mother!
/"I wanna make a Paradise."
Filmology Rating: 3 out of 4
Mother! is about……. yeah. I really don't know. I mean I do but I don't. I know that doesn’t make sense but that is how everyone who sees Mother! will think. To give a brief statement of what it is about, Jennifer Lawrence and husband Javier Bardem (characters Mother and Him) have this house in the country where struggle poet Him is trying to conquer his writers block. Events take place and soon strangers flood their home and sh*t hits the fan….
Mother! is an assault on the eyes, mind, and heart, that will possible become the most divided film ever made. The average viewer will NOT like this movie while movie critics will lean towards the side of admiration because of how different and unique it truly is (I know that is a generalization but that is a truthful reaction).
To start out, THIS IS NOT A HORROR MOVIE. The trailers for Mother! made it look like it was going to a horror film and that turned out to not be the case at all. I understand why they marketed it like for several reasons. 1) there honestly isn’t a way to really explain this film 2) trying to explain the film in a trailer would give away major spoilers 3) this movie would make essentially nothing if people knew just how strange this movie really is.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with director Darren Aronofsky, he has written and directed the very controversial film Noah starring Russel Crowe and Emma Watson, he has also directed Black Swan, Pi, and Requiem for a Dream. He is one of the most out there directors working today. He is the kind of director that will make films that will NOT be for everyone. This is his most out there film yet and one of the strangest films ever made. He is known to challenge religion, faith, morality, humanity, ethical debates, and much more. Without giving too much away, Mother! is a mixture of all of that.
Jennifer Lawrence gives her best performance to date and assuming the Oscars don't shy away from just how strange and disturbing this movie is, she will be nominated once again and it is well deserved. Her character Mother is so restricted throughout the entire film and portrays this childlike innocence for 80% of the film. When she reaches her breaking point trying to contain the chaos around her, her raw emotion and physicality was like nothing I have ever seen from her. Her acting was so intense that she needed to be separated during filming from the rest of the crew so she could listen to Christmas music and watch Keeping up with the Kardashians to calm down. I really don't know what else to say about Jen Law in this film other than wow.
Javier Bardem was fantastic as well. He brings a whole other aspect and dimension to the film that perfectly counters Lawrence. I wouldn’t necessarily say that Bardem and Lawrence have chemistry in the film but that is actually the point throughout the film. This off-putting lack of chemistry was the goal and it was done perfectly.
For the more technical aspects of this film, the cinematography, camera work and first person viewpoint was incredibly unique, sound editing and effects were phenomenal and much more. From the technical standpoint, Mother! is a near masterpiece with how it was made.
Technicality aside, that will not be enough to keep the average movie goer from saying what the fu*k did I just see. Walking out of the theater, there was a group of older couples that said “that was by far the worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life.” I understood perfectly what they meant and why they felt that way. This will upset, confuse, and irritate so many people.
Mother! is a very strange film but it is haunting beautiful and poetic.
Rating: See It
-Nick
While I still haven’t seen all of Darren Aronofsky's films, since I’m still missing The Wrestler and Requiem for a Dream, I still get excited when I see that a new film of his on the horizon. The amount of tension that he brings to the screen is always fantastic and the amount of religious allegory that he brings to his films is intriguing. The marketing for mother! would leave you to believe that you are getting nothing more than a remake of Rosemary’s Baby, but what you get instead is something completely different, but yet just as terrifying.
Mother, played by Jennifer Lawrence, wants nothing more than a perfect life with her husband, Javier Bardem, in the paradise she has created. Life for the poet seems to have hit a rough spot as writer's block has hit an all time high. His life seems to take a change for the better when a man, played by Ed Harris, shows up at the couple’s house.
mother! features an all star cast featuring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Every actor in the film is working towards the experiment that director Darren Aronofsky is attempting to create, but the real standout of the film is Javier Bardem. For those unfamiliar with Barden’s work, he has lately been playing villains who say more in silence than with a word of dialogue and Barden does the same thing in this film. Since the film is told from Jennifer Lawrence’s point of view you can never understand the motives of Bardem. You are left to wonder, is he the emotionless husband or is he the empathetic savior that most of the world sees him as. The brilliance of Bardem and the script by Aronofsky is that he can be both at the same time, which depending on your point of view could make him both the victim and the perpetrator of the chaos that unfolds. As for Jennifer Lawrence, this is easily better than her performance in House at the End of the Street, but considering that was one of the worst of her career isn’t saying much. Lawrence was a talent whom I thought could do no wrong, but after her performances in Passengers and Joy I quickly began to cool on her as an actress. Her performance in this film is frustrating, but I never found that to be because of anything she was doing, more of what she wasn’t doing. Her character is basically a prop for the movie and doesn’t come across as much more than that.
Watching the film I had two realizations; the first being that no matter how bad I thought my past relationship was, it was never as terrible as the one I’m watching unfolding in front of me. The second realization depicted is that blindly following a leader - whether that leader is spiritual or manipulative in a cult like way is never beneficial for society. A one-sided love will always end in doom and will let the heart rot away and then become hollow for ever feeling again. If there is anything that this year has taught us with films like The Big Sick and Wonder Woman it’s that love is one of the strongest emotions we have as humans and it should be treated with compassion and respect. In regard to the other lesson about following a leader blindly, all you have to do is look at the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States. You had a large group of the population who blindly followed a madman who they believed to be their savior. They are now finding out that he only has his best interests at heart. I believe that this is the same for any cult leader, they do not care about the community as a whole, but they only care about the fact that they will come out on top.
The themes of the movie, especially by the final moments of the film, are clearly defined. They were clearly defined by the forty-five minute mark in the film, leaving you only to suffer for the remaining hour and fifteen minutes, wondering when the suffering will ever end. As a compassionate human being, I hate watching people suffer. As a viewer, if I’m going to watch characters suffer I want it to serve a purpose. Tell me something unknown about our society, tell me about the horrors that humanity can bring upon others, teach me something new is all that I ask. Aronofsky doesn’t bring anything new to the table with the themes in this film, while they might slightly be new for him, all an average viewer would have to do is either look at the news or look at some of their friends relationships and see the same things that mother! is trying to show us.
While most of this film doesn’t offer the amount of tension that it believes it does, it still does offer one of the most horrifying images and sounds that I have ever seen on the silver screen. The third act when the chaos is completely unleashed is horrific, yet I never felt any empathy for the actual characters. I am empathetic to the situation that one of them is in, I don’t actually feel anything for the character herself. I understand the thoughts that she has going through her head: why do I give and give and get nothing in return? Why will they not listen to me? I think everyone at some point in life can empathize with those feelings but the issue that I have is why wouldn’t the character remove herself from the situation. It becomes emotional abusive and unsettling to watch, which might be true for some couples in real life.
mother! will not be a film that will please everyone. To be honest I’m still not sure how I feel about the film entirely. It definitely isn’t Darren Aronofsky’s most visual film nor is it the film that packs the most emotional punch. I can easily see a certain filmgoing audience enjoying this film and I have always called that certain group to be pretentious. If you feel that every film offers a deep meaning and should be studied with a fine tooth comb then you might enjoy this, but if you were looking for an engaging thriller like Black Swan then you will be gravely disappointed.
Rating: Rent It
-Jonny G