Rating: 4/5 stars
Darren Aronofsky’s (“Noah”) allegorical horror film “mother!” is easily the most ambitious, and very likely, the most divisive film seen all year. It is one of those movies that is incredibly hard to synopsize without spoiling the whole thing. A married couple, who are never named in the film but are credited as ‘Him’ (Javier Bardem, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell no Tales”) and ‘Mother’ (Jennifer Lawrence, ”X-Men: Apocalypse”), live in a large, secluded house that was recently severely damaged by a fire.
‘He’ is a once great poet who struggles severely with writer’s block, and she stays at home renovating their fixer-upper. Her perpetual spring cleaning is interrupted by an unexpected guest, credited as ‘Man’ (Ed Harris, “Westworld”), who mistakes the remote home for a bed and breakfast. While Mother is reluctant to let the man in, Him welcomes Man with open arms. Man brings his wife, ‘Woman’ (Michelle Pfeiffer, “The Wizard of Lies”), and she is also welcomed into the home without Mother’s consent. More guests arrive and each time Bardem’s character invites them to spend as long as they would like. With each new guest entering their home, Mother becomes increasingly irritated by her husband refusing to consult with her before letting in more strangers.
To say things get crazier from there would be the greatest understatement made in this piece. What starts as a slow burn psychological horror film eventually explodes into a surrealist nightmare. Cinematographer Mathew Libatique (“The Circle”) keeps the camera tied to Mother’s perspective throughout the 121-plus-minute runtime. There are only three different types of shots utilized in the film: close-ups of Mother, over the shoulder shots and point of view shots from Mother’s perspective. This creates a sense of claustrophobia that permeates the film. With the film being locked down to Mother’s perspective, it falls onto Jennifer Lawrence to carry the film with a powerful performance. The first half of her performance is fairly one note as she plays varying degrees of confused, but when the second half of the film demands she step up her game, she absolutely delivers what may be a close second to “Winter’s Bone” in terms of Lawrence’s best work. But it is Michelle Pfeiffer who puts in the best performance of the film. Her character has a charm that just dominates every scene she is in, and it is a shame she does not get more opportunities in this to show off.
Those better read on a certain famous book (the Bible) will pick up on the main allegorical subtext of the film fairly early on. But “mother!” is so much more than just a psychological thriller version of the good book. It is about art and our relationship to artists, it is about the earth and our relationship to nature, it is about religion, it is a horror, a thriller and, at times, it is an absurdist dark comedy. “Mother!” has so much to say about so many different things that it is almost impossible to unpack everything. “Mother!” is a nightmare in the best ways. It is the kind of movie that some may love while many others will loathe. The film may almost have too much say, but it does so much and is so uniquely original that it is hard to fault. Love it or hate it, like any good nightmare, “mother!” is not a film viewers will forget anytime soon. It supplants itself into the mind in a way that audiences will find themselves thinking about it long after leaving the theatre.
Photo provided by Paramount Pictures via YouTube.com
