From Eden to Armageddon in 2 Hours

Rating: 1/10 (1 October 2017)

Darren Aronofsky invariably churns out flaccid potboilers when he attempts to impress audiences with his intellectual virility. From the opening scene of 'Mother', he cranks the Pretentiousness dial up to 11 as a young woman wakes alone in the bedroom of an isolated country house. Her husband is absent, so she wanders about in an agitated state searching for him. After she finds him, their wooden conversation reveals he's a poet with writer's block. Later that day, a stranger knocks at the door, and the poet invites him to stay after learning he's a fan of his work. The next morning, the man's wife arrives - soon followed by a pair of bickering sons.
These six characters proceed to act out a fatuous re-telling of the Genesis myth depicting the antics of God, Nature, Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel. With acting, direction and screen-writing at the level of amateur dramatics, Aronofsky presents God as a vain, manipulative, impotent older man, Nature as his whiny trophy wife, the Creation as their residence and the rest of human history as an out-of-control house party. After Noah's flood is symbolized by some drunken vandalism, burst pipes and a soggy kitchen, mankind's sorry tale grinds on into the 20th century. Eventually it arrives at Aronofsky's puerile imagining of Armageddon, which comes not a moment too soon.