I can't give you anything but Love, Baby

Rating: 7/10 (20 January 2018)

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it's a clear sign of how generally reviled Darren Aronofsky's mother! was, as it's monumentally clear that nothing like it - at least with a $30 million budget made by consummately safe Hollywood players - will probably ever be attempted or allowed again. That's somewhat of a shame, as mother! is a genuine risk, and doubly so made by a mainstream Hollywood studio. A bizarre social experiment in aggressively polarizing arthouse wackiness disastrously mismarketed as Blair Witch style horror (an entire other movie could be made about the inevitable Hunger Games diehards walking out, bug-eyed and traumatized), mother! is a ferocious howl into the wind of a film. It's a surrealist Biblical allegory by way of gruelling, abjective Von Trier/Jodorowski-esq social satire, with scathing commentary on ideological gender disparity, the environment, mass media, the artistic process, and the breaking point of societal social norms, punctuated with some of the most harrowing imagery committed to cinema in years. It's a rough, beguiling, frequently frustrating, and utterly uncompromising fever dream of a film, and an intentionally difficult watch. In short: not exactly an airy, carefree Friday night popcorn romp. Still, Aronofsky's feverish vomit of ideas and themes are (overall) worth sifting through and grappling with, if only for the delirious pub night conversation to follow.
In terms of what the film is actually about... that's a matter of interpretation. Allegories span the Book of Genesis to the experience of childbirth to the sheer angst of waiting for overstaying party guests to leave so you can finally go to bed, though Aronofsky teasingly suggesting the film play as a double-bill with his 2014 Noah is a bit of a hat-tip. The thematic common denominator, in short, seems to be that the world is a fundamentally sh*tty place - and a fundamentally sh*tty place to be a woman specifically. The pathetic fallacy sinks it home with appropriate ickiness, with blood oozing from floorboards and squirting from exploding lightbulbs, as the walls crinkle and burn, exposing a throbbing internal heart, in feverish episodes which could be anything from mini-seizures to foreshadowing. Aronofsky accentuates the isolation with a disquieting lack of music and sickeningly claustrophobic cinematography (you can count the number of shots not primarily filled by Jennifer Lawrence's face or body on one hand), making the Grand Guignol grotesquery and proliferation of bodily fluids of all kinds all the more in-your-face.
Still, in the face of the histrionics to come, it's the film's first act that crawls under the skin arguably more memorably. A black comedy of manners, Aronofsky allows his pair of perturbingly oblivious uninvited house guests (Ed Harris - goofily cheery with just a glint of sinister unpredictability, and the utterly terrifying, scene-stealing Michelle Pfeiffer, like the Angel of Death circa Sex in the City) to push the boundaries of social acceptability like a nightmarish version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. It's an appropriately unnerving calm(ish) before the storm, and subtly twisted enough to squeeze out barks of uncomfortable laughter amidst the frowns and cringes. For the love of God, get off the sink.
One takeaway, which has most viewers particularly up in arms, reads the film as a life-imitates-art parable of artistic muses and the creative process, and an uneasy romance between a demure young muse and a tormented Creator twice her age (hmm... that sounds familiar). Reducing the film as such doesn't quite do it justice, but the cynical eye-rolling at its problematically antiquated gender roles is very fair, just as the antiquated arthouse trope of women grotesquely, violently suffering to underscore a thematic point is done to grisly, unearned excess here. Naturally, it all escalates to a hysterical boiling point, where Aronofsky doesn't just jump the shark so much as pole-vault the seven seas here, with a batsh*t climax seemingly geared to offend as many mainstream sensibilities as possible, and prompting even the most jaded viewers' jaws to plummet like a cartoon pantomime of Jim Carrey in The Mask.
Nonetheless, in a movie rife with chaotic imbalances, Jennifer Lawrence's formidably commanding performance provides a gravitational anchor throughout. Functionally a timid, 1950s housewife plopped into the middle of The Revenant, Lawrence is in almost every shot of the film, and the sheer mountainous deluges of feelings that burst out of her as she is raked over proverbial and literal broken glass, as well as every other imaginable tribulation, is exhaustingly worthwhile. Javier Bardem is similarly sickeningly magnetic, an enigmatic mix of charismatic and charming as much as he is sterile and sinister. And, as the conflict elevates to increasingly kitchen sink levels of insanity, Domhnall Gleeson, Kristen Wiig, and Stephen McHattie each pop up when least expected, generating performances as rawly affecting, only to disappear with as little fanfare.
Is there any value or remotion in mother!? Well, brushing aside all pontificating on how subjective an experience cinema is, it's safe to say that Aronofsky's film isn't meant to be 'liked' so much as seep in like a vicious hangover, its aftertaste like the sweaty, throbbing clarity that comes after a bout of violently throwing up. It's loud, abrasive, and clumsy, and its ideas are calamitously assembled at best (even Aronofsky, in the midst of animatedly unpacking his motivation, eventually sheepishly confessed "It's probably best not to overthink it"). But as a raw cauldron of feeling and primordial angst, mother! takes bold, unsolicited chances, and, as Hollywood releases are increasingly taken to task for being placid and safe, it's too much of a worthwhile experimentation of sweat, fire and bile not to champion, problematic, confusing, and displeasurable as it may frequently be. Suffice to say - whether you find mother! fascinating or traumatizing, it is one of the few movies you will genuinely never forget.
-7/10