Mother!

In stronger moments, the intensity of Black Swan or the unpleasantness and suggestiveness deeply ingrained under the skin of Requiem for a Dream are not lacking. However, whatever Darren Aronofsky wanted to say, all the allegory gets lost in an endless loop. The unsuccessful attempt to protect one's own privacy becomes so irritating after a while that with every new character, I just shook my head with increasing emphasis. The way the whole thing stagnates in the last act is so transparent, unnecessary, and (worst of all) lazily written that I just checked off the obligatory biblical references and became more and more frustrated with how Jennifer Lawrence gives absolutely brilliant performances, but it is all essentially in vain. It scares me that someone who was able to develop a simple chain of thoughts into the masterpiece named The Fountain a decade earlier now gives birth to an idea that obviously wants to flourish on multiple levels, then only lets it flow in just one. Noah may have been a disappointment, but Mother! is the boundary between missing the mark and losing yourself. (18/10/2017)

Darren Aronofsky is a director who rarely suits me with his work, he makes a lot of controversial films for his audience, but with this one he absolutely blew me away and proved that he has balls. Mother! is an acting tour-de-force of great actors: an excellent Jennifer Lawrence, who reaches the bottom of her acting abilities and gives an Oscar-winning performance, the same can be said about Javier Bardem, and the participation of Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer is very good, a dream casting for a horror-thriller. The premise is very interesting and I can say this is a great nightmare that I guess nobody would like to experience. The romantic idyll of a happy couple in a beautiful big house starts to be disturbed by uninvited guests, which start to increase and towards the end the house literally becomes a battleground! The film has a very stiffing and uncomfortable atmosphere, for the first time in a long time I was really anxious to the point of being uncomfortable while watching it. The last half hour escalates to the point where my mind was boggled by all the things the director dared to show, and at times he was almost explicitly rude to the audience, girls will definitely turn closed their eyes and the hardened viewers will "snort". During the final twist a lot of people in the cinema said “What the Fuck!" A lot of people may get upset, I personally was very surprised by something so original and strangely interesting. A gritty paranoid, hallucinogenic, intelligent and atmospheric thriller, the likes of which hasn't been seen in the last few years. The finale is the kind of WTF freakout that I want to repeat immediately. The movie will definitely divide audiences into two groups: very satisfied and very angry viewers; I belong to the former. 85%. (17/09/2017)

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% (13/12/2017)

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 (17/10/2017)

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. (06/03/2018)