FYC: mother!
Tuesday, December 5, 2017 at 9:50AM by Chris Feil
Has the world already forgotten about mother!? It may not have ever been a film built to be a formidable Oscar contender, but Darren Aronofsky’s film is one to hang the year on nonetheless. Now is time for a healthy reassessment, as it arrives on streaming today!
Or maybe it might be a first watch for some, after that all-too-brief run in theatres. The film was killed by a flurry of hot takes, sink bracing jokes (guilty), dissections of its marketing, and conversations on the value of Cinemascore. But now that the dust and clickbait have settled, the film still remains one of the most audacious and purely entertaining films of the year. And also one of the very best that we should keep talking about...
Did the film burn off all of its steam in its mystery-box promotion and post-release hyper-eagerness to Explain Itself? Many of those who tired quickly of the film’s discussion will tell you a virulent yes, and maybe that has little to do with the film itself. It’s a strange film to claim it was treated cruelly considering its own violence, but it is certainly fair enough to say that it begs to be reassessed. As hulking as the film is perhaps we should have treated it more delicately, like Javier Bardem’s glinting, mantleplace crystal. Or, well, that unbraced sink.
Though mother! is as imposing as its brazen house guests, first suggestive and winkingly provocative before it becomes a Hieronymous Bosch-like display of human indiscretion. Hanging on Jennifer Lawrence’s every move, it’s difficult to remain passive to the film when it puts us so viscerally in her perspective. We feel accosted because the film is so effective at transplanting us into her experience.
But its assault on the senses isn’t without intent and the rueful abandon Aronofsky has for his metaphor has its own kind of poetry. He staged the film with fluid precision, lending various rooms of the house with their own significance (notice how some of the nastiest bits occur in the nursery, where Adam and Eve had once been seen getting frisky). The film works because it is such a roller coaster and a florid one, as wickedly entertaining as it is a mental workout. It’s exhausting, but potent.
I’m also not so sold that we’ve fully examined the full texture of mother!‘s allegory with how it reveals other things festering in our culture. Sure, by now we all get that mother!’s angle is Old Testament punishment in the context of climate concerns, but you don’t have to scratch the film to gloss more than the Biblical. How women are told to behave and to what purpose, particularly as embodied by Michelle Pfeiffer’s boozy Eve. The implications of an increasingly validated fear of the outsider, the dangers of willful myopia. The ways in which we (singular and global) lose our identity to service another’s.
It’s a film the most wicked of us can greet with alacrity. As our mounting cultural depression creeps towards nihilism from the slow drip of the ongoing news cycle’s monsoon, there is something oddly comforting in mother!’s righteous embrace. It’s angry cinema of the boldest order, almost a relief that something so damning can come when it's needed most.
Or if that’s not your brand of comforting, just know you will have a lot of fun both during the film’s cataclysm and discussing it later. No matter the bombast or the sheer intensity, mother! is a rich experience that only tightens its grip over multiple viewings. In a year of films that speak to the hell of living today, from Get Out to The Post to several others, it’s one that shouldn’t be forgotten in the narrative. One imagines time will actually be kind to the film, but audiences should wait around for the tide to turn. It demands to be seen (or reseen) now and then do it all over again. Baby.
mother! is available now on iTunes and Amazon Instant.
Reader Comments (23)
I can't believe I'm saying this in the year that CMBYN and/or Get Out were released... but I think, all told, this will be my no.1 film of the year. It's the film I'm still thinking about more than any other, and I can't wait to watch it again.
I L-O-V-E-D mother! I thought it was so successful as both a comedy and a roller-coaster, and it didn't bother me that the metaphor was so unshrouded. It's a movie made to hit you over the head.
Lawrence and Bardem could be still be nominated.
YES! It is so, so great. Hoping JLaw garners a Globe nom, at least.
Great art is intended to provoke. It's intended for you to have a strong reaction: good or bad. I would rather spend 2 hours in a WTF-whirlwhind-of-a-film than see something like DADDY'S HOME PART 6 ;-)
I love me a good, blunt, horror/thriller and mother! hit all the marks for me. Is it ridiculous? Yes, as it is designed to be. It's very 1960s British horror (like the Amicus anthology films or Hammer Horror in its heyday) in its beats and use of obscure references. It's not the most accessible horror genre, but it's one I'm a huge fan of.
Ew.
Saw this for Michelle. Want recognition for Michelle. If nothing comes for Michelle this season concerning Mother--then the movie can go fuck itself.
Chris, I adore you. But nothing could ever make me attempt to endure this dreadful film again. Not even mother.
Aronofsky makes Tarantino look like Wyler. I desperately hope he gets the therapy he so desperately needs and not find the need to victimize his audience. The way Lawrence is treated in this is brutal. My retinas were aflame.
This movie was a big steaming pile of crap.
/3rtful. You are a pig!!!!
I hoped it would be forgotten and the conversation would die down, because I hated that movie. Instead, I just point out that Darren Aronofsky’s middle name is Aaron.
I love Pfeiffer so much. She was the reason I had high hopes for the film, but her role was such a letdown. I wish I could be on board, just for her sake, but I see nothing exceptional at all in the performance.
The film manages to be both stressful and boring at the same time, and, at every moment, dumb.
The surprise of the year for me is that I actually hated a film more than Mother: Three Billboards
Even if you don't like the film, how can you deny the craft? This just might have the most spectacular sound design of the year.
Count me in as a huge fan of this film (mostly for how batshit crazy it is and how much the dream logic adds to the experience), but I understand why people dislike it and I feel this is one film for which awards traction will be a great disservice. It's too divisive and I feel that having the attention of the Awards machine will make people hate it more than they do. Look it what happened to Birdman, a film I absolutely adore and am over the moon that I get to call it a Best Picture winner, but the Internet has decided it must be hated and I can't help but feel it has to do with its victory at the Oscars. It's funny how these awards can harm a movie's reputation often way more than they can help (especially when they're this unique). Anyway, I actually think this is Jennifer Lawrence's best work since Winters Bone (I really enjoy her David O. Russell work, but it doesn't reach the heights of that first film) and Javier Bardem is excellent in a deceptively thankless role (his final scene reminded me just how good an actor he is). If it does pick up some awards attention, I'll be championing it, but I fear it may not be the best thing for this particular film.
I was glad I saw it, but I still don't know if I *liked* it.
I know that Aranofsky wanted people to go in blind (which is a big part of that CinemaScore F), and Lawrence disagreed. I was on Team Lawrence for that one. I didn't want to know EVERYTHING going in, but I felt relaxed going in with the knowledge that this was to be an allegory/metaphor and not torture porn.
Loved Pfeiffer, though, so perfectly bratty, and thanks to Jonathan for reminding me how great the sound was, which really added to the sense of claustrophobia and panic.
Richter Scale -i so agree. I remain eternally gobsmacked that anyone thinks BIRDMAN is worth hating. So creative and funny and unique. Film consensus dogpile hatred and critical bullying are two of the absolute worst things about being a cinephile in the modern era.
Nathaniel - I know, right? And sometimes it's even film consensus dogpile adoration that leads to the critical bullying. I mean, God forbid anyone criticizes Christopher Nolan or Quentin Tarantino (a position you and I both have been in).
I think I understand why certain people dislike Birdman (I know people who get a headache from the single-shot trick, others who feel the comedy is undermined by that trick and others who might feel its critique and exploration of superhero stardom and theater acting is shallow), but it's the kind of film I wish there was more of. Technically audacious while being wickedly funny. I've seen it a few times since, I feel it holds up quite well (even moments I wasn't too sure of the first time I saw it have grown on me).
Anyway, whatever one might say about mother!, people have not stopped talking about it. People either love it or hate it, but everyone remembers it. I look forward to seeing how it ages.
"Mother!' is a horrible mess- I don't hate "Birdman" but it's highly over rated
Audacious and entertaining - you nailed it, Chris.
Cinema: audacious and entertaining.
Great performances all around.
Give me one mother! every year instead of some nice forgettable crowd pleaser.
I liked mother! I definitely prefer watching a film like this, that can incite conversation and has several interpretations, than something predictable we've seen before.
Lawrence gave the performance of her life in mother!
I love Mother! It's currently my No.1 film of 2017.
THANK YOU for this, Chris! I actually think that mother! is the THE film of 2017, in that it encapsulates so much of what is going on in the world today, and manages to be both good and bad and everything in between, often at the same time. Watching it felt like living in the world today feels, and for that, I'm weirdly grateful to it.
I also LOVE that it's basically Artaud's theater of cruelty put on the big screen.