A timely film tackling one of the most important issues the mankind has ever faced

Rating: 10/10 (24 September 2017)

I feel obliged to write in defense of Mother, Aronofsky's misunderstood minor masterpiece; three days after watching it, I still feel emotional tremors and deep uneasiness the film had caused in me. What causes movie-going public to so readily disregard a film that gives us something unexpected? Are we so lazy and complacent nowadays, to the point where the constant barrage of blandness from the mainstream media now causes us to recoil from the material that requires a bit of thought and emotional engagement? Mark Kermode's "diminished expectations" phrase comes to mind. For those expecting cheap scares of most recent horrors, I sympathize, the trailers were clearly trying to market this as a horror in order to put bums on seats. Of course it could be viewed as a horror, but just as Polanski's horror films are never just that, Mother! too offers so much more. Kathryn Bigelow recently said that it would be a shame not to use this medium to bring important issues to the front. Aronofsky is doing the same.
Rightly billed as the proper successor to An Inconvenient Truth, the movie has in it elements of Gaia, the theory invented by James Lovelock, the esteemed British scientist who warned us years ago that Earth, if pushed too far, will restore its natural balance by neutralizing the antagonizing agent, i.e. the human population. In fact, all of our negative traits are exposed in the third act: an insatiable appetite and propensity for violence and destruction, the hunger for the satisfaction of the ego, mindless celebrity and/or deity worship, an assumed right to claim ownership, readiness to bow to collective madness and, when given an opportunity, an utter disregard for others and the world we live in.
Jennifer Lawrence was perfectly cast for her role; her impotence to avert the oncoming disaster by rationality alone, was almost unbearable to watch; her innocence, honesty, emotional investment and trust she had placed in her relationship is continuously trampled on; she could almost be seen as a metaphor for powerlessness of the scientific community's consensus on global warming in the face of climate change deniers - no amount of reason or counting on the willingness to do what is right is enough, the loudest ones usually prevail.
Mother is a film for our times, it should be seen widely and I hope its magnificent heroine continues to contribute to its ticket sales, even if her fans might expect something a bit more "mainstream". It's not meant to be subtle, it wants to grab you by the shoulders, shake you and infuriate you. It perhaps wears its message on its shoulder a bit too strong, but that's not a criticism in my mind, it is a message that needs to be shouted out and this film certainly does just that.
Bravo!