First, I want to shut down several myths surrounding this film. For one, this movie is not at all the violent, disturbing, pornograhic gorefest its reputation suggests. There is one scene, which I will discuss later, that is certainly disgusting and will outrage people, but that really is it. Frankly, the movie bored me to tears, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Second, this film is not at all original. Not even close. A pastiche of so many older, superior films, mother! is as derivative as it is dull. I truly hope Roman Polanski is collecting royalties from this film because it is such an egregiously blatant rip-off of Rosemary's Baby. The "plot," which feels too generous a word, has plenty of similarities (the deceptive husband who sells out his wife/baby, the meek woman, the pregnancy, the growing invasion of their home, etc.), but it is the attempt to out-do Polanski's metaphors and depth that irritated me the most.
Third, mother! is not a horror movie. The trailer had the most tantalizing imagery I have seen in years, and I was hooked. The marketing team for mother! deserve a hefty paycheck because they sure convinced me to see this movie, but all on the basis of better editing in the trailer than in the actual movie. Everything from the trailer's atmosphere to the plot summary on countless websites, to say nothing of the divisive reputation, made mother! seem like The Devils (1971) of my generation. Yet, this was nothing more than creative re-imagining.
So, what is mother! really about? Well, there is no story. mother! (with a lowercase "m" to punctuate the genius) is an extended metaphor for Christianity, God, and creation. No characters have names. In fact, there are no characters; there are only symbols.
The film opens with Jennifer Lawrence on fire, her flesh searing and melting before our eyes. We then see Javier Bardem place a weirdly-shaped clear rock on display amid what is clearly the charred remains of a house. When he sets the rock in display, the house slowly returns to its pre-fire zenith, ending with a lump of ash in the burned bed transforming into Lawrence. I was already feeling echoes of Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca in which we are invited to see Manderly's charred remains as the nameless narrator--a young woman married to an older, aloof man--begins the story of their marriage and the destruction of their home. So, the derivative aspects of mother! begin with the first images. Not the best way to begin a supposedly original film.
I'm going to go out and spoil the characters and plot by giving my impression. Bardem is God (his name in the credits is "Him" with a capital "H"), Lawrence is Mary. Always wearing white and clearly virginal, Lawrence represents the Holy Virgin; she directly tells her husband, "You don't fuck me." His response is to start having sex with her. We don't really see any sex, though, and when she awakens she knows she is pregnant.
Michelle Pfeiffer (billed as "woman") and Ed Harris ("man") arrive at Bardem and Lawrence's house early in the film. As far as setting things in motion goes, they are basically supposed to be Adam and Eve. Their two sons show up, and one kills the other (oooh! Cain and Abel!), and the rest of the film becomes a pretentious "Find the metaphor!" pu-pu platter of Biblical symbolism. I won't go into each detail, mostly because that will become exhausting, but will suffice it to say that this film is not a film in the classic sense of the word. mother! is bloated extended metaphor that is expressed visually. There are no characters, there is no story, there is, in fact, not one note of music; mother! is only a string of symbols that grow increasingly bananas to represent...(wait for it!) civilization going baaaaaaaddddddd! And what happens when civilization gets baaaaaaaaaddddddd beyond redemption? Why, God sends his only begotten son to deliver us from evil.
This brings me to the most divisive, cynical, and disgusting part of the movie. After Lawrence gives birth to their son, Bardem eventually gets the baby from her and presents it to the wild crowd outside their room. The crowd takes the baby and passes him over each other (kind of like passing around a person at a metal concert, which I don't think was an accidental metaphor). Lawrence runs to the front of the room screaming, and then we see the baby roasted and served on a table. Everyone has taken handfuls of the baby, and they are eating him ritualistically.
The scene was disgusting for many reasons, especially the slurppy sound everyone made while they were eating the baby, but the literal depiction of Holy Eucharist was rather offensive. I completely understand people who hate this movie for that scene. For me personally, Aronofsky crossed a line this time in the most profane and narcissistic way. And here is where calling Rosemary's Baby superior feels like the understatement of the millennium. Rosemary's Baby may be full of witches and Satanic imagery, but there was a moral to the film; rather than belittling religion, Polanski is examining far more profound and interesting themes about gender and morality. mother!, on the other hand, is a masturbatory allegory that really has nothing to say.
And that is where my distaste comes in. I won't say the film offended me so much as it left me irritated and bored. The camera is only in three places: in front of Jennifer Lawrence's face, behind her head, or showing her point of view. It's a good-on-paper idea in that it sounds far more interesting than it is in practice. The action is difficult to see, and the film felt so dull because of it. At least one-third of the movie is just following Lawrence around. When you combine that with no music and very little sound, the film is at-best laborious to watch. It's boring and indulgent, and does not really reveal anything interesting or profound.
As for the religious symbolism, I felt it said nothing. Beyond being a guessing game about what represents what, there really is nothing to mother!. There is certainly no story and there are no characters, so as a result there is no pathos. None at all. During the baby eating scene, I felt sick to my stomach, but not because I was worried for the baby or identified with Lawrence's character's feelings. I was simply grossed out. Considering this movie came from the man who gave us The Wrestler, one of the most moving films of the 2000s, I am appalled at the lazy self-indulgences taken in mother!. The symbolism is clever, I suppose, but it doesn't say anything. Unless the point of the movie is that God is a megalomaniac, I'm not sure what the point of this giant mess was.
I will highlight one good thing about this movie, though: Michelle Pfeiffer. Hers was the performance that stood out the most to me. She was entertaining to watch, you really had no idea what she would say or do, and she was actually funny. I went into this film excited to see Michelle be evil, but she's only in a few scenes. I can't think of anything that represents how much Hollywood hurts itself with its own ageism than how underused Michelle Pfeiffer was in this movie.
I do feel so torn about this movie, though, because, despite the trashiness of it, I was impressed Paramount green-lighted a movie this divisive. In a market flooded with comic book movies, "based on a true story" didactic nonsense, remakes, and franchises, it is refreshing to see something not playing into any of that commercialism. But did it have to be this lousy?
Grade: D
