Is There Any Hope?

Rating: 8/10 (16 September 2017)

"Mother!" takes story telling into a different territory. Is it a horror story? Or does it just have horror elements in it? Is it a big allegory? What are we watching? Truly, there are questionable choices all over the film, but not much can be said against the work done for those involved. It's not confusing. It's just different.
We're supposed to believe it's a horror/love story because there is a couple and underexposed film, making the setting look a bit dark. This is a choice I am never fully capable of understanding. I'm glad we have Jennifer Lawrence, doing the best she can with her part, and Javier Bardem, though underutilized, gives a galvanizing performance. At the heart of the story, there is a connection between the environment and her character. It's not quite that easy to see how the connection evolves.
A couple of two very different characters, a lovely, younger, and a bit more compliant young woman is married to a sophisticated, more mysterious older man who casts a spell on her. She's hesitant to cross him, and though he supposedly loves her, we can see that the devotion doesn't really go both ways.
In the opening scenes, we see their relationship is at best tense, with her asking reserved questions, almost afraid to say the wrong thing. He looks tired bored, "uninspired", waiting for the new idea, the new "spark" to strike. This occurs when a couple comes in to shatter to pieces what little peace is in the house. It's a this time moment that I wonder whether the film should have called house, but then by the end, I realized "mother!" was after all a better title.
Things move slowly, as we see the dying man capture the writer's attention, and if he was barely paying attention to her, he's has now fallen under the spell of the newcomers. These multiply before we realize an invasion has come in after a tragic events, and any semblance of sanity and a sense of home is destroyed.
Jennifer's character eventually gets pregnant, starting the second act of the story. Once again, things get settled, and both the child creates some type of bond between them. He's also inspired to write a new book. What happens next is where things go wild. Mobs arrive, worshiping whatever word is written in his book. Fanatics go to extremes, leading to a warlike atmosphere, which could destroy everything and everyone in the home.
It's at this point where people are either say they like or hate everything that we have seen so far. There's nothing wrong with the performances, both Ed Harris and Michelle Pfieffer are dark and creepy, not a model family, in spite of having been together for a while and having two children. Everyone who wanders from the outside comes him with some type of darkness attached to them. People make passes at her, other violate their privacy, destroy or disrespect their surroundings. Truly, it all fits the whole; however there are bits that could have been executed better.
"Mother!" is not a boring or particularly challenging film. It has big ideas, powerful sections, and overall it works, though it might not please all who see it.