When a film carries a reputation before it even comes out
and then divides opinion down the middle, it’s hard to steer clear of snippets
of information before you see it. Such
was the case with Darren Aronofsky’s mother!,
which has gained headlines for putting star Jennifer Lawrence through the wringer
and for being batshit crazy. I’m going
to attempt to get to the bottom of what this unique, difficult, and visceral
film is all about. I probably won’t be
right, but one of the remarkable things about mother!, is that interpretation is not just invited, but essential
to enjoying it.
My gut reaction on leaving the cinema was that it was like
watching an escalating panic attack.
Cinematically, Aronofsky has outdone the gut punches he threw with Requiem For A Dream and Black Swan, adding an acute sensation of
drowning in anxiety. The entire film is
set within an impressively complex octagonal house; that we never leave is
important to my interpretation, but I’ll get to that later. Boasting impeccable
production design, mother! is meticulously
constructed with the express intention of keeping you on edge, and then
sharpening the edge. Creaking floors,
unpredictable water pipes, and the unpleasant sound of glass rubbing on glass
are almost constant, and this is aside from J-Law’s nameless character often seeing
a decaying heart through the walls.
The ‘plot’ (loose as it is) sees Lawrence trying to restore husband
Javier Bardem’s fire-damaged house. Uninvited
visitors arrive, preventing her work, while he (a respected poet) does none
anyway. An unnamed Ed Harris and
Michelle Pfeiffer arrive and befriend Bardem; drinking and smoking, they are
passive-aggressive towards Lawrence and ignore her every request. They go to Bardem’s forbidden writing room, which
contains a strange, brittle crystal, implied to be his inspiration. They break it, and then when told to leave go
to their room and have sex instead. Their
children and extended family arrive and won’t leave when Lawrence asks them to
(often asking if this was his
decision, as though hers doesn’t count). This escalates to a point where the
endless guests, mostly ignoring her or carrying out unrequested decorating on
her behalf, sit on an unfinished sink and cause a flood. Cue Lawrence going apeshit and making them
leave (although they still look at her like she’s
overreacting). Lawrence and Bardem have
sex and she wakes up instinctively knowing that she’s pregnant; this inspires
Bardem to write like a man possessed.
Jump forward 9 months and Lawrence is ready to drop, while
Bardem’s poem is finished. Believing it
to be his best work, within minutes of completion it starts to attract increasingly
sycophantic and fanatical readers to the house.
He basks in the adulation, but Lawrence can’t keep them out of the house
(again), and they start to become abusive.
Now… if at this point you’re taking any of the film literally, you will
be thinking that mother! is baffling,
annoying, and probably a little silly.
The fans, including Kristen Wiig’s publicist, start to debate the
meaning of the poem, form factions over its meaning, then execute opposing
factions, then a full-on war breaks out.
All the while, Lawrence is trying to find somewhere quiet so she can
give birth.
Baffled by her husband’s behaviour, she refuses to hand the
child over to him, fearing what he’ll do.
She falls asleep and he takes it, handing it over to the waiting mob…
who proceed to kill, eviscerate and eat the baby. Her protests result in her being called a
whore and beaten by the fanatical crowd.
Angry, she retreats to the basement and uses Ed Harris’ lost cigarette
lighter to ignite heating oil and destroy the house. An unharmed Bardem pulls out her heart, from
which he then finds another crystal. The
film ends with the same shot that began it: ‘mother’ waking in her bed, only
this time played by a different actress.
I don’t normally describe the whole plot in these things,
but in this case the details are important.
My take is that mother! roughly,
loosely tells the story of the bible from Genesis to Revelations, but from the
point of view of Mother Nature (Lawrence).
The house represents Earth (Lawrence states that she wants to make it a
paradise), hence Lawrence can’t leave it.
Bardem’s study, the Garden of Eden.
Bardem plays God; proud, resting on his laurels, and bathing
in the adulation of his followers. His
poem is the bible (or another holy text) – a throwaway line states that
everybody takes its meaning differently.
Harris and Pfeiffer are Adam & Eve; entering the forbidden room,
breaking something they shouldn’t have touched then popping off for a shag. Their warring children, obsessed with inheritance
and legacy, are Cain and Abel. Those who
follow are the human race; going with this reading of the film, Aronofsky
clearly has little affection for his species as they ignore, destroy and abuse
nature content as long as they think their God is happy and welcoming. This phase of the film ends with a flood (his
previous film, Noah, didn’t do it
this well) which empties the house.
The second phase of the film, once ‘mother’ is pregnant,
tells the tale of organised religion.
Factions form based on differing interpretations, they fight, and the
house becomes dangerously overpopulated, all he while ‘mother’ is shunned and
abused, the film becomes overwhelming to watch.
Bardem often refers to her as his Goddess; one might see this as simply affectionate
but nothing else about his behaviour supports this. The most horrific part of the film centres
around the baby; the crowd stops their violence in anticipation of the 2nd
coming, and then promptly resumes, and the unrepentant nastiness that follows
can be read as the origins of the Catholic church.
Rather than just telling the bible story as a lengthy
metaphor, Aronofsky seems intent on making a point. That point is up for debate but here are a
few suggestions:
That Lawrence’s Mother Nature character is shunned, ignored,
abused, and her creation trampled by countless brainwashed humans, plays into
Aronofsky’s well publicised environmental concerns. His message may be that if we continue down
this road – too much respect for a lazy, egotistical God and not enough for the
goddess who does all the actual work in sustaining our world – she will turn on
us and we will then be promptly fucked, and God will not care. mother!
can also be read as a warning about the dangers of an increasingly misogynistic
world. Everybody, even female
characters, take Bardem seriously, love and respect him, but patronise and
ignore the actual creative force. Even
when she creates life, all anybody cares about is that it came from him. Probably the most personal reading is that Aronofsky
is commenting on the creative process itself: nobody cares about the muse, only
the poet, whose success causes the neglect and destruction of the muse. The poet then moves on to another muse.
mother!, while
horrific, is not a horror film. It owes
a huge debt to Polanski: the claustrophobia and ‘living’ rooms of Repulsion, and the bleak commentary on
motherhood that pervades Rosemary’s Baby. It trusts the audience to go along with the
metaphor – taking it literally will mean not taking it seriously. On an emotional level, it is a cinematic
masterpiece; if you let mother! in,
it will make you feel something and
leave you different to how it found you.
And that is the essence of all great art, and like all great art, nobody
says it has to be pretty.
