MOVIES
BY MEERAH POWELL
THE MOTHER
OF ALL MOVIES
Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! is a grotesque,
intellectual thrill ride not meant for the faint of heart
I
t’s been a while since a major studio movie has been
as divisive as Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! There is no
spectrum of audience appreciation for this film, no mid-
dle ground — only high praise or vehement disgust.
And rightfully so. Mother! is not a movie for everyone.
Although I fall into the former category of people who
loved Mother!, it’s not hard to gather an inkling about why
people hated the film.
First off, the film’s marketing strategy was a recipe for
disaster — pushed as a straightforward horror movie in-
stead of the hell-bent, conceptual, psychological beast that
it is. If you’ve seen any other Aronofsky movies, though —
Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream, Pi, etc. — you probably
could’ve taken a wild guess that this is the direction the film
would take.
Second, there’s a by-now-notorious “gross-out” scene
that has offended pretty much everyone, with some people
saying it made them walk out of the theater before the film’s
end. (Maybe I’ve just been desensitized by traditional horror
movies, or I’m just a terrible person, but this scene didn’t
particularly get to me.)
Lastly, there’s the film’s plot — merely a blank slate for
any number of allegories or metaphors — which is every-
thing but traditional.
Mother! stars Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem as
a married couple. Lawrence is in the process of renovating
Bardem’s childhood home after a fire; the two live in har-
mony as Bardem’s character, a published poet, works on his
writing and Lawrence works on the house.
Mother! functions as a fill-in-the-blank film for the view-
er, one to which you can ascribe any higher meaning you
want — so much so that Aronofsky doesn’t even provide
names for his characters. (In the credits, Lawrence is “moth-
er” and Bardem is “Him.”)
The couple’s idyllic paradise is quickly shaken when Ed
Harris’ character shows up at their door. His wife, played
by Michelle Pfeiffer, arrives shortly after. Lawrence is dis-
turbed by the couple’s arrival, but Bardem is ominously
calm, inviting the two to stay as long as they’d like. This is
where things get weird.
The film evolves into a feverish thrill ride going off the
rails, with Lawrence’s character strapped in tight. In classic
Aronofsky fashion, as Lawrence becomes more paranoid,
so does the film, leaving the viewer unsure of what’s re-
ally going on, yet pummeled by tangible anxiety. Her lack
of control is the true horror, and Aronofsky makes sure the
audience feels every second of it.
This chaos is portrayed brilliantly by cinematogra-
pher Matthew Libatique, best known for his work in other
Aronofsky movies. Libatique creates beautifully frightening
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tight shots, almost Kubrick-esque, paralleling The Shining’s
young Danny tricycling through the claustrophobic halls of
the Overlook Hotel.
Libatique’s camera follows Lawrence throughout the
house so closely and quickly during times of distress, the
audience yearns to zoom out and reveal whatever it is that’s
lurking around the corner.
In the second half of the film, more and more people
show up at Lawrence and Bardem’s home, claiming to be
fans of Bardem’s work, trashing spaces and breaking furni-
ture — with Lawrence’s character’s valid concerns ignored
and scorned, and Bardem blinded with egotistical joy.
The film’s final 30 minutes swirl into a total chaotic
nightmare, with Lawrence’s character taken past her break-
ing point, but still willing to give up everything to her hus-
band and her home.
There are an infinite number of allegories Mother! could
represent, but the most coherent one is the Biblical creation
story portrayed in Genesis: Bardem plays God, Lawrence is
Mother Earth, Harris and Pfeiffer are Adam and Eve (their
two sons who come along, played by the real-life siblings
Domhnall and Brian Gleeson, are Cain and Abel), and the
house itself is the Garden of Eden.
But, for someone like me who has minimal Biblical
knowledge, the film offers up a plethora of other metaphori-
cal options for consumption: colonization, the destruction of
land and nature, or humanity’s apathy about global warm-
ing, the loss of control and bodily autonomy that women
face in a patriarchal society — and the concept of maternity
itself and the sacrifices that come with it.
The list goes on.
The multiplicity of Mother! is its beauty. Its ability to
be a truly individual experience for each and every viewer
is unlike anything I have seen in recent film. But inevitably
it’s a film that people will either love or loathe. The film has
already received an F on CinemaScore, a site that surveys
moviegoers in random cities as they exit the theater. (Cin-
emaScore gave the Emoji Movie a B, so my trust in its audi-
ence ratings isn’t particularly strong.)
Not unlike Aronofsky’s other films, Mother! features
such grotesque and uncomfortable imagery that I question
its re-watch value. And when I say grotesque, I was truly
surprised that a major studio like Paramount decided to run
with the film. That said, Mother! is definitely not for the
faint of heart.
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