The eye of the beholder

Rating: 9/10 (26 September 2018)

I finally got around to watching this, not sure whether I was going to like it or not. For reference, I go for big, well-made action movies and good crime thrillers as much as I'll like an intense drama or surrealistic piece like this one. So I never really know. I don't care about genre; it just has to be good.
I've liked all of Aronofsky's other films, except maybe for Noah (too much animal CGI and it was forgettable).
mother! is not a film I'll forget. It was like watching someone's dream.
In the beginning, I thought this was maybe a ghost story. Mother can never leave the house. She feels its beating heart when she embraces the walls. Similar to "The Others," I thought maybe she was a ghost and didn't know it, but I wasn't sure how it was going to work out. Anyway, that wasn't the direction it took and not what I thought for long.
There have been some great reviews on here, sussing out the allegory that is mother! to be about both religion / creation and relationships. I've read some great theories that the film condenses Judeo-Christian monotheism - Him (Javier Bardem) is God, Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) is nature, and the guests (Ed Harris and Michele Pfeiffer) are Adam and Eve, their warring sons Cain and Abel.
I have to admit, while I definitely detected religious overtones, I didn't glean anything that specific, but I agree with the reviewers it's there.
The other theory is that this film is a relationship parable. A study in two people coming together, trying to start a life, have a child. Maybe so, but I think it's so much more.
By no means have I read all of these reviews exhaustively, but I haven't seen either of the theories that were so acute in my mind while watching. One, that this is a parable about the creative process. Aronofsky is, after all, a writer, and there is an autobiographical element here. To be an artist sometimes means to be selfish, to take from others what you need, to shut them out, to take inspiration where you find it, even if it isn't fair to your loved ones. When you consider the fragility of the crystal, the preciousness of Him's workspace, his distractedness and self-concern, this film comments that making something, while wonderful, is a fragile and emotional and tempestuous thing. It is a little bit of hell to go through to get to the promised land.
As the film progressed, inasmuch as I felt the creative process parable shining strongly through, I also perceived a brilliant commentary on humanity, something universal; we destroy what we love. After "Him" finally completes a new poem, fans show up at the house and grow in numbers to swamp the place, become mindless devotees tearing everything apart. Their love for Him and his work devolves into decadence, then chaos and destruction - the people bring about an apocalypse.
Certainly this theory dovetails with what others have said - that this is an environmental statement, or this is religious / biblical. The ending, for me, is telling, since the selfish artist wants to start all over again, full fell knowing the hell through which he puts his muse.
But that's just me. Like "Him" says about his poem, the words mean something different to everyone. That could be commentary on the Bible bearing multiple interpretations and spawning religious sects. It could be a comment on art, how beauty lies with the beholder. It could also be a comment on the film itself, that we each will see it how we see it, and there's no wrong or right in that.