I Am Mother Projects a Bleak Outlook on the Future
Netflix’s SF Original Film Asks: Who is the Woman and Who is the Machine?
*Warning: this review contains spoilers, read at your own risk.
“The fundamental axiom suggests that a person is morally obligated to minimize the pain to the greatest number possible. Now, consider that you’re the doctor and also the only organ match for your patients. What then is the right choice?” Mother asks.
“I mean, Comte says I should be willing to suffer harm for the benefit of others.” Daughter replies.
“And do you agree?”
“Well, do I know these five patients? Are they good humans? Honest, dishonest? Lazy, hardworking? I, a life-saving doctor, might be giving my life for people who are murders or thieves…who end up harming more people due to my sacrifice.”
“You don’t feel that every human has intrinsic value and an equal right to life and happiness?”
I Am Mother has a lot going for it on the surface. It’s refreshing to see a majority female cast in a science-fiction thriller and Netflix Original, especially one exploring the relationship between AI and humans in a dystopian future.
The movie opens with the story of how a human girl (simply referred to as “Daughter” came to be under the guidance and care of a droid (“Mother”). From birth to teen years, the child is raised in a shelter built to protect 63,000 embryos from the human extinction occurring outside of the facility. It isn’t entirely clear how humanity became extinct from the get-go, but Mother (voiced by Rose Byrne, acted by Luke Hawker) plants the seed to make us believe that it was the result of a virus.
The dialogue above happens in the first ten minutes and sets the stage for this film’s ethical challenges. The basic dilemma of the film doesn’t become immediately clear to us until Daughter (played by Clara Rugaard-Larsen) finds a woman (played by Hilary Swank) in need of help outside of the shelter. Despite all that Mother has taught her about the outside, Daughter is at the age and mental state where she challenges all she knows in order to form her own identity. Daughter chooses to save and help this woman, without even considering whether she can be trusted or not. At first, Daughter appears to have made the wrong choice. As the plot progresses, we learn that the character we end up trusting the most might actually be the one we misunderstood the most, especially if we are given no other option but to trust them — like Daughter trusted Mother.
We, as a human audience, come to empathize with the orphaned and impoverished woman, and see the droid in a different light from her perceived role as “Mother.” The film also shifts our perceptions as it explores the differences between the woman and Daughter, both human, but one more droid-like than the other. Even though they are both human, their ability to connect is significantly on a surface level. Daughter has led a sheltered existence, while the woman knows what Mother and the rest of the droids did to humanity.
Throughout the film, the viewer hopes that Daughter and the woman can team up and save the rest of the embryos from the droids, but they’re unable to put their differences aside in the end. Ultimately, as much as Daughter is against the woman and her mother dying, she makes the choice in the end to not suffer harm for the benefit of others. Following the path of Mother, she makes the choice based upon her perception that she is, in fact, a superior being who can make the best decisions for the sake of humanity. This role-shift is troublesome, however, because she was taught by Mother and has a similar conscious to the droids. What will stop her from making the same life-taking decisions that Mother did with the unborn children and the woman?
We don’t know the answer, but with the Daughter staring into the camera (and all around the embryo center) as suspenseful music plays, the viewer begins to feel that she is the new “Mother” and holds the power to create a new human race — whether it’s similar to our own or to the one that Mother taught her was the only way.
Given humanity’s self-destructive tendencies and our relationship to Earth and machines, this film hits home as it challenges us to consider changing our ways. By creating machines that act upon the same God-like superiority complex that we do as creators, we are setting ourselves up for forces out of our control to make the decisions for what’s best for Earth or machines. Is that such a bad thing, if we are not capable of making those decisions ourselves? In the case of I Am Mother, it can become catastrophic when we place all the power in the hands of machines.
I Am Mother was intriguing visually and philosophically, that’s true. However, were there any redeeming qualities worth watching for? Not really. While the small cast played their parts convincingly, I found it difficult to emotionally invest in their lives or the dilemmas they faced. I believe this was the result of rushing emotionally charged scenes and not providing enough backstory to the point that any attempt to create that emotional bond with the viewer was sloppily done. It was obvious from the scenes in the beginning that the priorities of the film were depicting a dystopian future cinematographically and placing us in the middle of an ethical dilemma. Beyond that, there isn’t much going for it.
Have you watched I Am Mother yet? Did you love it or hate it? Feel free to leave your thoughts below.
Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” We use affiliate links and Patreon to pay our writers a fair wage. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
