Mother Movie Review: Truisms Masterfully Executed

Darren Aronofsky’s Mother, is a good film. Not a great one, and certainly not a subtle one, but a singular piece of work that remains beholden to an impressively cohesive motif. It dares to make use of striking imagery without getting lost in it, or seeming ostentatious. While Aronofsky's biting censure of theology, misogyny and hero worship is perhaps less ambiguous than I might have preferred, Mother feels dense, in ways that movies simply don’t anymore.

From the start, before you figure out the biblical send up that informs the core of Mother’s dreamlike narrative, you’ll already find yourself captured by Jennifer Lawrence’s ethereal performance. Make no mistake, everyone is good here, exceptional even, but the wrong kind of performance from Lawrence would’ve absolutely undermined the delicate framework that made any of this function. Ostensibly, she portrays the nameless lover of Javier Bardem—a narcissist and a writer or creator as the film makes a point to specify, going through a particularly arduous bout of writer’s block. She dedicates the majority of her time renovating his home, which at some point in the past, was destroyed by a fire.

It is only when a dying, obsessed fan, portrayed by Ed Harris, happens on the couple’s doorstep, that the many allegories begin to take shape. None of the characters are given names, with Ed Harris’s character being distinguished only by “Man.” He has a wife, played masterfully by Michelle Phiefer, that leads him to transgress Bardem’s character and two sons that quarrel over their father’s approval, ending in one killing the other. None of this is muted and despite my own predilections, subtly was neither the film’s point or intention.

Aronofsky successfully addresses theological truisms with visual expertise. The commentary feels familiar, yet it’s delivered with some of the most jarring and unforgettable symbolism that I’ve ever seen, specifically in a scene near the film’s end.

Metaphors aside, there is something to be said for the film’s narrative structure. My first viewing of Mother was in a packed theatre on a Friday night. Twenty minutes into the film, I could feel the antipathy building. Mother’s trailer sells it like a sort of mindless supernatural thriller; a series of mildly disturbing images availed by a creepy score and Lawrence screaming: “Get out of my house!” Even at the height of its terror, the film meanders in a good way. Its scares oscillate from intense to slow and atmospheric, with a punctual, gut-punching rhythm.

As I left the theatre, I could hear the mews of “Boring” and “Lame.” It’s true, I didn’t love the film at every juncture of its 120-minute running time, but that's okay—that’s excellent in fact. Mother gives you something to leave the theatre with, things to discuss and ruminate over. It makes you ambivalent and inspired. That’s the greatest compliment I can pay it. In an industry drowning in the fat of sentiment and nostalgia, I implore you to seek out films that have a mind to challenge its audience, irrespective of how meanly they may think of them after the fact.