‘mother!’ will blow your mind
Tale is beautiful piece of art-house horror
Darren Aronofsky unleashes the mother of audacious art films this year, and mother! is bound to polarize the masses who give this slice of winning insanity a go.
The latest in a filmography that includes a terrifyingly dark ballerina ( Black Swan) and a downward-spiraling pro grappler ( The Wrestler), mother! ( eeeE out of four; rated R; in theaters Friday) manages to be the writer/director’s boldest yet: a tale of relationship turmoil and a genre-exploding showcase for star Jennifer Lawrence. But Aronofsky isn’t subtle with the deeper meanings. Impending motherhood is seen through a horror lens, there are enough religious metaphors for a particularly strange Sunday school, and mother! thrives as a thoughtful, angry look at modern society.
Lawrence plays the mother in the title, who lives for fixing up a huge estate in the sticks with her older husband (Javier Bardem), a famous poet labeled “Him” in the credits. He strug- gles to find inspiration, while she in many ways becomes one with the house.
Their tranquility is torn one night when a stranger (Ed Harris) knocks, thinking the place is a bed and breakfast. The man strikes up a friendship with Him, who lets him stay the night and invites in the guy’s wife (Michelle Pfeiffer).
(No character has a name, and most are lowercase: Harris and Pfeiffer are “man” and “woman,” and supporting characters include zealot, neophyte, penitent and soldier. Only Him gets capitalization, a nod to the Christian underpinnings of the story and the poet’s status.)
The newcomers turn out to be houseguests from hell, and their presence creates an increased exasperation for Lawrence’s character.
More random people inexplicably start showing up, enough to drive mother crazy as she drives them all out. A quiet moment leads to her finally getting pregnant. Yet that just ignites the flames that envelop the rest of the film, which turns into a dizzying array of sex, violence, death, destruction, sacrifice and primal instincts, with Him becoming an idol for worshipers and mother fighting for survival.
Waves of disturbing imagery and hellish bacchanalia earn mother! its exclamation point and leave viewers drowning in symbolism.
Lawrence’s performance grounds the more out-there aspects of mother! The audience is with her, in sickness and in health, and we feel every bit of her bloody pain and pathos.
Impressive in its ambition, mother! doesn’t quite reach the heights of Aronofsky’s Black Swan, yet endless conversations about what the heck you just saw will surely be born and raised.