mother!

Darren Aronofski is definitely a unique voice in the movie making community. I haven’t seen nearly enough of his films to tell if I’m a fan of him, but I respect him mostly out of reputation more than anything. I’ve seen Requiem for a Dream and Noah and the common thread that I can pull from his movies is that you don’t exactly come out of the theater feeling good about life in general. He pulls a lot of his inspiration from disturbing imagery, theme heavy story-telling, and almost a horror element in some of his films as well, though I wouldn’t call Noah or Requiem a horror film. But I think some people thought that mother! was going to be a horror film, based on the trailer and previous films like Black Swan (it’s on my list, I promise), so when it turned out the way it was, people were disappointed. I think the biggest thing to take away from 2017 movies is that if we get our expectations so high and it doesn’t turn out being what we think it should have been, that doesn’t make it a bad film. And mother! is no exception. After taking some time to finish mother! I actually think this movie will probably be more appreciated as time goes by. Is it a phenomenal film? Well, no, it definitely has its problems, but this review might be a little hard because I don’t want to give too much away. At the same time, I don’t think this movie is the kind of movie I do a full spoilers review on. I hope I can describe this movie as best as I can without going into spoilers and hopefully you'll be able to asses whether or not this movie is one for you or if you can skip it. 

mother! stars Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence. They are a married couple who live in this house together in the middle of nowhere. Bardem’s character is a poet who is having trouble writing a new piece whereas Lawrence is just a homemaker, in the sense that she spends a lot of time taking care of the house that they live in so Bardem can write. You may notice I’m using the actor’s names and that’s not for the reason it usually is that these characters don’t have memorable names or something, it’s that they don’t have names. On Wikipedia, Lawrence is credited as “mother” and Bardem is credited as “him”. That might give you a little bit of insight into the type of movie we’re dealing with here. Everything is very abstract and while characters are making decisions in the film and they say things, it’s usually, if not always alluding to some kind of metaphor.

Well Bardem and Lawrence are visited by this couple played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pheifer. From there things only get more and more hectic as stuff starts to happen and more people start to show up, and they start to make themselves comfortable in Lawerence and Bardem’s house and a lot of stuff happens and it’s all symbolic towards a larger message that I won’t get into now.

This movie is definitely not for everyone. It’s easy to be turned off by the style of this movie because in all reality, it’s pretty hard to not catch onto the metaphor they’re trying to convey and the movie pretty much forgoes any structured story in exchange for a super abstract metaphor. Which I’m not sure it really needed to do that.

There is a definite supernatural element to this movie and it could have easily been turned into an interesting story with a couple of twists and turns while still being symbolic. Jennifer Lawrence herself has these moments and things she does that are really interesting and could have made her an actual character. The issue is she’s not a character, she is a symbol. It’s very hard to relate to a character when the entire movie is banging you over the head trying to explain that she is symbolizing something. 

The last thing I will say as somewhat of a criticism of this movie is that if you read about the production of this film, it all seemed very laid back and finished very quickly. Aronofsky apparently wrote the script in five days, and since it’s all really abstract, he can kind of get away with it by saying read into it however you like. And while I kind of like how mother! is definitely different from other films, I do think it is a little bit pretentious to write a script that you could see being written on a 5 day cocaine bender (not saying Aronofsky does cocaine, just a joke) and leaving things up to interpretation.

But that being said, I do have to give Aronofsky credit, although I’m a little bit skeptical on the amount of work that was put into this film, it still is a movie that makes me think. The allegories in it are pretty well done in the context of a modern setting, and there are definitely parts of the film that don’t exactly fit into that allegory so it just makes you think more and more about what it could mean.

There are other pretty recognizable names in this film and pretty much everyone is 100% committed to the role they're in and the style this movie is, but the other parts played by other big names actors is so small, they're almost like cameos that were more entertaining than super important to the plot of the story. I'll leave their names out so if you decide to watch the film you'll be pleasantly surprised like I was, but you should know that the other actors like these cameos and Harris and Phiefer, outside of Bardem and Lawrence, give good performances in this film. 

I think the biggest thing I enjoyed about this movie was just how it made me think a little bit about the metaphors being portrayed. Like I said, everything is a metaphor and instead of a real structured story, it just decides to bang you over the head with that metaphor. However, not everything is so clear cut as other things. There are things that happen in this film that are clearly alluding towards a certain allegory or symbol and it's pretty obvious while there are other things that are open ended or just things I'm not totally aware of. 

Now, this does have the danger of making Aronofsky seem a little pretentious that instead of a story, he's giving you "art" or "a message" but I'm not going to be the guy who criticized him because I didn't understand some elements of the film. But I'm also not going to say this is the most inspired thing I've seen ever. It's fine and it's a mind fuck. It's Arronofsky, what did you expect?

I won't spoil the ending but it's a great example of how this movie could have multiple interpretations and at the end of the day, that's really what film and themes in films are, subject to interpretation. You might get something out of this movie differently than I do and you may hate this movie even if you think I'm describing a movie you will enjoy. 

My goal is to point out what is good and bad about the film, say a type of people who might enjoy it, and the rest is up to you. I hope I have done that in this review because this review was difficult. 

Have you seen mother!? What did you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts via Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog. 

I do thank you for your patience as this is the first review I've done in a while. I've got a couple of posts I want to get out this weekend so I'll push for that, but it's the same old excuse about transitions and making money as I've done in the past. I've also been playing some video games. I'm thinking I'm going to try and incorporate some video game reviews and thoughts. Again, thanks for your patience and continue your support on the blog and on Twitter. Thanks!