding its cast.
Jennifer Lawrence is the main focal point, she’s in every single scene, and does a fantastic job. While I was still only a handful of scenes in, I thought Lawrence was the perfect choice for a horror movie lead. She’s sympathetic in her situation but not a dumb character.
Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, and Michelle Pfeiffer lend support, and are excellent as one would expect.
Plot?
A couple (Lawrence and Bardem) reside in a secluded country house. He’s a poet with writer’s block; she’s a DIY pro fixing up the old house.
A stranger (Harris) appears at the door one night, and they invite him inside. The stranger is behaving very strangely. He and Bardem seem to be keeping secrets from Jennifer Lawrence. The stranger’s wife (Pfeiffer) shows up and all Hell (pun intended) breaks loose.
I was invested at this point.
Jennifer Lawrence is highly talented, and the slow burn style is something only a great actor can pull off. Something is amiss. Javier Bardem is gaslighting her. More is going on than is being revealed. I can’t wait for the reveal.
And it just gets weird.
Everyone is ignoring Jennifer Lawrence and her concerns. Random people show up. There’s a murder. Wild parties. Destruction of the house.
A Film with a Message!
The first time I ever walked out of a theater was in 2006. The movie was “The Fountain” and the filmmaker for that was Darren Aronofsky. Twenty years later, I enjoy the dissection of film more than I did back then. Maybe I will revisit “The Fountain” at some point, but back to “Mother!”
Credits rolled and I hated what I had just watched. It was stupid. It was a waste of time. And it was supposed horror that wasn’t scary at all.
And then I saw the barrage of praise from a variety of sources, reviews, podcasts etc. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, was slurping this up as though it were the best thing ever created.
It’s an “artist’s cry from his own corrupt heart…a work of a visionary!” said Peter Travers of Rolling Stone. “Toweringly outrageous,” “leaves no gob unsmacked,” “It is an event-movie detonation!” said Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian. Filmmaker Denis Villeneuve of Dune fame cited it as among his favorite films.
Or my favorite, Martin Scorcese who thought “It was so tactile, so beautifully staged and acted…Only a true, passionate filmmaker could have made this picture, which I’m still experiencing weeks after I saw it.”
Did I miss something?
Further digging reveals the true meaning of the movie. Bardem is God. Lawrence is Mother Earth. Harris and Pfeiffer are Adam and Eve. The people trashing the house are humans trashing the Earth. Isn’t it just so clever?
Food for Thought
What’s funny is the allegory is interesting. Thinking about it for a bit offers a duh my bad realization. I’m not sure how the other cinephiles knew about this immediately, and I doubt all of them did.
Bardem plays Him, Lawrence plays Mother. Harris and Pfieffer are Man and Woman. The random kids are Cain and Abel. Okay, I get it, but you wouldn’t know that until you saw the credits or heard the so-called experts.
The other biblical references pointed out wouldn’t be recognized by the average viewer, save for Pope Leo, and I bet even he would have been confused.
I get the impression Darren Aronofsky thinks he’s such a visionary he forgets the enjoyment factor of his work.
“Mother!” is well shot and well-acted. It’s not horror at all. I can see a second of third viewing revealing even more of the true meaning, but I won’t be investing the time.
