tell your children to walk this way, with caution

Rating: 8/10 (15 September 2017)

With mother! a story of taking care of a house, having to let in unwanted house guests and feeling the awkwardness settle in more and more, and why being a *strong* woman is so crucial in this world (by this I mean that by showing us scene by scene how women like Lawrence get ground down by not just the men but by other women too - "Be a mother" of course is always the words spoken especially without asking), this is wildly intense stuff. This by the director of Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan and Noah is not a surprise. What's surprising is that, on a first viewing, I'm not completely sure it's all... cohesive in its approach to how human beings... are.
Yet, two-thirds of this is a masterpiece, the first two-thirds I should say, with a harrowingly compelling performance by Lawrence and a... almost too spot-on casting of Bardem as the Poet who can't help but be both a charismatic AND terrifying presence (especially in those close-ups). It's claustrophobic and deeply, darkly, nightmarishly, even black-holey surreal in its approach - akin to Polanski (a brew of Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant, but still all Aronofsky), maybe some Bunuel thrown in there (a house where they can't leave you say or where people keep coming because... why? but still all Aronofsky), and it is basically PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE: THE MOVIE, a series of scenes where Jennifer Lawrence is stuck in that painfully awkward position of the social contract and probably the most bitter satire of toxic masculinity as far as, well, everything's about the man (except for having kids)....
And then it gets into the last third. I don't know what to think about that except... well, that was intense, and unpleasant, and possibly really, really pretentious (the very last scene, I get what you're doing man but... man). It's not a film that you immediately know what you're getting from minute one and it's a filmmaker, a writer-director, who is going TOO far and not reigning himself in and is unloading his id (and probably ego too) onto us all... and not all of this, again, is meant to be pleasant.
This ends on such a depressing note, as if (without spoiling too much) a cycle will repeat itself, I'd almost say Requiem ends in a sunnier light (hey, at least they're *alive* by the end of that). To get something like this, with vision and fire and violence and (yes) pitch-black comedy, in a major release on thousands of screens is welcoming and encouraging - final cut certainly helps, but nevertheless - and that this ambition when it comes to what is technically a "bottle" film is... art.