After Attempting to Explain it to Strangers, their Blank Expressions said it all

Rating: 7/10 (19 September 2017)

On the surface, Mother! is a movie that meanders around for the first couple of acts, not really doing or saying a whole lot. Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) lives with Him (Javier Bardem) alone in the country in a nice big house. She spends her time renovating the house, while He spends his time trying to find inspiration for his next great work. One day a stranger (Ed Harris) appears and He invites him in, much to Mother's annoyance. The next day the strangers wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) appears and starts causing trouble. Their squabbling children (Brian and Domnhall Gleeson) arrive, there's a murder, and more people start to invite themselves into the house. It escalates and escalates until it reaches the most bonkers, surrealist climax that lacks any logical or narrative sense. On the surface, Mother! is extremely hard to digest and understand, because on the surface, it literally makes no sense. The climax is without logic or realism.
But Mother! is not a surface-level movie. It's not the straight-forward psychological thriller the marketing made it out to be. To explain requires MASSIVE SPOILER WARNINGS. The key to unlocking the mystery and surrealism of Mother!, to ensure that that bizarre climax makes any semblance of sense, is understanding who Mother and Him are; who they represent. Mother is mother nature, the binding lifeforce of the Earth. She maintains the house and attempts to turn it into the perfect paradise to live. He is God, the almighty, the biblical omnipotence, crafting works of words and relishing love and worship lain before him by his followers, who he invites into his world freely despite their destructive, corruptible nature. Once these keys are in place, it unlocks the rampant symbolism the movie is filled with. The stranger becomes Adam, the stranger's wife becomes Eve, their squabbling children become Cain and Abel, the secret room becomes hell, the broken sink becomes the great floods, his works become the old and new testament, Her baby becomes Jesus, the rave becomes Sodom and Gomorragh, the publisher (Kristen Wiig) becomes Islam, and even this feels like I'm just scratching the surface. There's so much in the movie to unpack and rearrange.
But to truly tap into Mother!'s surrealist genius of concept and execution, you realise the biblical allegories aren't even the end of the themes and messages the movie attempts to convey. Every scene, every moment, every action by every character serves a symbolic purpose. One level deep it's a biblical narrative, from Genesis to Revelations. Go deeper still and you find themes relating to environmentalism, feminism, the creation of art, and abusive relationships.
All that said, the third act is just completely bonkers. I can't even put into words how off-the-wall, batshit crazy the third act really is. It loses all sense of subtlety and narrative cohesiveness in favour of rampant, down-your-throat symbolism and metaphor. It completely spoils the surface-level enjoyment the movie could have enjoyed had it reigned it in a little bit and kept just a little more realistic. Instead we get Mother scrambling from room to room into ever-increasing amounts of WTF; from an open warzone in their living room, to cack-handed references to Global Warming, to women in cages being raped, to a full-on riot between anarchists and police.
Even as I woke up this morning, Mother! managed to stick with me. I'm not even sure writing all this out has helped me to unpack what I witnessed last night, and I feel my opinion is mired by the experience still being a little too fresh. Aronofsky doesn't care if you cheer or boo his movies, as long as you do one or the other; as long as it causes enough of a rise in you that you feel compelled to tear it apart or applaud it, the movie is a success. Love it or hate it, there's no denying Mother! was successful in that regard. It is a movie that will not be forgotten any time soon. It has people talking about it and discussing it, and will continue to for quite some time.
For me, I feel more positive towards it than I do negative. The allegory, particularly early on, is well-handled, and it's complex arrangements of multiple themes and messages surrounding this allegory is nothing short of genius. It's just a little let down by it's final act that throws narrative cohesion out the window, in favour of a montage of surreal situations seamlessly stitched together in an escalating fashion. It becomes a blunt force trauma to the head of symbolism that lacks subtlety or nuance. I wouldn't say it feels out-of-place because the whole movie builds up the sense of weird, right from the opening sequence of the burning house being restored, but I feel it didn't have to go full bananas - deliberately alienating mainstream audiences - to get it's point across. I give Mother! an imperfect 7/10.