Sunday, September 24, 2017

MOTHER!



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.


Saturday, September 02, 2017

To Porg or not to Porg.

So as "The Last Jedi" has gotten closer, various behind the scenes and toy reveals have given us The Porg.  Or thousands of Porgs from the look of things.  And I see people either diving right into Disney's plans to assimilate us into the Porg Collective with what I assume is weapons-grade cute developed somewhere in a Sith temple on Malachor, or immediately turned off by the hype and afraid we are getting new Ewoks.

I spent a lot of my fandom hating on the Ewoks, but now that I am older and I hear Porgs being compared to them I say: I hope the Porgs are like the Ewoks.  They would be lucky to be Ewoks, because Ewoks may be the single most subversive thing the Flannel-clad Maker ever gave us in his six films.

Stand back, I'm about to testify to the mad genius of George Lucas, because it took me 30 years to figure out that Mr. Eleven Thirty-Hate used all that kiddie marketing to make us all love an entire population of Hannibal Lectors.

We mostly remember cute little things, don't we?  Like this little guy.
Get Kenner on the phone, I need a dozen in plush, STAT!

He came along just when Leia needed him most, and he takes her in.  Do you remember why he took her in?
She killed this guy.  Wicket only decides for sure that Leia needs to come back to the tribe because she has shown she's a warrior.  He now sees her as an equal.  Don't believe me?  What is going to happen to the guys who are dumb enough to fall into a trap and then get (much to Han's chagrin) captured without a fight?




They are going to be eaten.
THEY are going to be EATEN.
They are GOING to be EATEN.

The Ewoks consider anyone outside of their tribe to be food, unless that someone has demonstrated the ability to kill.  Their minds are changed only after their golden god dissuades them otherwise. And THAT is only after he demonstrates he is an angry god by floating around the village.  Remember, they are going to kill and eat Han, Luke, and Chewie to honor Threepio EVEN AS HE IS COMMANDING THEM NOT TO and Luke has to Force the issue.  The Ewoks are willing to defy GOD HIMSELF for their hunger for flesh.*  

Did they do all that to Leia?  Not at all, she's basically become one of them. (More on this later.)

Take a moment and bask in the glory of our now luminous Princess and General.
So, the Ewoks are then persuaded to join the Rebel Commando company in their assault on the Imperial Garrison.  Sure we get funny moments like Chewie and the Ewoks swinging like Tarzan, or the Ewok on the speeder.  We get sad moments like the little Ewok who's Mom gets killed.  But really, why do the Ewoks get in on this?  What are they getting in return?

A kick ass drum set.

But besides that, where do you think the troopers for those helmets are?  Lando, don't eat the soup.

So thinking of this, take just a moment and look at this screencap:

What do we say to the god of death? Yub nub.

Realize you are actually seeing a false deity acting as a god of death setting his flesh eating minions upon soldiers who are just trying to do their jobs.  This isn't the First Order where Stormtroopers are trained nearly from birth, or the Republic where the Troopers are cloned to fight.  These are conscripts from across the galaxy, or maybe someone who joined up to get off their little podunk planet because THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE (even Luke was on his way to the Imperial Academy).  Instead they will be eaten by friggin' teddy bears with spears that someone on this day gave fully armed commando support to.  

Now, I am not the first person to come up with all this.  Before Disney purchased Lucasfilm, we used to have a wonderful--and semi canonical-comic series called "Star Wars Tales."  Yes, there are things they published like Indiana Jones investigating tales in Mexican jungles of an Ape Man, only to find an ancient crashed hunk-of-junkspaceship with the skeleton of a pilot who seems so very familiar to him somehow, and the ape-man with a life debt watching over the body.  But they gave us some keen insights into Star Wars as well, such as issue 14's "Apocalypse Endor."



 I love this story because it disables the myth of the "incompetent Stormtrooper" I have discussed elsewhere.**  It also points out, the Ewoks are vicious killing machines who will eat your flesh in a ritualized manner.

And that's why I have to bow to the genius of George Lucas.  He takes the idea of cute marketing to kids, and packages it up, but in that package he has actually given us cute little cannibalistic monsters; not obviously monstrous like a rancor or a krayt dragon, but far more insidious.  Right in front of us all this time.

Now, will the Porgs be something like that?  I don't know, it's not like Disney would do something like that, would they?

Hey, have you seen the new "Forces of Destiny" cartoon?  Here's an episode with Leia on Endor.  It's two and a half minutes long, give it a look and come on back.



So, the Ewoks get two Stormtroopers here, right?  Captured alive.  They all go back to the village, and Leia gets a gift.  A leather dress.  Where did the leather come from?  Where did they get a human sized piece of leather to make her a dress and ritualistically bring her into the tribe?

No Dan, Disney wouldn't do that. Disney does nice Star Wars, they wouldn't suggest Leia is walking around in a dress made from the hide of her enemies.

And they certainly wouldn't make a film where every character you care about dies on screen in heartrending fashion, would they?
A Baze of Glory
So, maybe Porgs are just cuteness overload.  Maybe something we need since it looks like The Last Jedi is taking our characters some pretty dark places.  But maybe, just maybe, there's a little old style subversion hiding in those Puss-in-Boots-from-Shrek eyes, and a joke you may find to your taste.

Actual screen cap: Looks like Chewie chew-chew-chooses the Porgs.
Oh, Chewbacca doesn't eat raw meat?  Remember how they got captured by the Ewoks on Endor in the first place?

Besides, what do you think Luke's been living off of on one island for the last 10-15 years?

A smorgasporg.  



*At least we believe Threepio was trying to stop them.  Perhaps he saw himself with an opportunity to finally free himself of Skywalker family drama and live as the Ewok god until he rusted?

**A native population that outnumbers you hundreds to one in terrain that they know every inch of.  It's almost the kind of thing that might lead a big, strong country to fight a war for 15 years or more somewhere.

(All Star Wars images property of Disney, used here under fair-use laws, not for profit.)
(Even I don't mess with the Mouse.)