Is Mother! a spiritual journey, dramatised nightmare or sadomasochistic porn? Yes, and much more, too much to parse in a single discussion or digest in a single viewing. A film so thoroughly oppressive and bleak, so unflinchingly brutal, is to be thought about for days.
On one level, the story is a complex psychological mystery. While it is initially hard to get a grasp on, everything is in place to be read into and ultimately understood if you’re willing to pay close attention. The film focuses on imagery that moves into retina-frying hallucinatory realms augmented by weird sounds from the background, creating the sense that it’s all taking place on a different plane of existence. While it carries echoes of work by provocateurs including David Lynch, Roman Polanski, Lars von Trier and Luis Bunuel, there’s nothing like it in terms of overall style and imagery. This is a film completely on its own.
The characters are unnamed archetypes played by Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem, two of the most expressive performers of the era. Lawrence is the young wife and muse of a celebrated poet who has become unable to produce anything. An almost ethereal beauty, she encourages the older man, played by Bardem, pleased to serve as his handmaiden. For his part, he gazes on her fondly as she freshens up their aged manor and delivers his meals.
While he is often distant and self-important, their bond is hopeful. He may be able to return to writing when the right theme arrives; she may someday have her dream come true as a mother.
Their home is from the creepy-house-in-the-woods playbook. Matthew Libatique’s camera creeps around the decrepit octagonal home at Lawrence’s side, keeping her increasingly worried face in claustrophobic close-up. A look out the front door shows that there is no road to the place, just yellow fields surrounding it, and whatever it is that’s growing on those fields represents no recognisable branch of nature.
Change raps on the door in the form of a surgeon in search of lodging. He happens to be a huge fan of the poet’s celebrated early work, and the writer invites him to take one of the house’s multiple empty rooms. Ed Harris pays the part with his typical screen magnetism, making him both a figure of pathos (he’s dying) and disquiet (Lawrence wasn’t consulted about his limitless stay-over).
Then comes the arrival of his acidic wife (Michelle Pfeiffer in haughty, overindulged form). And from there forward, each sound at the front door introduces people who don’t belong and don’t care about how inconvenient their arrival is to the increasingly paranoid Lawrence. Watching Mother! descend into a population explosion of uninvited guests and Lawrence’s gratuitously gory martyrdom is like feeling the sizzle of a branding iron against your brain. It sears its way into your subconscious. Watching it I juggled terms like coven, Antichrist, demon, madness, revelation, mutilation.
What writer/director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) is exploring are dark, profound issues regarding human nature and faith. The gradually revealed biblical overtones are as powerful as in his epic Noah. Here again, humanity seems like one of the universe’s failed experiments.
The movie pushes the limits in every scene. It shows us in stark detail unspeakable acts of violence and sexuality while dramatically justifying them only through implication. Although Aronofsky isn’t just out to jolt viewers, the film might make many feel merely stunned, rather than touched by its disturbing, weird, highly abstract vision. Mother! is agonisingly uncompromising, yet utterly compelling.
Katie Walsh writes based off the trailer and poster, many have surmised that this is Aronofsky’s tribute to Rosemary’s Baby, and there are similarities: the waifish young blonde wife (Lawrence), the egotistical artist husband (Bardem), the overbearing older couple (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer), who make themselves at home despite the discomfort of the subservient, passive bride.
The films share character types and the theme of pregnancy and parenthood, but Mother! is possessed of a raucous, wild energy that builds to a riotous crescendo, and the villain here is not Satan, but unchecked humanity itself. There’s more than enough evil to go around with the people who assemble in this home.
Cinematically, Mother! is an expertly executed wild ride. Aronofsky keeps the audience focused completely on the subjective experience of Lawrence’s unnamed young wife, as unwanted guests invade her sanctuary, a huge, lonely Victorian mansion. The camera follows her as she walks throughout the house, grants us access to her point of view, moves uncomfortably close for nearly abstract close ups of the dewy planes of Lawrence’s face. The overlapping sound design is note perfect. Footfalls take on the tenor of gunshots, voices signal danger, and always, she experiences an overwhelming ringing in her ears.
Lawrence is remarkably restrained throughout the first two-thirds of the film, as the perfect little wife too polite for her own good. She modulates her tone, and never gets mad enough at her rude intruders. When she finally, finally screams, “Get out of my house!” it’s a cathartic experience for her, and the audience.
The film does go completely off the rails at a point where you expect it to end, after all of its exhausting mayhem. But Aronofsky pushes it completely to the limit, drains every drop in the same way that his leading lady does. Lawrence’s press tour has detailed the physical challenges and injuries of this shoot, and Aronofsky holds nothing back. There are some sickeningly violent images that are deeply uncomfortable to watch and toe the line of decency.
Critics were provided with a director’s statement to be read before the film, elucidating what was on Aronofsky’s mind when he coughed up the screenplay for Mother! over the course of five feverish days of writing. But the best way to see this film is knowing as little as possible. When we’re clued into Aronofsky’s thought process, it leads to a sense that his metaphor is a little too on-the-nose as we plunge into the absolutely insane climax of the film.
However, what makes Mother! brilliant is that it is open enough to read and project your own experiences onto it, which makes it deeply personal and universal. More than any metaphor about the state of the world, Mother! is a film about being in a relationship with a narcissist: someone who takes and takes and takes all of your love down to the very last drop without ever giving anything back. Any viewer can place their own experiences on top of this story, and ultimately, hopefully, honestly consider what it fully means to give, and to take. — TNS
DVDs courtesy:
Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha
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