Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer
Rated R, 121 minutes
Have you ever thought about how women must feel in this crazy world of ours? Because Darren Aronofsky sure has. For instance, did you know that society often expects women to be their husbands’ subordinates, or that a woman’s value is often determined based on her looks and her capacity for childbearing? Well, Darren Aronofsky just read about that somewhere, and he thinks it’s unfair! If there were some medical procedure that allowed men to bear children, you can bet Darren Aronofsky would have signed up years ago.
But such a medical procedure doesn’t exist yet, so we have “mother!” instead. That lowercase m is intentional, by the way. Ever notice how women are treated as less important than men? Because Darren Aronofsky has, and he’s got the typographical symbolism to prove it. And that exclamation point? That means he’s serious!
Lest you think that’s all the symbolism up Aronofsky’s sleeve, rest assured, “mother!” is full of it. You want a house as a metaphor for a marriage? You got it. How about characters with no names? Done. Biblical references? Out the wazoo. The only thing “mother!” is missing, really, is a knack for storytelling.
Not that a lack of traditional storytelling is necessarily a bad thing—look at Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia,” for example, or Aronofsky’s own “Black Swan,” great films whose plots pale in comparison to their aesthetic novelty. When a talented director dares to let story take a backseat, it’s usually a breath of fresh air. Usually.
“mother!” is a big, unsettling gust of something, but I don’t know that I’d call it fresh air. Ostensibly the story of a woman (Jennifer Lawrence, “Silver Linings Playbook”) and her poet husband (Javier Bardem, “No Country for Old Men”) and the series of unexpected, unwanted guests that turn their secluded idyll into a hellscape of violent idolatry, “mother!” is a blunt allegory for the frustrations of womanhood. It’s far more experimental than your average mainstream movie, but it’s also far less subtle.
It’s also shocking. In just minutes, “mother!” turns the stress of having your house overrun by strangers into the abject horror of a war zone, complete with executions, human rights violations, and even cannibalism. What, were you expecting people just to shout at each other and maybe trade a couple punches?
Significantly, the harrowing insanity that befalls the poor woman is the direct result of her husband’s self-aggrandizement. Having written a poem that perfectly encapsulates the human experience, the poet suddenly finds himself held aloft by the masses as a new prophet, and in short order he abandons his wife to party with his fans, leaving her to clean up the mess. It’s too easy and too common, Aronofsky says, for successful men not only to forget about the women who have propped them up, but also to actively demean them.
This message undoubtedly bears repeating, but “mother!” lacks the nuance or originality to make it stick. It’s a technically well-made film, featuring admirably committed performances from its cast and Aronofsky’s usual eye for suspense, but the movie’s shocking elements, although exactly as uncomfortable as Aronofsky wants them to be, don’t actually lead us anywhere productive. “Mother!” may be visceral and brutal, but it offers no insight into the social ills it decries, instead harping on the same blandly generalized point for two hours.
Worse still, “mother!” is unintentionally funny. To say nothing of the laughable absurdity of the premise, the second half of the film, after the poet pens his opus, is less haunting and more reminiscent of the old Monty Python sketch about the funniest joke in the world. The difference is that the Monty Python sketch is a few shades more insightful about the human condition.
There is a noble intent behind “mother!,” which makes its unevenness all the more unfortunate. Rather than the powerful statement it dreams so mightily to be, “mother!” ends up little more than a formal exercise; rather than the work of a master, it feels like the half-baked ramblings of a student who has yet to learn the fundamentals of screenwriting. Rife with symbolism that is somehow both heavy-handed and frustratingly nonsensical, “mother!” makes me want to scream, just not in the way that Aronofsky intended.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 9/22/17.