In short: Mother! (2017)

While I sometimes think I’ve seen basically everything in a movie, and can find my way around any of them, there still is the possibility to encounter a movie that takes me by surprise and may even confuse me quite a bit. So how about Darren Aronofsky’s somewhat divisive Mother!?

This may or may not be a religious allegory (which may or may not be saying that the creator godhood is an asshole sucking the blood and love of women –perhaps standing in for humanity - while giving them nothing in return but an illusion of love and a baby he’s going to take away again), a film about that horrifying conceptual entity known as The Artist (which may or may not be saying that The Artist is an asshole sucking the blood and love of women while giving them nothing in return but an illusion of love and a baby he’s going to take away again), or a couple of other things. Insert your own favourite theory here, really - you’ll probably find more than enough ambiguous moments in the film to hang it on.

It most probably is a male-driven feminist work, curiously because Aronofsky’s camera can’t seem to glance away from Jennifer Lawrence – whose performance dominates the picture not without good reason – for more than a moment, than despite of it, clearly wanting to say something about the way women and society in public and in private relate.

In the beginning stages, this aspect also turns Mother! into something of a social horror film with a couple of scenes that reminded me of the books of Ramsey Campbell in their dread of skewed social situations; later it becomes a (probably metaphorically) apocalyptic one. It’s not a film made with a horror audience in mind, though. At least marketing-wise, Mother! really wants to be sold to a mainstream audience, though it certainly isn’t the audience that would get much out of it.


Be that as it may, this is clearly the work of a director who is perfectly alright with presenting his film to an audience not being willing to follow where he goes, one misunderstanding him, or one just getting out of a film whatever the hell they want. Even if this approach doesn’t work for a viewer – and for once, I wouldn’t even blame anyone for calling a film pretentious - one should at least appreciate the incredible visual power of Aronofsky’s filmmaking, as well as the fearlessness to make a film like this and pretend it’s totally going to be the sort of thing a mainstream audience is going to want to watch without complaining afterwards.