mother! is the horrifying story of a woman who just wants to keep her house clean but outsiders keep wrecking it. That's both an oversimplification of it and a direct metaphor. More specifically, it follows Jennifer Lawrence. She's married to Javier Bardem and they live in an idyllic and secluded farmhouse. Their blissful peace is ruined when two strangers played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer show up at their door. Well, I should say that Lawrence's peace is ruined. Bardem seems oddly fine with it. Increasingly bizarre things start happening around the house after that, and that's about all I can say.
It's going to be tricky to talk about this film, because the ad campaign has been so much about the mystery. The film isn't all that twisty. I'm pretty sure it's advertised as a mystery because it's hard to get across what the film really is in a TV spot or trailer. "It's a mystery" is much simpler to advertise. My biggest issue with the film is that I liked it less the more I realized where the story was going. It begins as a curiosity. Something is clearly wrong and Lawrence is oddly OK with letting it all play out. The more things escalate, the more biblical and personal (for Aronofsky) it all gets. By the end, the messaging of the movie gets too scattered for me. Aronofsky is making points about motherhood, marriage, female subjugation, and the curse of the tortured artist and none of the points hit me very hard.
The not so secret comparison that's being made with this movie is Rosemary's Baby. The two films are more similar in tone than plot. Lawrence is the lead but she isn't driving the movie. It's a very reactive performance and it's frustratingly passive. Lawrence is both very good in the role and wasted in it. Her character, only known in the film as Mother, doesn't say much. A lot has to be conveyed through looks and reactions and Lawrence is great at communicating that. I don't know that I've ever seen her be this passive though and it's uncomfortable. Her best characters take charge of a situation, partly because that's what she is best at as a performer, and that isn't what Mother is about. She's completely helpless. This is intentional and tied to the core of the film. As I said though, I didn't care for that core and what it's trying to say. The film is so heavily tied to Lawrence's perspective that it's hard to read the rest of the performances. I like that Javier Bardem would've been the lead of the film if it was told in a more straightforward manner. As is, he's a very opaque character. Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer give good performances, although they are walking plot devices.
On a technical level, the film is well made. It takes place entirely in the farm house but it never felt confined in it. The dedication of the camera on Lawrence is impressive. Often it's like the camera is chasing her so that it can find her for a close up, like she's looking away and it keeps finding her. Aronofsky manages chaos as well as anyone and foregrounds a lot of key items and locations effectively. While I mention the obvious Rosemary's Baby comparison that keeps getting made, I actually kept coming back to A Ghost Story, which I thought was a much better film and had a lot in common with this. mother! fits neatly into Darren Aronofsky's filmography but isn't essential to it. It might be his most personal film, which has to count for something. I simply didn't connect with anything it had to say.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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