‘mother!’ review: Pushing the boundaries

Oggs Cruz

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‘mother!’ review: Pushing the boundaries
The movie breaks rules and upends expectations by flinging conventions around to the point of exhaustion

Darren Aronofsky’s mother! is definitely an audacious and defiant film.

Centering on the young wife (Jennifer Lawrence) of a writer (Javier Bardem) whose quaint life is suddenly disturbed by unwelcome guests (Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Harris), the film uses what essentially is a familiar set-up for conventional horror to push the boundaries of the medium.

Flinging conventions

It is very tempting to just box mother! as a horror film on the basis that some of its narrative elements feel reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and that a lot of its imagery provokes feelings of terrifying claustrophobia and uncertainty.

Michelle Pfeiffer in mother! Screengrab from YouTube/Paramount Pictures

However, mother! belies conventions of horror. It breaks rules and upends expectations by flinging conventions around to the point of exhaustion. It almost feels like Aronofsky is hell-bent on causing bewilderment and confusion. Just when the film starts to follow a logical direction, he makes a rapid turn, forcing the story towards areas that can only leave the audience in a state of shock, if not nausea.

Sure, the film’s blatant abstractions are discomforting, but the rewards of surviving its ingenious test of endurance are plenty. Aronofsky has crafted a film that could mean anything and everything. It draws on the Bible, on pop culture, on perceptions on celebrity, on human emotions, and on current events to provoke interpretations that will neither be right or wrong.

 

 

Puzzle to be solved

To treat the film as a puzzle that is meant to be solved will prove to be a disservice to its very many pleasures.

Aronofsky’s storytelling is astoundingly coherent. The characters, while admittedly based on stereotypes and written to be somewhat unrealistically unhinged, have apparent motivations. Matthew Libatique’s camerawork is exquisite as it captures not just the little gestures that snowball into maddening chaos but also the delicate personality of the rustic house that serves not just as a setting to the metaphorical and humorously absurdist domestic woes of the titular character.

Javier Bardem in mother! Screengrab from YouTube/Paramount Pictures

Paced teasingly and deliberately, perhaps in anticipation of the bizarre turning point that has the film evolve into a staggering document of current societal ills, mother! is quite a devilishly clever film. What starts out as intimate explodes into a noisy and noxious bombardment of information and emotions. It is almost impossible not to applaud its brashness.

 

Encouraging and miraculous

Screengrab from YouTube/Paramount Pictures

In this age of superheroes and sequels, the fact that mother! got made with studio money at all is encouraging. Say what you will about Aronofsky’s methods and intentions, or whether or not the film makes any sense at all, but its very existence is nothing short of miraculous. – Rappler.com

 

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ ‘Tirad Pass.’ Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema.

 

 

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