USA TODAY International Edition
Aronofsky hopes to vex you with ‘Mother!’
Fans have been telling Darren Aronofsky that his new psychological thriller Mother! is his strangest movie yet — meaning, stranger than Black Swan, The Fountain or Requiem for a Dream.
The director is less than convinced. “I don’t think they’re strange. To me, they make sense and feel right,” he says, pausing and then letting out a chuckle. “We’ve made a few weird ones.”
His latest (in theaters Friday) doesn’t seem the most conventional: Jennifer Lawrence plays a woman who’s fixing up a country estate with her husband (Javier Bardem) when an unknown couple (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer) and a bunch of other strangers show up and throw off their tranquil life.
Aronofsky, who snagged a best-director Oscar nomination for 2010’s bizarro ballet film Black Swan — which also was nominated for best picture — explains what you need to know going into his new movie:
THERE ARE GOOD REASONS FOR THE TITLE ‘MOTHER!’
Yes, it’s kind of odd that on movie posters it has a lowercase “m” and an exclamation point. Both are clues to the central mystery and reveals, Aronofsky says. “When you do see the film, you will get it. It’s all explained.” “Mother” is “kind of a big giveaway,” he adds. “It’s Jen’s character, but what it means in lots of different ways is part of seeing the movie.”
EVERYTHING CAME TOGETHER IN ONE INTENSE WEEKEND.
His films usually have a long gestation period: It was a full decade between when Aronofsky met Natalie Portman and when they made Black Swan. But he birthed Mother! over a long weekend.
“I’ve always been jealous of singer/songwriters because they could write a song in an afternoon,” he says. “As a filmmaker, it takes me two, three years to get an emotion out.”
IT’S NOT A CONVENTIONAL HORROR FILM.
“It’s one of those roller-coaster rides where you get to the amusement park and you see that loopthe-loop and you’re like, ‘There’s no freaking way I’m getting on that thing,’ and slowly but surely the line’s shrinking and suddenly you’re strapped in. I want people to know it’s pretty crazy.”
GET READY TO GO INSIDE JENNIFER LAWRENCE’S HEAD.
The entire film is told from the point of view of Lawrence’s character, so there are no wide shots: Every scene is shown looking over her shoulder, focusing on her face or seeing what she sees in front of her. “It’s kind of a continuous film with no breaks,” says Aronofsky. “It’s very immediate and an extremely difficult acting challenge for Jen, but I was lucky to have her talent to carry me and take audiences on this journey.”
PREPARE FOR DIVISIVENESS.
The movie discomforted yet dazzled critics at Venice Film Festival, and it will likely do so for regular moviegoers as well. Aronofsky describes a screening he had where half the audience “felt the allegory and the other half felt it was a relationship movie. There was this whole debate and discussion. It’s the type of movie where I hope the conversation continues well into the night.”