mother!

Rating: 8/10 (15 September 2017)

Imagine "Rosemary's Baby" filtered through the dark and twisted creator of "Black Swan" with a lot more symbolism and a lot less literal and you'd get "Mother!", Darren Aronofsky's nightmare about a mother's isolation.
From the start we are launched into the perspective of Mother (not a single name is ever said in the movie for any character). The film uses almost entirely close ups of Mother, over the shoulder shots, or point of view shots to emphasize this viewpoint. The sound design also adds another layer of immersion, accentuating the many small sounds made in Mother's home, and creating a three-dimensional landscape through the sound. This very limited perspective, as well as the fact that the film takes place entirely in one home, gives the film a claustrophobic atmosphere and often heightens the sense of paranoia.
The set up is simple: a couple, comprised of a writer and the woman who built their home, is interrupted by a sudden unexpected guest. I don't want to go much further than that, but the sudden escalation of events is incredibly surprising and very bizarre if taken literally, but even as I wasn't entirely sure what exactly was happening I was pulled into the movie by the amazing performances from Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Although it may seem like a traditional psychological thriller film at the start, along the same lines as Aronofsky's own "Black Swan", I can say by the end I had many lingering questions about what I had actually just seen and what exactly it meant. This is why I'm going to do a more in depth analysis below this, but this is where the spoiler free review ends.