Photo Courtesy of indiewire.com || Jennifer Lawrence, above, plays a submissive housewife in the home-invasion horror film “mother!”
In the new landscape of existential art-house, horror films that have been appearing in theaters recently, none have been quite like the no-holds-barred, horrific insanity of Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!”
That is not to say the movie is funny, although it can certainly be interpreted that way, as it can be interpreted in a lot of ways. Rather, free from the conventions of most mainstream films, it transfixed and excited viewers with its unpredictable, nightmarish logic and its commitment to that vision. It riveted viewers in a way a movie has not in a long time, even sending two viewers walking out of a theater screening after a particularly brutal scene. This is not a film people will feel ambivalent about.
The story takes place in a secluded country house with a young woman named Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) and her older husband, Him, (Javier Bardem). The archetypal and gender-specific nature of their roles become apparent fairly early on, as Mother is shown to be a docile homemaker with her husband free to pursue, in isolation, his creative needs as a writer. Their domesticity is disrupted by the arrival of a lost stranger (Ed Harris). With nowhere to go, the husband offers to let him stay the night. The next day, the stranger’s wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) comes to the house and she too is offered a place to stay. The confused Mother continually submits to her husband’s decision to invite strangers in, all the while trying to maintain the order and care which she has brought to their home. It is clear she has a special connection to the house and an unconditional love for her husband, both of which become gradually compromised as more and more strangers arrive.
To say that things “escalate quickly” from there is an understatement as worthy of its iconic use in the movie “Anchorman” as it is here in “mother!”
The chaos in the final act of the film is so frenetic and brutal, as the symbolic violence and depravity of humanity is condensed into this one house, that I was left depleted by Aronofsky’s fever dream of a film. Depleted, but also thrilled that filmmaking this imaginative can still be accomplished. It was exhilarating to watch such a surreal film follow its own bizarre internal logic and to have that journey feel so rewarding by the end. After the movie, a friend and I had a lengthy discussion about the imaginative and original nature of the film. What may be imaginative to one, however, may be seen as pretentious or gratuitous to another. Both views are justifiable here.
The film is certainly not subtle with its symbolism, and sometimes the story’s allegorical meaning is a little too narrow for its own good. In the end, this is simply a film that you will either love or hate.
Love or hate though, the cast is excellent, and they deftly bring nuance to the archetypal roles they have been given. At first, I wondered whether Jennifer Lawrence could be credible in such a demure role, since her specialty seems to be playing assertive women. Lawrence fully commits to a gamut of human emotions, as she joins the ranks of leading ladies that suffer horrible onscreen trauma at the hands of an auteur director – a trend that can be problematic in its sexism, but here works within the film’s themes.
Bardem imbues his character with a love of humanity and creativity that sharply contrasts with his wrathful and thoughtless tendencies towards Mother. His relationship with Mother is key to one of the film’s themes: the consumptive, dangerous nature of selfish love and the depleting nature of selfless love. In the supporting cast, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer are also excellent, particularly Pfeiffer’s character who provides a nice foil to Lawrence’s character. There is also an unexpected cameo towards the end of the film that would have been distracting had it not been such an amusing herald of the insanity the film was about to be plunged into.
Horrific, pretentious, brilliant, exploitative and absurd, all of these words can be used to describe “mother!” It is not an easy film to digest.
I loved that the film was able to take grandiose concepts and convey them through such a dark, fantastical premise. Is it heavy-handed and overblown? Yes, but the technical excellence and surreal atmosphere allowed me to feel continually engaged in the story even as it descended further and further into allegorical chaos.
The film took hold of me and wouldn’t let me go until the credits rolled and I was able to emerge shaken and awed. This engrossing experience got me to think about familiar themes and issues from an entirely new, insane perspective of Aronofsky.
