4 stars out of 5
Most of you would hate this movie, but I kind of loved it. I had no idea what to expect going in. My director friend Heather pointed out that the poster was an homage to/ripoff of Rosemary’s Baby. So was Jennifer Lawrence the mother(!) of a demon child? Then last week at the theater, before IT, I saw the hard-sell (“Buy tickets as soon as the movie’s over!”) trailer. Was Mother! a horror film? It seemed it would be… shocking?
But the trailer did its job; I now wanted to see this movie. Plus, I almost always love writer/director Darren Aronofsky.
However, even during the opening credits, my expectations were shifting. For after the word “Mother” appears on the screen, the exclamation point shows up accompanied by a “ding” sound effect. So was this a comedy?
Two days later, I still don’t know how to describe this. Remember the Black Swan? That was a straightforward story in which some bonkers things occurred. This seems like it’s going to be straightforward but oh man it is no such animal. We meet Jennifer Lawrence, looking quite well, a cross between Natalie Portman and Jewel. She’s alone in a big creepy house in the middle of nowhere. Except she’s not alone; she’s married to older-guy writer’s-blocked poet Javier Bardem. Then Ed Harris shows up, a… doctor… who… thought this was a bed & breakfast and… has a lot of coughing fits. He is perhaps not who he seems! And then his wife shows up, it’s Michelle Pfeiffer. She’s sexual, and also antagonistic toward Jennifer. Aronofsky coaxes a stronger performance out of Pfeiffer than we’ve seen in a while and it’s fun to watch. Lawrence also gives it her all, playing confused, angry, scared, and occasionally incapacitated by mysterious spells.
Next, Harris and Pfeiffer’s younger son Brian Gleeson shows up, who is the real-life younger brother of the omnipresent Domhnall Gleeson, who also shows up. And the movie starts feeling like an Edward Albee play. What are all these people doing in Jennifer’s home? She’s been meticulously rebuilding this house, letting Javier write, or try to write, anyway.
Something bad happens and, then things get screwy. The absurdity builds and builds, and I did laugh from time to time. There’s much going on here. Yes, the specter of motherhood, but also the cult of celebrity, the creative process, the Sisyphean nature of building and tearing down, and hugely, how we use — and use up — those who we claim to love. There’s a little Giving Tree angle to that.
It all started to feel like too much, like Aronofsky had gone way too far over the top. But then it ends perfectly — he really sticks the landing — and everything made sense. Or nothing did. Does it really matter?
Jack Silbert, curator