A Movie Review: Mother

Sticking to his surrealist blood-and-thunder style of filmmaking, film director Darren Aronofsky, surpassed audience expectations with his 2017 masterpiece Mother! The feature tells the tale of a young nameless woman, who we can simply refer to as Her/She, played by Jennifer Lawrence, and her nameless partner, who will be referred to as Him/Him, played by Javier Bardem. The couple live in an immaculate three story Victorian that Her is painstakingly trying to salvage after it was engulfed in flames only leaving an emaciated skeleton behind. While she assiduously rebuilds, he spends his days writing, He is a famed poet working on his next sensation but he finds himself unable to produce much of anything. The couple continue to endure this endless tedium, until he begins to welcome destructive and unexpected visitors into their home permanently disturbing the peace. The first to invade their little slice of paradise is a lifelong devoted fan “Man” and soon his overbearing vulgar wife “Woman.” The pair are not only exceedingly hostile to Her but are more than ecstatic to disrespect and destroy the pride and joy that is her house. Man and Woman continue to invite guests who further the damage to the house and Her mental stability. Much praise is given to Aronofsky for illustrating the metaphysical connection She has with the house by giving her the ability to see and feel it’s literal organs. She finds that a beating heart has clogged the toilet and as people continue to defile and wreck the house that she loves, She can feel the literal heartbeat of the house slowing down. The macabre elements present in the movies are quite disturbing, my personal favorite being the cannibalistic consumption of their first born son by mob of demented strangers in their used-to-be dining room. With that being said, the most unsettling aspects of this film were not the deranged gore scenes. As viewers it is impossible to resist becoming overly invested in Her and feeling the stress and paranoia that She does. I could not help myself from screaming “get out of her house” because this coupled with the flourishing animosity that is felt towards Him for not only allowing the strangers in the house, but welcoming the destruction of all of Her hard work because “it can all be replaced.” He continually accommodated strangers, most of whom were fans, over his extremely dedicated and quite frankly infatuated wife. Although bizarre and emotional taxing Mother! has a lot to offer not only as a great psychological thriller but as a serious critique of the human condition. On Rotten Tomatoes, this film scored a 69%. Many critics who reviewed this movie believed that Lawrence was perhaps misacted for the role. They also expressed their thoughts on the story itself. A lot of the critics believed that the film, in general, just did not work at all and did not make any sense. Mother! can be found on various streaming services, as it came out two years ago. Have you seen it?