Mother!
Directed by:
Darren AronofskyScreenplay:
Darren AronofskyCinematography:
Matthew LibatiqueCast:
Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Brian Gleeson, Jovan Adepo, Raphael Grosz-Harvey, Andreas Apergis (more)VOD (3)
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A couple's relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence. (Paramount Pictures)
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Reviews (12)
I was pretty bored in the first half of the film. All in all, it irritated me rather than kept me on the edge of my seat. I couldn't help feeling like I was watching an invasion of barbarians into the household of normal, adaptable citizens. I kept waiting for the big twist at the end, but to my surprise, the film ended in a completely predictable way.
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Bullshit. Yeah, I could express my thoughts in a more subtle and laconic way, i.e., that it’s simply uselessness. So why did I give it one star? For the little film within the film with Michelle. We hadn't seen her playing the role of the sassy little MILF (supposedly the biblical Eve) for a long time, which in and of itself was a small gig in spite of everything and all her teammates.
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An excellently driven absurd thriller that works both as a portrait of an unhealthy relationship, as well as a parable of the relationship of humankind and the figure of the mother or Planet Earth. The second half, unfortunately, drowns into biblical allegories that are literally hair-pulling so even a moron would understand them, which radically affects the thought-provoking aspect. Yeah, God is a smug douchebag, the Scriptures are misinterpreted nonsense, poor life-giving Mother Earth, and humans are idiots… but what else? In the details and in the conclusion, that’s effective, but the impression of a smart film that has something to say vanishes. That said, the intention is commendable, sure. 7/10
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Mother! is a film that in a way made me think again about how I should actually approach the evaluation of works of cinema and how to approach this one in particular. I could be a principled objective reviewer who doesn't care who works on a film, what they've done before, or how their outlook on life and artistic sensibilities affect me, then I'd follow the plot without emotion, trying to uncover the general processes I've consciously or subconsciously automated while watching films, and Mother! would have struck me as a big-budget creation that, in pursuit of a thoughtful philosophical point, cheaply resorts to parroting various biblical themes on which it merely hangs its model story. But I can also be a highly subjective reviewer who has both a good understanding of general narrative practices and an opinion of the actors and the director, which, if negative, can affect the experience of the film to such an extent that it’s impossible to get past being pissed off at the artistic expression of the filmmaker and enjoy the film subjectively. Or I can be a subjective viewer who doesn’t give a crap about the artistic views of the creators, and even though the film just parrots big themes, its portrayal simply draws me in and, if nothing else, shows me once again how powerfully the medium of film can communicate and create at least the illusion of big authorial ideas. Mother! is a controversial and far from perfect movie that has understandably divided the audience and raises the question of how much one is able to empathise with the narrative and accept its expression. I respect all options (a hundred people are a tribute to a hundred audience tastes), I chose mine, and it is evident from this really difficult review. 85%
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Mother! is a very dark comedy of morals that degenerates into a surreal apocalyptic horror flick. First through hints and then increasingly explicitly, Aronofsky’s film makes it clear that we are not watching a realistic story. The idea that it will be a variation on Repulsion (1965) or Rosemary's Baby (1968), i.e. a domestic horror movie about a paranoid female protagonist, holds together for roughly the first hour. Then the film definitively abandons the moral, logical and any other norms that apply in our current world. The characters’ actions can no longer be explained based on any psychological parameter, there are no rationally legitimate relationships between events, and the laws of physics cease to apply. The subtext becomes the main text and it is impossible to come to an interpretation that is anything other than allegorical, unlike the above-mentioned Roman Polanski films, which until the end keep us in a state of uncertainty as to whether we are only watching the personified fragments of the protagonist’s disturbed mind. In attempting to come to a reading that is more grounded in reality, the film’s structure would collapse. However, Mother! does not base its narrative on uncertainty and unanswered questions. Nor does it try to encourage viewers to think about what has been left unsaid. As is his habit, Aronofsky instead shamelessly shoves his “big ideas” is our faces. Watching the film is an uncomfortable experience not because we would be groping for the message that it is conveying, but because we know (and see) more than we want. Sometimes it is necessary to attack all of the senses. Thanks to our physical attachment to the main character (the camera practically never wavers from her point of view), we sympathise with her, experience her physical suffering and understand both her growing frustration and her final act of defiance. In most of his films, Aronofsky works with a similarly aggressive visual style, for which he is often ranked among the biggest posers of contemporary American cinema, but for the first time in mother!, he clearly found appropriate material on which to use it. We can see the choice of the “story of all stories” as the basis for the narrative as a manifestation of a lack of judgment. However, we can also see it as a middle finger raised at critics who had previously blamed Aronofsky for the efforts of numerous midcult artists to address the problems of the entire universe with trite brevity. Mother! goes back to the beginning of life on Earth and, at the same time, ostentatiously flaunts its own banality. It doesn’t pretend to be high-brow art that we should long contemplate. A bit in the spirit of the “theatre of cruelty”, it is rather a naked attempt to draw attention, by any available means of expression, to the crisis in which humanity has found itself due to unjust social conditions and people’s selfishness, disinterest, hypocrisy, dismissiveness and complacency. It is a desperate and, in its ingenuousness, extraordinarily authentic cry, not a genial request. Perhaps you will find it offensive, or maybe you’ll laugh at it or it will make you sick, but it if doesn’t leave you indifferent, it has served its purpose. 90%
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