Mixed Experience

Rating: 4/10 (7 December 2017)

I really have mixed feelings about Mother. Strong are the performances of the main actors: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer. They all shine like Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz did in Polanski's Carnage. But whereas Polanski provides us an "everyday story" with a fine psychological analysis and a well-choreographed rise of tensions between the protagonists, unmasking neuroses and deeper layers of the involved characters, leaving a lot of room for the actors and their skills, Darren Aronofsky drowns the great cast and wastes their fine performances in an unbelievable and absurd story overloaded with (imo) pseudo-intellectual symbolism with a really plain "outcome".
Mr. Aronofsky directed some of my favorite movies - The Fountain, The Wrestler, Black Swan, and whereas I didn't like Noah the first time watching it, the 2nd time I liked that one too. But Mother!?
I don't believe watching it a 2nd or 3rd time will change anything: the story is for my taste too artificial and of course, if you read some surrealist's poetry you can find tons of layers and of possible interpretations (projections of the reader etc.), same I guess with this movie, but for me the mixture of symbolism, drama, some elements of horror and thriller and Genesis just doesn't work out well - the whole movie I was annoyed by the unbelievable and stupid behavior of the protagonists (even if they are just "symbolic") and some "stuff" happening felt just out of place. Also if I try to interpret Mother with the help of the Old Testament (like some reviewers indicate) this just does not work well for me - if Bardem is God and Lawrence is sth like Mother Earth or "Life", such concept is unknown to the Genesis or to the Holy Bible (alone the idea/concept that "Mother Earth" can suffer or has a personality is just a projection, and here imo Mr. Aronofsky, the atheist, misunderstands or misinterprets the Christian concept of God, as nature is nothing but God himself), and if I got to rewrite the Genesis so the characters somehow fit in, I could also use, let's say Shakespeares Hamlet as a reference for interpretation and do the same. (Alone that the audience must know the Genesis to make such connections, just imagine someone watching the movie without knowing anything about the Genesis, imo a great fail, good symbolistic codes should be universally applicable).
Sadly I must state: this is the first fail of the greatly talented Darren Aronofsky. And I have the mild "feel" that the very (well hidden) message or lecture of the movie is just one of the usual esoteric texture of romanticism - man fails to achieve Eden because he is too selfish, greedy etc. pp.
So what is the essence of the movie!? That life is a cycle!? That people behave like they do because they are people and do the same mistakes again and again!? Wow, a lot of noise to make such a plain statement...
Final words: a great packaging (acting) but also pretentious with a shallow content. A rate of 4 - but only because the great actors saved Mother! from being a disaster.