‘mother!’ (2017) ****/*****
Another cinematic trauma from the man who brought us ass-to-ass
It was likely the success of Black Swan that led to Paramount thinking that there was money in the movies of Darren Aronofsky. Aronofsky, who made his bones and continues to expand his filmography by making dark, visceral, obsessive, profoundly strange art films. Somebody needs to stop Paramount. Somebody needed to stop them from trying to market the difficult, hallucinatory Noah to mass audiences as some kind of mix between a superhero movie and a fantasy film — and somebody certainly needed to stop them from taking this nightmarish, surreal, expressionist open wound of a movie and selling it to wide audiences as some kind of haunted house movie starring the girl from The Hunger Games, or even as an homage to artier horror fare like Rosemary’s Baby. mother! is neither of those things. And still, one can’t help but sympathize a bit with the studio’s marketing people, because there’s really not any way to explain what this movie is without giving away its secrets, and if you were somehow able to accomplish this feat, all you’d be doing is letting Average Joes know that they aren’t looking to buy what you’re selling. Aronofsky makes heady, challenging movies for niche audiences who appreciate things like theme and craft. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just something that needs to be done on a smaller budget and released on a smaller scale. Paramount continuing to treat his movies like they have been is doing no favors to anyone.
Let’s keep the plot synopsis bare bones. Javier Bardem is playing a respected poet who’s currently suffering from writer’s block. He once lived in an opulent country house, but then it burned to the ground. Jennifer Lawrence is playing his young and devoted wife, who has spent a great deal of time and effort rebuilding his house and furnishing it down to every last detail. They seem to live in solitude, him struggling with his flaccid pen, her rebuilding walls and picking out paint colors, until one night their sanctuary is violated by a knock at the door. Ed Harris shows up playing a physician who has mistakenly been told that their house is a bed and breakfast. Not one to be rude, Bardem invites him to stay the night, seeing as it’s late and he has nowhere else to go. Harris acts strange, and even stranger once his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) shows up unexpectedly the next day. Before you know it, these two have taken over the house, not just making themselves at home, but making messes, breaking things, and prying into the couple who lives there’s personal lives. They’re not just the houseguests from hell, they’re multiples of that, and the situation with them starts getting crazier and more surreal, to the point that Lawrence begins to think that she’s losing her mind, and you begin to think that maybe something supernatural is going on. The film only spins more out of control and gets more insane from there.
One of the things that often gets talked about when it comes to Aronofsky’s movies — nearly as much as how intense and trying they can get — is the craftsmanship he brings to the table as a filmmaker. Usually that involves innovative camera work and rhythmic editing that lends his productions a kinetic energy that almost reaches out and grabs you by the throat. There’s not much of that going on here though (until the bonkers third act that looks like an extended version of Ellen Burstyn’s game show freakout from Requiem For a Dream on steroids), as this is a much calmer, icier, slower paced film than what he usually makes, for much of its run time. So much so that it often feels like a throwback to 70s cinema. What is going on here is a lot of intricate sound design. The incidental noises of the house that the entirety of the film takes place in are so pronounced and layered that they become tactile. No glassware is picked up without an audible tink, no item is set down on a table without a robust scrape on wood. The sound work serves to really root you in the moment of what Lawrence’s character is experiencing, and to immerse you in the heightened world she’s inhabiting in this strange house. So much attention is paid to the soundscape of this film that you get the sense Aronofsky wouldn’t have let a cotton swab touch a baby’s butt without it making some kind of distinct noise, and if you’re the sort of person who likes to get lost in the little details of a movie, there’s lots of stuff going on here that you’ll be able to ponder.
Aronofsky also traditionally gets strong performances out of his actors, so seeing as the people he’s cast in this film all came in so talented and experienced already, it’s no surprise that the performances are first rate. Lawrence spends a good deal of the film in closeup and is pretty much the foundation that the entire production rests on, and there isn’t any point where it feels like she’s going to be crushed under that weight. She showed up to the Hollywood scene already a robust, preternaturally talent actor, and after thriving in a demanding role as trying as this, one gets the feeling that she’s just beginning to show us what she can do. Bardem is mostly coasting on his charisma and his established screen persona here, but that’s something that’s very baked into the concept of his tortured pseudo-celebrity character. He works kind of more as a plot device than as a real character, so a larger than life screen presence like his was probably necessary to add weight and authority to the things his character was doing — because it’s his actions that continuously take the audience to the places the storyline needs them to go.
My favorite part of the film was the supporting performances given by Harris and Pfeiffer. They’re both so full of energy here, so manic, and so forceful with their oblivious selfishness that they’re able to make you feel uncomfortable essentially every second one of them is on the screen. They’re hilarious too. There’s a whole lot of strong comedy of manners humor littered throughout this mostly unpleasant movie, and not only does it make you want to claw out of your skin almost constantly, it also makes you consistently laugh despite yourself. Or at least it made me laugh. The rest of my suburban multiplex audience didn’t seem to be as in on the joke. Maybe there was just so much darkness layered into the comedy of manners that they felt too uncomfortable to laugh, or maybe the horror movie/paranoid thriller tone that the film sets early on kept them from thinking about comedy at all, but one thing was clear to me when I came out of the theater — this movie is going to be seen by a lot of people who don’t understand it, and who come away from it feeling like their time has been wasted by something pointedly strange and unpleasant. This can’t be repeated enough: mother! is not a studio horror movie by any standard definition.
mother! is a two hour Agoraphobic panic attack. It’s the worst living nightmare of nesters and introverts. It’s a deep dive into the suffering of man and the hard truth that the origin of our suffering always comes from our inability to admit that nothing will ever be perfect, nothing that’s perfect will ever stay, and that we ultimately have no control over the universe we live in. It’s a frank portrait of our inability to accept our own mortality, and the way that we try to cheat death by creating longer lasting monuments to ourselves in the form of our relationships, our careers, and, yes, our homes. It’s the horrific end result of all of the evil and chaos that springs from our desperate grasping at the impossible concept of perpetual happiness, and how all of that evil and chaos gets perpetually multiplied the more confused, suffering people are thrown together into a mob while desperately trying to grasp in different directions. The film directly addresses the human condition and the flaws inherent in it that keep people stuck in a perpetual loop of pain and dishonesty. Everything you need to know about everything that’s wrong with humanity both on an individual level and on the level of the flawed societies we create is tucked away in this waking nightmare somewhere.
Also, I think mother! is probably a movie about divorce.
