MOTHER!
In cinemas throughout the Lower Mainland.
In the cinematic drought of the summer of 2017, one would hope to be able to approach a film written and directed by Darren Aronofsky with some hopes his latest offering would be something worth watching. However, anyone attending MOTHER! with such expectations is likely to be very disappointed.
This is not to say Aronofsky is without some artistic aspirations. The director of such films as REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, a brilliant piece of film-making though perhaps the most depressing film ever made, and the Oscar winning BLACK SWAN, certainly holds out the promise of good movie fare.
Clearly, too, Aronofsky is aiming at making something meaningful with his latest release, MOTHER! This is a film which would seem to be trying to make a statement about the destructive egotism of the artist, or, on a much darker level, it is simply an attack on God—as Aronofsky seems to think as God is portrayed in the Bible—though choosing to do so through the horror genre might seem to be somewhat unexpected, if not simply defiantly anti-Christian.
What is unexpected is the whole thing is ultimately a cinematic mess. To begin with, on a surface level, which is the level at which virtually all viewers will approach it, the story line makes little sense, something which even in a horror film it should do.
The audience is introduced to a young woman (Jennifer Lawrence) who is busy restoring the home of her husband (Javier Bordem), a home which has been largely destroyed by a cataclysmic fire.
The husband is a writer who is suffering from a bad case of writer’s block. When a stranger comes to the door (Ed Harris), claiming he thought the house was a bed and breakfast establishment, the husband (none of the characters have names) invites him to stay, much to the misgiving of the wife. As is the convention of all horror films, this leads to a bloody, though not necessarily logical, climax.
From there, the complexity increases with a series of events that seems to have absolutely no connection to the first part of the movie. The husband manages to get over his writer’s block and produce a worthwhile book, and things become even more bizarre, brutal, and bloody.
Perhaps all of this is to be expected of a horror movie, even one with artistic pretensions. What is remarkable, however, is Aronofsky has made the film by indulging in a multitude of self-conscious techniques.
Doors creak, weird and unexplained sounds emanate from walls, bizarre images appear to the protagonist, but they are so emphasized as if to ensure the audience will be aware of the technique involved, thereby allowing them to objectify them and remain uninvolved in the proceedings.
As the film and its bizarreness develops, with events that might otherwise prove comical in their inanity if they weren't so horribly nasty, the result is ultimately tedious.
At the end of it all, Aronofsky beats one over the head with all too obvious symbolism as the themes are hammered home with no attempt at subtlety.
Some people may be impressed with the film’s ability to draw upon a variety of cinematic techniques; others may be impressed with the gory grotesqueness of the plot, the crude and virtually blasphemous use of religious imagery; and still others may be impressed at the film's attempt to say something serious through a pop culture genre.
For them, MOTHER! will be seen as a worthy continuation of Aronofsky’s cinematic achievement. Some may even applaud what seems to be an attack on the portrayal of the Christian God as a self-absorbed being, concerned only with being praised and unconcerned about the plight of creation; they might even find clever the obvious and repellent use of references to the Fall, Cain and Abel, to the Incarnation, and the Crucifixion.
Clearly, if this is the underlying meaning of the film, all Christians will find it offensive. However, many will simply find the whole thing nothing more than a conflated and nasty piece of self-indulgence. This is ironic in that the most obvious purpose of the film is to present a portrayal of artistic self-absorption, something of which Aronofsky himself appears to be guilty. For film-goers who see the film on this level, and for others who see it as an attempt to be meaningful, the cinematic drought of the summer will continue.