“mother!”– Movie Review

This week, I attended the New York Premiere of the new horror picture, “mother!”, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem. 

Synopsis

When a couple’s idyllic country residence is disrupted by intruders, can their relationship survive?

Story

A young woman (Lawrence) has been furiously working for quite some time now on performing an extensive renovation of the decrepit rustic house that was once probably stately when originally constructed.  She shares the home with her husband (Bardem), a poet who’s been experiencing writer’s block of late.  As she paints and plasters, the couple receive an unlikely visitor:  a sickly stranger (Ed Harris) who claims he was misinformed about their residence being a bed and breakfast.  Since it is late and The Stranger is clearly not well, The Husband invites him to stay the night, much to the chagrin of The Wife. 

The next day, The Stranger is joined by His Wife (Michelle Pfeiffer), a rude woman who commandeers the couple’s house.  The Stranger And His Wife wind up breaking a valuable heirloom belonging to The Husband; following a number of unpleasant encounters with the obnoxious pair, this is the last straw.  The Wife asks them both to leave.  Before they can go, The Stranger And His Wife are surprised by the arrival of their two grown sons; The Sons get into a physical altercation, resulting in one of them being seriously injured.  Following a brief hospitalization, he dies. 

The Husband and Wife now find their home invaded by many odd people – friends and family of The Stranger And His Wife, who have joined them to mourn the couple’s loss.  While there, things become chaotic when The Mourners turn the house topsy turvy, greatly upsetting The Wife, who is already angry at The Husband for allowing them entry.  After they leave and the damage is repaired, The Wife learns she’s pregnant, which causes The Husband to snap out of his writer’s block.  But when The Husband now becomes unbelievably famous and successful, anarchy returns to their household when they are besieged by selfish fans.  With The Fans now totally destroying the house and The Wife realizing The Husband can’t be bothered with stopping them, can she exact a revenge on all of them?  

Review

As relentlessly jarring, infuriatingly disturbing and frequently confusing as “mother!” can be, it is a movie that offers an extremely unique experience.  Whether or not you find it to be a positive or a negative experience will in large part depend on how you feel about Aronofsky’s previous work.  It is stylistically consistent with his earlier films in the sense that it takes you into a dark and scary world from which you desperately want to escape but can’t.  Filmmakers such as Aronofsky and David Lynch have often – and accurately – been characterized as visionaries; in “mother!”, Aronofsky, for all of his unique visions, has never been more comparable to Lynch.

Unfortunately (but understandably), “mother!” will be inaccessible to many.  That doesn’t make it a bad movie, but it does make it a complicated movie – which is Aronofsky’s specialty.  This is an allegory; consider it Aronofsky’s film about environmentalism – his own personal hue and cry about how mankind is ravaging the planet.  That’s precisely where the controversy will come; if you are a climate change denier, then it will be easy to write off this motion picture as sheer drivel.  If it’s possible to put politics aside and simply watch “mother!” for what it is, it can nevertheless be a mesmerizing adventure.

In promoting “mother!”, those connected with it have somewhat tipped off what the story is really about, and Aronofsky confirmed this prior to the screening when he introduced the movie.  He said that “[‘mother!’] is not about your mother or my mother, it’s about our mother”.  In other words, Mother Earth; as a Mother, JLaw’s character is the planet on which we all live and she rebels when we’ve taken advantage by mistreating her.  There is a price to pay for this, Aronofsky seems to be saying, and based on the film’s conclusion, it is a brutal one. 

As far as the screening itself, seeing it in New York City’s Radio City Music Hall made it all the more special.  If you are familiar with the glorious venue, you may know there is an organ downstage right of the proscenium arch; prior to the screening, an organist played for the audience.  As noted above, Aronofsky took the stage to introduce the movie; he was accompanied by its star, Jennifer Lawrence (whom, we are given to understand, is also his current bestie).  Following the screening was a live performance by Patti Smith; she sang the old hit “The End Of The World” (which apparently is heard over the closing credits); she followed this by reading the above prayer (which was distributed to attendees), then sang her own composition, “Pissing In A River” .