I probably should wait a few days before writing this, as
this is a movie that will be waking me up in the middle of the night for months
as my subconscious unravels the deeper layers of imagery and meaning. It’s a Rorschach Test of a movie that allows
different people looking at it from different perspectives to see different
things. If you’re walking in here
expecting the haunted house story the trailer wanted to feed you, you are going
to be sorely disappointed. If you walk
in with zero expectations and allow the movie to teach you its rules as it
goes, you might find one of the most meaningful cinematic experiences you’ve
ever encountered. When it finished,
Jennifer and I sat in rapt silence, wrapping our heads around what we had just
seen, interpreting it the way one might look at an abstract painting or
sculpture. A guy in the back of the
theater just shouted “that’s bullshit!” and went on with his day.
You get from it what you take into it I suppose.
So, I’m going to talk about the movie, I promise, and I am
going to talk about what I got from the film itself. I have to say, what I pulled from the film is
apparently not what was intended by Darren Aronofsky, which you can find
elsewhere if you want to read (I’m not going to do your Googling for you). There are other opinions as well, but I will
tell you up front: this movie is not for everyone. It is often surreal, it is at times brutal,
there are horrific moments that though not overtly gory are remarkably tense
and there’s a direct implication of one of the most devastatingly awful things
I have ever seen in a film. Though the
film follows it’s own logic, there are things that don’t quite make sense when
you pull them out of the movie and look at them in the real world. It is less a narrative than an allegory.
I am not trying to imply that someone who liked it is
smarter than someone who didn’t, or that anyone who didn’t like it just didn’t
“get it.” (Though I have no doubt those
people are out there.) This movie does
not give a damn whether you like it or not, and you could flow completely with
the story elements and the allegory and still hate how it made you feel and
therefore the movie. As Jennifer and I
wandered slightly zombie-like through a store afterward, I made the statement,
“there are a lot of men who are going to hate that movie, and maybe not know
why they hated it.” This movie is black
licorice: you hate it or you love it, but if you love it, it opens your world
to absinthe. See the odd metaphor I used
there? Get used to it before you go see
“Mother!”
So, now that I am 500 words in and still haven’t actually
discussed the movie itself, I suppose I should.
Spoiler warning, but honestly, I’m not sure its necessary. This movie is far more than its plot points,
as atmosphere, performance, and inference are every bit as important to the
experience as its relatively simple story.
The framework for the movie is a young woman, played by Jennifer
Lawrence in a standout performance among standout performances, married to
an older poet, played with dripping condescension by Javier Bardem. The poet has been unable to write for some
time, so he and his wife have settled into his former home which was previously
destroyed by fire. She is rebuilding the
house herself while he sits in his study, not writing, but entranced by a
strange gem that he later mentions was found in the rubble of the house after
the fire. One evening, there is a knock
at the door, and Ed Harris arrives; a man who thought the house was actually a
bed and breakfast. Bardem’s poet insists
Harris stay the night, despite Jennifer Lawrence’s misgivings, and this all
gives way to a sequence of events that will start with more unexpected guests,
and then wind through murder, abandonment, hero worship, riots, war, and an
apocalyptic reset of the entire world they inhabit.
Got that? Yeah,
exactly.
So, here’s what I got from the film, and promise you your
results may vary if you work up the courage to see the movie. To me, Lawrence represented the role women
play in 10,000 years of human society.
She nurtures, she preserves, she restores, she becomes a mother. She provides advice, she helps celebrate
victories, she tries to help us minimize our defeats.
Everyone else in the film are the assholes who mistreat her
for it. Be it the husband who takes what
she has done for granted, and can’t understand why she’s upset when he does not
consult her, or did not give her the first reading of his completed work
despite all her support, or who is so caught up in the adulation of others he
doesn’t care to notice how much she has done to facilitate what he has created,
that indeed he would be nowhere without her.
Or maybe it’s the older woman (played by Michelle Pfeiffer), who is
ready to discount her experience and encourage her to rely only on her
sexuality to get the attention of the man in her life. To stay self-medicated and stop trying to
build something for herself, or participate in the creative process. How about the
man who arrives, in her house, and
insists she should hook up with him. And
when she doesn’t want to, when she doesn’t share her number, calls her an “arrogant
cunt” and dismisses her like trash. Or
perhaps it’s the people who are perfectly happy to destroy what she has built
as if it has no value because it came from a woman, and dismiss her telling
them that a particular piece of architecture is not finished and will not
hold. And of course it is the society
represented by the mob that will take her newborn and literally cannibalize it
because they need to consume anything she has made, and then beat her savagely
when she tries to resist them and maintain her agency.
Over and over I saw the allegorical examination of how
society “mansplains” over women experts, or takes for granted that a women has
to be sexual when we demand it, and a mother when we demand it, and her agency
be damned, she should be more appreciative that she even HAS a man to take care
of her. The Poet simply baffled that she
wouldn’t want to see his wishes come true at the expense of all she has done,
because he has never noticed her actual struggle to make it all so.
Aronofsky and crew have called 10,000 years of Patriarchy to
task in this film, and that’s the type of message and delivery that’s going to
make a thousand Dudebros go, “that’s bullshit!” and not want to see themselves
in the Bardem character, or as one of the mass of people who rely on her, yet is happy to
use up and marginalize the women of our society. They may not even be consciously aware of why
they feel indicted, but it will make them dismiss the film. That won't be why everyone who dislikes it dislikes it, but more than I few I wager.
There are horror elements and suspense in this film. In a country where one out of every five
women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, half of those before the
age of 18; where women are subjected to verbal abuse or ignored in work
settings be benefit of their gender; where women can spend 20 years raising
children, managing a budget, keeping a household going…and be dismissed as
“just a housewife” and have nothing to put on a resume when they have decided
to get out of their empty nest and into the world; where three women are
murdered EVERY DAY in the US, and one of those three will be murdered by
someone with whom they trusted enough to be intimate. Hell yes there are horror elements in this
film, because that is all horrific. And
that’s not even looking at other countries where women are not allowed to read,
or after being told they must submit to a man’s will are then considered
“unclean” and subject to being killed by their family to uphold “honor.” Yes a movie illustrating what the world does
to women is a horror movie, because how else do you tell it?
Yeah dude, I know.
YOU aren’t a rapist. YOU don’t
beat your partner. YOU don’t kill women who reject you in a
bar. But is your first thought when you
hear about a rape, “well what was she wearing?” or “well what was she doing
there?” Do you notice how much more
often men interrupt women during conversation than they do other men? Or how much more willing men are to encroach
on personal space of a woman versus another man? You ever tell that joke about “what do you
tell a women with two black eyes?
Nothing, she obviously didn’t listen the first two times.” Ha ha, funny.
Hell, I’ve told that joke myself because it’s just a joke.
Until it isn’t.
Anyway, getting back to “Mother!” Again, other people got
other things from it, and there are certainly plenty of metaphorical elements
to support some of the “Mother = Earth, Poet = God, the Man and Woman = Adam
and Eve” interpretations I see out there. Regardless, the performances from
everyone involved are nuanced and stunning.
The photography is claustrophobic and breathtaking. The emotions are discomforting and
horrifying. I love this film, my wife
loved this film; most people are going to hate it, either for what it says to them, or
what they don’t want to hear from it, or because it does not deliver a “normal”
experience. It most certainly, regardless of your interpretation, does not do that.
I say judge for yourself, but if you’re not up for challenging cinema, you may want to let this one go by. “Mother!” is not for the standard audience, and certainly not for the timid.
