TIFF 51: Mahershala Ali learns to be a better father in “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother”

by Cláudio Alves

In the current political climate, it feels incredible, nigh impossible, for such a movie as Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother to come out of a major Hollywood studio. Yet, here it is, in all its MGM-backed glory with a TIFF world premiere to boot.

Bassam Tariq’s third feature and follow-up to 2020’s Mogul Mowgli, concerns a man of that profession which seems ever-so-common in moving pictures, but not so much in real life – the contract killer. He’s Latif, whom we meet in a peculiar scenario, intercutting between the mess of murder in a public toilet and a mysterious dialogue spoken by childish voices, illustrated by intertitles that disrupt the violence. It’s about Islamic scripture, a reflection of Latif’s devotion and a prelude to the news that is about to shake him to his core. Whom do you owe the most respect? The prophet, asked this three times, answers the same words each time: your mother. And who have Latif’s children lost while their father was away, spilling blood? Their mother…

Losing Khadijah breaks something inside Latif, and not just because it throws upon him the brunt and responsibility of single-fatherhood. For years, there’s been a tension running beneath the patriarch’s life, the very foundation of his belief and how he regards the world. A stint in the Marines, that form of state-sponsored violence, led him down a path where killing seemed like the only craft he could do, both for himself and for his community. Such decisions estranged him from family and from faith, especially from the faith as embodied by Imam Abdul Malik, whose ever-understanding ways can sting more than open reproach.

But now, in widowhood, Latif’s alienation grows deeper. During rites of mourning and collective prayer, he finds he can’t bow as tradition demands. The Lord has just taken his wife for him, and now He expects his reverence, for him to bow? Such conflicts are verbalized in narration, but they’re already self-evident in Mahershala Ali’s performance – his best since Moonlight – and the way both Tariq and DP Katelin Arizmendi capture the thespian’s face. That visage has never been so gloriously filmed, approached as a monument, perchance a landscape, where a world of meaning can be contained in something as simple as a refusal to meet the eyes of those who ask more and more and more from a man who’s already given so much.

In one specific scene, using an overhead light bearing down on Ali and no catch lights to illuminate his gaze, Latif’s eyes seem empty to an unnerving degree. It happens when ghosts from the past come to him with propositions of new business, new killing. Yet, the patriarch already has a lot on his plate and refuses. Even as his faith vacillates, as he avoids prayer and passively distances himself from erstwhile devotion, he seeks to walk away from bloodshed. His family needs him, its newest member most of all, a baby daughter demanding mother’s milk and refusing formula. Which is a problem, as the last of Khadijah’s supply is running out and government programs involve too much red tape.

And so it goes, that MGM’s new action thriller isn’t just founded upon Islamic belief in a sociopolitical context where Islamophobia prevails, but also structured around the seemingly mundane mission of finding breast milk for a babe who can’t tolerate formula. The divine and the quotidian hold hands in a variation of both ideas that seems fairly unique, if not entirely unprecedented, in Hollywood action movie history. But Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother isn’t meritorious through its singularity alone. I’ve already alluded to the brilliance of Ali, but it’s worth mentioning how his best work doesn’t come in the form of Latif’s violence or his stoic consideration of it. 

Instead, it comes through in the film’s portrait of fatherhood and the specificities of this widower’s relationship with his three children. As an infant, baby Aziza isn’t much more than a plot mechanism, but Qadir and Fatiha are fully fleshed-out characters and, in many ways, mirrors to their father. The boy practices his religious duties with the sunny zealotry of a boy who’s still optimistic about the world, no matter how much he has suffered in his young life. The teen girl on the cusp of adulthood is a different matter, already pulling away from Islam. She’s not too different from Latif in her tacit avoidances and transgressions, but she will not pretend to be anything but a rebel.

Ali’s movie star presence might shine, blinding like a supernova, and his performance follows suit, but Adia’s take on Latif’s teenage daughter might be even more impressive as they both navigate their own personal relationship with grief. When these actors get to share a scene, and they do it plenty, their familial conflict, intersected by complementary crises of faith, enervates and grounds Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. And the film needs grounding, or at least an emotional anchor that won't stray too far off course, to sustain it through its greater contradictions. Because Tariq’s thriller moves more like a fable, a fairytale set on some alternative Texas, a heightened version of reality that might be the lie that speaks truth.

However, no matter how burnished and polished to a fault the cinematography might be, how stylishly deranged and jaw-dropping the sets and costumes often are, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother refuses to commit fully to fantasy. Violence is always brutal, viscerally felt and showcased for maximum shock. There’s none of that fluorescent candy-colored blood from Italian giallo or the cartoonish carnage with which some contemporary filmmakers can make these horrors feel more like graphic elements than actual broken bodies. The gore, the fight, those strive for authenticity and the dangerous delights of Hollywood convention, its unholy spectacle persevering. 

Yet, even then, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother surprises. I shall not spoil how the film concludes exactly, but it involves a confrontation with the crazed Christian mob led by John Cho in perfect dirtbag messiah mode. In their mission to eradicate sex trafficking from the world, they’ve taken to targeting any kind of sex work, including the pornographer son of one of Latif’s former employers. As much as the widowed father tries to escape his past, it comes rushing back, pulling him back into the fold, usually through the matter of his Sisyphean quest for mother’s milk. The climax of this particular narrative conflict stretches tones between the tragic and the absurd, finally settling into something unexpected, transcendence through belief – a miracle.

Indeed, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother often feels miraculous, though one must acknowledge its imperfections, the limitations that keep it from achieving a higher greatness. For instance, while Son Lux’s score is a beautiful variation between adrenaline-pumping beats and a grasp at the immaterial, the soul-shaking, the film’s sound mix leaves a bit to be desired when it comes to dialogue. Ali’s gravelly voice is the most affected, a crime against art to obscure, in any way, such a strong performance from an actor who’s been wasted so many times before, despite having two Oscars to his name.

The tonal plasticity doesn’t always work either, though I won’t begrudge the risk-taking nor a dad joke or two about furry erotica. Alas, sincerity goes a long way, and this is one sincere movie, earnest and soulful, enough to make up for some conceptual dysfunction or that photographic high gloss that keeps me at a distance but might come down to a question of personal taste. In its fabulist twist on the contemporary USA, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother can feel disconnected from reality – some contrivances depend on a lawless universe, while a few production design choices make me question the authenticity of these community centers - but that need not mean it’s unengaging or that it’ll leave you indifferent to its plight, its plea, its promise that an unlikely hero can walk through hell and come out the other side a better person, a better man, a better father.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother played as a Special Presentation in TIFF’s program. It will open theatrically on September 25, and expand on October 2.