Ever since he got started in film, Darren Aronofsky has been excelling in providing cinematic experiences that each prove to be more traumatic than the last. Be it the black and white anxiety of Pi or the rampant misery of Requiem For A Dream, to even the mind flaying body horror of Black Swan, the filmmaker has managed to hone his skills in big screen miserabilism to a razor fine edge. However, there’s a good chance that 2017’s Mother! could possibly be his most unsettling yet, which is something of a big claim to make when you consider the final 15 minutes of Requiem would be enough to make even the cheeriest of soul take a minute to gather themselves.
After making Noah, a biblical epic that seemed to audaciously leave out recognisable aspects of the story in favour of battle scenes and giant rock monster angels, Aronofsky returned to screw with religion once more with Mother!, a movie billed as some sort of freaky psychological horror/thriller, but in actuality is something way, way, way more fucked up.
After a blazing inferno, a woman only known to us as Mother wakes in her beautiful home that’s surrounded by an idyllic field. It seems that she rebuilt the whole house back up from a burned husk and now she lives there with her husband, an acaimed poet we only know as Him. While their lives may be quiet, Mother wouldn’t have it any other way and as she continues renovating the house, he struggles with writers block as his creativity enters a stalled period.
One day, much to Mother’s discomfort, there’s a knock at the door to reveal a stranger called Man who is an orthopedic surgeon by trade and once Him welcomes the guy in, Mother is further unsettled by how little heed her husband give her wishes. It soon becomes apparent that the man is two things: both a fan of Him’s work and genuinely unwell, and soon his wife, naturally named Woman, suddenly shows up, and again, Mother squirms in discomfort as her husband welcomes them in and loudly proclaims that they can stay as long as they wish.
If Mother’s social anxiety was getting triggered before, it goes into overdrive when Man and Woman’s feuding sons, Oldest Son and Youngest Brother arrive and start fighting only for one of them to be killed due to their sibling rivalry. From here, things only get worse as, that night, dozens of people arrive to mourn the dead son and storm through the house with absolutely no thought to the fact that this isn’t their property. But while Him welcomes them, Mother finds the whole ordeal massively traumatising as her beloved house is getting trashed before her very eyes.
A reprieve comes when everyone mercifully leaves, but when Him finally breaks his writer’s block and creates a poem that creates an instant, cult-like sensation, Mother realises that the devestating upheaval she’s just weathered is only the beginning.
In many ways, Mother! is quite the simple watch. It doesn’t take a film degree to spot that Aronofsky is using the incredibly upsetting events of this movie to detail the basics of the bible and the subsequent rise (and fall) of man and funnel it all into some incredibly pretentious (and weirdly obvious) commentary. The second you peg what the impish filmmaker is up to, things start slotting into place with Jennifer Lawrence’s flustered, protective character a version of the beleaguered Mother Earth, while Javier Bardem’s flighty, dismissive Him is obviously God (or a God, at least) and as the story gets ever more frenetic, we soon spot Aronofsky’s variants of Adam, Eve, Cain & Abel and the subsequent rape and destruction of the planet due to man’s destructive greed. Some may be floored by the director’s audacity, others may find it all a bit too on the nose (subtlety isn’t really an option here), but regardless of your feelings on Mother!’s ferocious retelling of religion, there’s something you can’t really deny.
As cinematic experiences go, I really don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like Mother!. Foregoing storytelling basics such as human names, time, or even a sense of normality to get us settled, it’s a horror film that’s virtually unique in the fact that it wants us to mercilessly suffer just as much a Lawrence’s title character does – which is quite a fucking lot. Aronofsky isn’t telling us this story as so much as hoping that we spot the parallels so he can just make us as upset as he can and I’m not talking about anything as mundane as blasphemy.
As we see everything from Mother’s point of view, even when terrifying, destructive chaos isn’t blowing out the speakers, the move keeps you in a constant state of outrage simply by the way every other character treats her like absolute shit. Gaslit to oblivion, ignored, marginalised, mocked and even beaten, Lawrence is magnificent as someone kept in a perpetual state of frustration simply by the fact that no one is respecting her space, and it could be said that Aronofsky may have created the perfect horror movie for introverts.
Obviously, those looking for less metaphors to go with their bad feelings will probably find Mother! hard going, but then, considering that the film is supposed to hard going, I guess this technically can be classed as a good thing, even if Aronofsky delivers it as gently as a frying pan to the face. However, the bottom line is that it makes you feels things such as outrage (Lawrence’s genuinely awful treatment will be uncomfortably familiar with anyone who’s been in a one-sided relationship) and actual horror (the scenes with Him’s baying cult wanting to see Mother’s newborn baby is legitimately tough to stomach) and it’s something of a miracle that such a big swing got made with big stars and a major studio.
More an exercise in nightmare logic and metaphor than more comvention fare, Mother! obviously will be a gargantuan turn off for those not up for something so violently strange. However, where else are you going to find a horror-themed, skim reading of both testaments of the bible that’ll have you genuinely outraged that people won’t stop sitting on Jennifer Lawrence’s sink? Or get the overwhelming urge to slap a God that’s being played by Javier Bardem as a wanky poet? Or witness a legitimately unhinged finale that sees riots, murder, cults and the sight of Kristen Wiig as a publicist executing people in the dining room?
Relentlessly uncomfortable, you can pick and choose whatever metaphor floats your boat – religion, toxic relationships, the rape of the natural world, they all fly here – but there’s no denying that Aronofsky is pushing buttons that both unnerve and unsettle. While I’d maybe debate the rewatch value, Mother! certainly proves to be the matriarch of all of the director’s attempts to righteously piss us off.
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