mother! is a Nightmare of a Movie and I Love It

“More like motherfucker amirite”

Hey, I’m finally back!  Sort of!  I’m still not quite settled in all the way yet, but I have stopped traveling (for now) and, after a wild summer, I have time again.  So I should be able to return to my regularly scheduled programming of whatever I want to write on a given day, instead of just posting chapter after chapter of spooky vampire castle book.  But, like I said, I’m still not all the way established; I have a lot of unpacking left to do, both literally and metaphorically, and it’s going to be a bit before I really get myself into a groove of working and writing again.  Because I’ve moved!  I don’t know if I talked about it much previously, but over this summer, besides traveling a ton, I also moved everything I owned from Urbana, Illinois, to Minneapolis, Minnesota!  It was honestly a pretty big hassle, and a pain in the ass, but it should be all worth it.  I moved there with both my brother and my partner, so I’m definitely looking forward to getting into the swing of things and fully exploring this new place.  And you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be writing about it on here.  Eventually.  Because, this week, I’ve just got a shorter filler piece.  That’s also why today’s post is a little later than usual, posting at 3PM instead of 1:30PM Central Standard Time.  Because I literally just set up my desktop in my new apartment this morning.

So now we’re on to the new stuff!  After two and a half months and like ten chapters of Spectral Crown, let’s dive right in to what may end up being on my most needlessly controversial opinions to date; I think that mother!, the 2017 Darren Aronofsky movie with Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem, is a good movie, and one that deserves to be watched.  Why do I feel this way?  And why is it so controversial?  Because mother! is one of the most surprising, unsettling, and downright uncomfortable movies I have ever seen, and to say anything else about it would spoil the entire thing.  I firmly believe, as did my friend Melanie who showed me the movie in the first place, that this is one of those films that you need to go into blind.  To know anything about the piece, other than the fact that it is tense, contains violence, and stars Jennifer Lawrence, would be to ruin it for yourself.  So, before you read this post, please, please, please watch the movie first.  Normally I’d never say this, but stop reading now if you have any intention of watching this movie and getting the full, mind-fucking experience it’s supposed to have.  Because I’ll discuss the most unexpected and disturbing parts of the movie here, and there will be big spoilers.

Spoiler Warning!  Go watch the movie!  Or don’t, I can’t tell you what to do.

Alright, has everyone here seen the movie? Or, I guess, has no intention of ever watching this movie and is just here to support my writing (thanks, Mom and Dad)? Cool, cool, we’re all good then. Let’s get going.

Ok. So. What did you think of it? Were you as fucking blown away as I was? Were you bamboozled beyond your wildest expectations? Were you upset by it? Does it haunt you, the way it does me? (Leave a comment and tell me!) But the bigger question is, for me, what did you expect it to be about? What did you think was going to happen, and what did you think it was trying to say? When I first heard about this movie, my friend Melanie expressly told me not to look up anything about it. So I didn’t. I didn’t know literally anything at all about the movie, except that it starred Jennifer Lawrence. I didn’t even know that, when it first came out, people walked out of the theater during the screenings of the movie, because they apparently hated it so much (I’ll get to that later). Prior to watching it a few weeks ago, the only footage of the movie I had seen was a single still image (the heading and ending image of this article, actually), and for whatever reason, it had lodged itself in my head as a signifier of a “rural horror/European Pagan cult” movie, a la Wicker Man or the much newer Midsommar. The first thing I thought of, actually, was “oh, maybe this is like the opening of Resident Evil 4,” because I guess I somehow recognized that Javier Bardem is Spanish? Is that racist of me? I don’t know. But that’s what I went into this movie expecting. Something along the lines of “young family kidnapped by pagan cult, hilarity ensues.” Obviously, if you’ve seen the movie, that is absolutely not what happens. It is so, so much stranger than that.

If you completely ignored my spoiler warnings and haven’t seen the movie, here’s a quick run-down. None of the characters have stated names, by the way, so I’ll just go with the actors’ names. Jennifer Lawrence lives in a country estate with her husband (Javier Bardem), a famous poet struggling with writer’s block. She’s repairing the home, which is Bardem’s childhood mansion, apparently, and also she can feel a heart in the walls of the house, I guess? Anyway, some random sick dude (Ed Harris, actually) shows up and claims to be a fan of Bardem’s, and Bardem lets him stay in their house, much to Lawrence’s dismay. Soon Ed Harris’s wife, Michelle Pfeiffer for some reason, also shows up, and she’s an absolute shithead to Lawrence. They both are, actually. Harris and Pfeiffer destroy Bardem’s most prized jewel, and he locks them out of his study. Soon, Harris and Pfeiffer’s sons show up, screaming about Harris’s will and how he’s apportioned it, and one brother kills the other. Everyone rushes off to the hospital, except Lawrence, who is left alone. The blood left behind from the attack seeps into the floor, creating a weird, fleshy hole in the ground that reveals a hidden door in the basement, a furnace, and a giant canister of oil. Bardem then invites Harris and his entire extended family over back to the house for a funeral/drunken party to celebrate the life/untimely death of the son. After the party destroys Lawrence’s unfinished sink and flood the house, she kicks them all out. Lawrence and Bardem get in an argument that turns into sex, and the next morning, Lawrence is pregnant. Bardem, inspired by Lawrence and her unborn child, is able to overcome his writer’s block and write a new poem, one which is, apparently, beautiful.

That’s the first half of the movie. If you had ended it there, it could have been a weird, experimental study in human grief and beauty arising from destruction, but no. The movie has another hour or so left after that, and it is fucking weird. This is the point, I think, where people started to realize that they were in for a nightmare of a time, because once the poem is written, Bardem publishes it, and immediately receives heaps of praise. People come to their house, asking for autographs. Lawrence tells him to send them away, but he doesn’t, and they soon start climbing into their home, destroying it and taking things as souvenirs. Hundreds of people show up, there’s chaos and destruction everywhere, and poor pregnant Lawrence is stuck in the middle of it. Shit gets uncomfortable then, but it gets much worse, because all of a sudden, and I don’t quite remember when it happens because I was a nervous wreck watching this thing, things get really violence and then there are police bursting in through the walls, Kristen Wiig shows up and starts executing people, there’s a bomb that goes off, there are people in cages, everyone’s screaming and running around, and then Lawrence goes into labor and Bardem pulls her out of the struggle to his study, where she gives birth to a baby boy. But then, while she’s sleeping, Bardem steals the kid from Lawrence and passes him around in the frenzied crowd; while the baby is down there, someone bumps his head on the ceiling and his neck fucking snaps, and then, Lawrence, attempting to find her now-deceased child, instead finds all the people in the house cutting up the kid’s body and eating his flesh. Lawrence, understandably, loses her shit and starts attacking people, but they savagely beat her before Bardem can get them to stop. Lawrence escapes to the basement, and in a fury, lights the oil tanker on fire and blows up the house. But there’s more.

In the aftermath, of the burned-out house, we see a disfigured Lawrence and an unscathed Bardem. Lawrence says that she was never enough for him, and Bardem asks her for her love. She agrees, and Bardem rips her heart out, crushes it, and reveals a new jewel, similar to the one smashed in the beginning. Lawrence disappears into dust, the house rebuilds itself, and a new woman wakes up in a clean bed. It is awful.

But that’s the thing with this movie; it is a tense, unrelenting, unstoppable nightmare from the word go. It is unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. This isn’t like Good Time, which felt dangerous and a bit like an out-of-control train that can only end in one way (destruction, that is), and this isn’t like some movie with a twist ending that you can’t spoil, like Sixth Sense or Infinity War, this something else entirely. Because here’s the thing; for everything that happens, that I just described above, those couple paragraphs will never really do the movie justice. There’s so much more going on than just the actions that occur, and there’s so much more to see and take in, even as it’s introduced and then immediately destroyed in the second half. It’s such an overwhelming experience that you have to see it without knowing what’s coming, or you’ll just be looking for the wackadoodle shit instead of the whole thing together. And as a whole, mother! is, I believe, three major things; an allegory for the Bible, an allegory for the act of creative artistry, and a fever dream of despair. That’s why I think you shouldn’t know anything about this movie going in, because if you’re just looking at one part, you’ll miss the rest of it. Also, the allegories become a lot clearer when taken as a whole piece, instead of just in pieces.

So here’s the thing about both the allegory for the Bible and also why people walked out of the movie. Nothing about this movie is “bad,” per se; it isn’t like the audio is poorly mixed, or the sets and costumes are tacky, or the acting is cardboard, or the writing is uninspired or boring. Visually, everything is stunning, all the actors are incredibly convincing, and the writing is spot-on, in my opinion. It isn’t laughably bad, like Sharknado or Troll 2. And it isn’t scary, or gory for gore’s sake, like Saw or something. So why did people walk out of the theater, and why did the movie get an F on CinemaScore? I have two theories; the first, and easiest to explain, is that the movie isn’t for everyone. It’s an intense rollercoaster that takes a decisive split at the half-way mark, shifting tone and content and throwing as much fucking nonsense as the viewer as it can. It is overbearing in its allegories at times, and very much an “art” film. Some people don’t like it because it’s too confusing or too abstract, and some people don’t like it because the whole thing kind of screams “I’m cool and unique and I’ll punch you in the face.” It is for a very specific audience, I think, and the fact that it got big-name actors and a major budget is, frankly, surprising and maybe a bad business move, though I’m still very glad the movie exists as it does. But the other reason that I think people walked out is because, on levels perhaps both conscious and unconscious, those viewers realized that it’s an allegory for the Bible and human history, and they were offended by the messages the movie was attempting to convey. To be fair, I don’t think this was the majority of viewers. But I do think that some people, perhaps those with a certain kind of religious bent, got the gist of the movie in some shape or form and just outright rejected it because it didn’t fit with their worldview. I think that maybe a small part of the population watching this mother! were flat-out offended by the movie. Because, by the end, it’s clear Javier Bardem’s character is the Christian God, and in this film, God is not good.

There’s a lot to break down as to the one-to-one religious allegories here, but the gist of it is this; in the beginning, there’s just Bardem and Lawrence, or God and the Earth. Yeah, Lawrence is Mother Earth. Then there’s Man, Adam, or Ed Harris’s character. There’s a scene where Ed Harris is sick, and has a wound on his side; soon after, Michelle Pfeiffer shows up, and it’s pretty clear looking back that Bardem took one of Harris’s ribs to make Eve, Pfeiffer. When they go up to Bardem’s study and touch the forbidden jewel, he kicks them out of his space. Then their kids show up, and commit the first sin (because their kids are Cain and Abel), and later you’ve got the party of people, which is cleared via a flood (when the sink breaks). After that, Lawrence gets pregnant, and inspires Bardem, who writes a new poem, or the New Testament. He shares it with the world through his publicist, or the Christian Church (who later executes people; much like the actual Catholic Church). People flock to worship Bardem, and then there’s wars and torture and destruction, much like in real human history. Lawrence’s baby is, of course, Jesus, who is killed by those who profess to love him, and then partake of his flesh. In a rage, such as described in the book of Revelations, Lawrence destroys humanity, even though Bardem, or God, asks her to forgive them. The whole thing is one long, twisted, fun-house mirror reflection of the Bible, and it is not anything that would get played in a church meeting.

But there’s the other part of things, too; Bardem is not a good person to Lawrence. Bardem continually asks more of her, and she continues to give, birthing life, cleaning the house, and eventually giving him her love. She does everything for him, and never once does he really every try to give back to her. He is constantly obsessed with his fans, and their worship of him, giving away himself, his relationship with Lawrence, and their child just so that he can be praised. He admits, at the end, that she was never enough to make him happy, and that the only thing that ever would be is more praise. And then he goes and kills her and makes a new replacement, tossing her aside like a used tissue. It really gives the smashing of the jewel a new meaning, because that was just some other proto-Jennifer Lawrence, who, had she been the main character, we would have gone the whole movie knowing she loved him without pause, only to have it be thrown away. It’s not just a critique on God, though, because all these things are true, too, of the creative process in many ways; balancing your life and the lives of those around you while trying to create something beautiful is both terrifying, demoralizing, and incredibly egotistical. I am not immune of this; to believe that what you have to say, that what you have made, is worthy of appreciation by others is perhaps the highest form of arrogance. And yet, any creative type does it anyway. Because, at least from my perspective, we don’t know anything else. It is self-destructive and destructive of those around us, and maybe, says mother!, God is the same way. It is not just creator and created; it is artist and muse.

There’s also some thing about how the movie is about climate change, too, and I mean, I can kind of see it. If Lawrence is Mother Earth, and she gives and gives and gives to her children, and they continue to abuse her and destroy her home, before she uses a tank of oil to burn it all down, then I can see how it’s a climate change thing. But also… that’s kind of weak. Like I get it, it’s a pretty general metaphor, but it can really be applied to anything. Honestly, you could say the same basic thing about pirate-faced Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, except that doesn’t end in fiery death. Honestly, in some ways, mother! is just the gritty reboot of The Giving Tree, and I stand by that. Anyway, the movie works as a thing about climate change, but it is by no way the overriding theme of the movie, so there’s not really much of a point in viewing it that way. And at least one person agrees with me on that.

But whatever way you cut it, I think the movie stands on its own, too. We can read it as whatever we want it to be, and whatever Aronofsky says it is, but I also think it’s an incredible movie. In interviews, director Aronofsky says he wanted to create something like a punch in the gut, and I’d say he exceeded all expectations. mother! is a movie that I just can’t shake, no matter how much I puzzle over it, because it’s unique all the way through. There isn’t much comparable to it that I know of, and it gets points for that. This is a movie that I think deserves to be talked about and explored for years to come, though it seems that it’ll never really get that appreciation. It is, if nothing else, an exhausting look at the act of creating new things and the emotional turmoil that comes with it, even if the whole thing is aggressively destructive. This isn’t a movie that I want to watch again, not the least because it’s the kind of thing that will wreck my mood on any given evening, but it is the kind of movie that I want other people to watch, because it is a singular experience. This is why I’m so adamant about going into it without any knowledge ahead of time; it’s fucking bonkers, but it’s also absolutely stunning in ways that I can’t quite put into words. It is one of the tensest movies I’ve ever seen, for sure, and though maybe that tension starts to fade as it spirals out of control at the end, mother! never quite lets up on the viewer or gives them room to breathe. It is one particular thing. It is, you could say, what it is. And what it is, is haunting and beautiful.

Or, perhaps, I am what I am. And that is all.