Review: mother!

It is almost impossible to talk about Darren Aronofsky's mother! without spoiling some element of this bonkers film. It opens on the image of a woman burning in fires that rise above her. That is followed by a sequence in which a house, the only setting of the film, is resurrected from the ashes and made anew.  To call mother! crazy is beside the point, the film explodes with ideas and is a two-hour thrilling ride that mixes humor and horror into its wild plot.

Jennifer Lawrence is onscreen for the overwhelming majority of the film as an unnamed wife to famous unnamed poet played by Javier Bardem. We learn early on that she is renovating the house while he is battling a long stretch of writer's block. Their life seems to have balance but this is thrown off when a man (Ed Harris) knocks at their door in the middle of the night. Much to the wife's dismay, the poet invites him to stay. Soon the unknown man's wife shows up (Michele Pfeiffer) and Lawrence's character is thrown completely out of stride. 

Cinematographer Matthew Libatique keeps the framing so tight, our attention often on Lawrence as her psyche cracks and simmers. The images he creates here are completely immersive. We feel the same churns in the stomach and blurs in clarity as the wife does. Its an extremely effective technique that comes from the long relationship Libatique and Aronofsky have. The film rivals the work they did in Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream.

The film has so much going on in it and Aronofsky seems to invite many possible interpretations to the film. The Biblical imagery from Adam and Eve to Cain and Abel to quite possibly the most shocking communion scene ever committed to film, mother! can be read as a story of creation. This extends to the more personal read of the film in which Aronofsky might be apologizing to those close to him who he tortured as his ego cracked in the pursuit of the creative process. These thematic elements are connected and create an ambitious, egotistical and all around knockout of a film.

It’s nearly impossible to discuss this film spoiler-free, but I will say that the finale returns to the first scene to explain the meaning behind Bardem and the crystal. It’s then that we realize the role Lawrence’s wife plays in his life, and in the entire world of the film: she was never the subject of this movie, but the object. She’s the muse to Bardem’s artist, who like many mothers, as Pfeiffer’s character laments earlier, must “give and give and give, and it’s just never enough” – and it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest there’s a tinge of misogyny in the film’s patronizing attitude toward its female lead. It’s kind of shocking that an outspoken feminist like Lawrence, who’s dating Aronofsky in real-life, would star in a movie that so blatantly uses, abuses, and devalues its female protagonist.

The finale image of mother packs a wallop, placing the film in new context. While the whole film seems so focused on Lawrence's brutalized character, the final image reveals she is merely an object, a tool for the creator who is truly at the center of the film. Bardem and Lawrence give fully committed performances here. Lawrence is pushed beyond her comfort zone as an actress and occasionally it shows but there are too many fireworks in mother! to care.

Mother! is destined to be divisive. I often think the best films are.

4.5/5