Mother - Review

MOTHER

Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer star in Director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream) latest effort called Mother” a riveting psychological thriller about love, devotion and sacrifice.

THIS PLOT NEEDS SOME EXPLAINING: From the onset of the first frame, you get a sense that there is something slightly off about the film’s tone, its characters and even the way their large home sits in the middle of a field. They all seemingly (both the married couple and their home) feel unusually and overly isolated from having any neighbors living nearby, much less ever being remotely connected to a local community, town or city. The sense of their isolation is powerfully obvious from the get go.

Jennifer Lawrence who plays “Mother” (no one in the entire film have any given names) is a 20 something very sweet, meek and overly submissive wife to her older husband (Bardem) who can be a times a bit charming and yet be equally odd, impulsively dominant toward his “Mother” - wife; exhibiting erratic spontaneous moments of being brooding, narcissistic and a malcontent. You wonder from the beginning of the film what Lawrence’s and Bardem’s characters ever saw in each other to ever be married in the first place.

Mother has a daily routine which is getting up to making breakfast for her husband and obsessively working to personally rehabbing their lovely fixer upper country home from top to bottom, while her husband goes off to his upstairs (off limits) office to begin to write his new work. Apparently he has had some previous successful written works published that has given him some measure of national acclaim, but now he has writers block and can’t seem to find “my inspiration again”.

One late evening a “stranger” (Ed Harris) comes to their home apparently telling the married couple that he was under the impression from someone locally that they were running a bed and breakfast. Immediately the husband (Bardem) and the stranger hit it off oddly acting like they are lifelong friends which causes Mother some concern. Her apprehensions becomes more pronounced when she learns late that night Bardem’s character has offered to let the “stranger” stay overnight without consulting her (Mother).

The next morning while cooking breakfast and after hearing the stranger up most of the night coughing his lungs out, his wife oddly shows up (Michelle Pfeiffer) moving into their home (uninvited) with luggage in tow into the room her husband (the stranger) is staying in. Later on after some odd conversations between the stranger’s wife and “Mother” we discover the “stranger” lied about why he showed up last night. The fact is he was a huge fan of Bardem’s character previous written works and just wanted to meet him before he dies from a terminal illness (he likes to smoke a lot) . Meanwhile, Mother now has new house guest in her home as her husband implores her to be nice to them as he has invited them to stay as long as they want due to his new friend's health condition. 

Shortly after this revelation, the two strangers two adult son’s show up (also unannounced) to immediately begin arguing about how one found out the other is slated to get all of their father’s financial assets in his will, resulting in an all-out terribly brawl. It’s this key confrontation that leads to eventually an endless array of other strangers totaling in the hundreds showing up at their home (uninvited), literally taking unreasonable liberties with the couple’s hospitality and home by staying over night, eating their food, stealing their possessions and simply invading "Mother's" privacy for no apparently reason or rational. FULL STOP.

REVIEW: Director Aronofsky has clearly drawn his inspiration from Roman Polanski’s 1968 classic “Rosemary’s Baby”. Both “Mother” and “Rosemary Baby” share the same plot component about the incompleteness of one’s life by not having children. And while overall structurally “Mother” shares some of the same hypnotic sequences of “R’sB” where reality and dreams cannot be distinguished from one another. Its basic story is an endless meandering display of unexplained emotional dimension seemly timeless to the films principle characters respective lives. If you see this film you will learn its not solely a horror film, but more of a viewer’s exercise of trying to distinguish what is either moments of horror, of light, of superstitions and primortal human fears.

Mostly because “Mother” (Lawrence) seems to be the most normal person in the film we root for her as she is perpetually surrounded by hundreds of strange people who are unpleasant, always engaging in aggressive nihilistic behavior; who are ugly with unruly dispositions and who seemingly only want to inflict that anger on her – Mother”. And yet they project themselves in the film as being the normal ones by always questioning and demanding of “Mother’ to be nice to them as she grows appropriately more frustrated by this wholesale unexpected intrusion into her previous quiet life.

“Mother” is hard to turn your head away from pure boredom for any of its 2 hour running time as it is quite compelling to visually look at. And yet it is singularly the oddest movie going experience I have ever had - EVER. In a nut shell I don’t understand how in the hell this film was ever green lighted with these four A list  actors on board other than some producer gave the Director a pile of money to do whatever he wanted including adding an unexplained sequence of Lawrence’s “Mother” perpetually drinking some yellow bromide concoction whenever she became overly nervous or upset to calm herself down. This and many other odd ticks in this film are encased in a continuous frame after frame of endless chaos inside their home that at times mirrored scenes from “Mad Max: Fury Road” to “Saving Private Ryan” and “The Exorcist”…………….Yep that weird.

“Mother” is intriguing to watch, but is also terribly frustrating to watch with its bizarre and over the-top,………….I mean way, way, way over the top manner. If I had to guess I believe Director Darren Aronofsky was trying to tell some modern biblical allegory story about the creation of Adam and Eve and how their creation gave way to the eventual birth of Christ into a nihilist world of depraved sinners and hedonistic behavior. If that is the case then I need to start going back to Sunday school and start reading my bible on lunch break at work.

This was one hell of a mental trip of a movie to watch.  I can only suggest to you that if you do at some point see or rent "Mother" I promise you will muttering under your breath the whole time……………..WTF?.

2 Stars