Unnerving, disturbing, enraging, confounding

Rating: 6/10 (23 December 2018)

Mother! begins like a Peter Weir film, with increasing unease as unwelcome guests proliferate in the young wife's large home. Then it begins to resemble Polanski's Rosemary's Baby as her husband seems to join the Dark Side of the crowd of intruders mistreating her and making increasing shambles of her house. In the latter stages this becomes like a Ken Russell film of Grand Guignol or the seventh level of hell.
Jennifer Lawrence is excellent, and that is apparent since the camera holds so tightly on her throughout that it seems almost her POV if not her hallucination. In any case, this is on some level a fable with a moral, but I wish it were clear what it was. I offer no spoiler because I'm not sure what to conclude.
The film as a metaphor is not without worth but it is challenging if not irritating to sit through, especially if one is sensitive to exotic violence and an infuriating level of repeating chaos in a helpless wife's life, with a husband who is of no real help to her or us at all.
Perhaps this was about a victim of mental cruelty who needed to leave her husband and seek a safe house, but that's not what happened and I really couldn't say. I'm sure the filmmakers would disagree with me on that deduction.
As an audience member I can stand some abuse as long as I find out what it was all for at the end. I can't say that here. I suppose the pointlessness could be intended to tell me the God of this world is mad. It would certainly please Ken Russell. Maybe polonsky too.
But again, I have no idea if I'm near the mark. Mainly, I praise Jennifer Lawrence's courage for toughing this one out.