MOTHER!: Bold And Extreme Cinema, One of a Kind

I like excess and exaggeration in cinema. I like it when they manifest themselves in a pure state and with an authorial flair. What matters most, however, is when they serve the plot and the chosen theme. In the context of Mother! these are quite distant genre examples, but with similar fascination as with Aronofsky’s film, I watched The Great Gatsby by Baz Luhrmann or Macbeth by Justin Kurzel. In the first case, the sugary, gilded world reflected the main character’s longing, a dream he was desperately trying to bring to life.

Meanwhile, in Kurzel’s film, the darkness and madness filling Macbeth’s soul spilled onto every frame. The stains of blood were not visible only on his wife’s hands. Both directors reached the limits of their chosen artistic conventions. The creators wanted to deliver a single emotion to the viewer in a concentrated dose. And in an exaggerated, overexposed form.

It is no different with Mother!, which in a crystalline way conveys the sensations of entrapment and oppression. Aronofsky created a film that is extremely intense in its accumulation of improbable events, attacking the viewer with expressive formal choices and acting extravagance. Darren Aronofsky’s film is uncomfortable and gets under the skin. It is a heavy but refreshing cocktail.

At the forefront, we have a marriage in crisis. It is difficult for them to express what they need from each other. They are going through a period of stagnation. He (the uneven Javier Bardem) seems to prioritize his professional life over his private one. He is a poet and writer who once achieved significant success but now feels as if the touch of the pen burns him, and the blank pages probably haunt his nightmares. She (the moving Jennifer Lawrence) has devoted herself to the meticulous renovation of their house.

It is her gaze that is central and forms the core of the film’s narration. At first, her days are filled with repetitive tasks: preparing breakfast, hanging laundry, and washing dishes. Over time, however, this order begins to fall apart; her perspective undergoes a drastic transformation. Her senses seem to sharpen, her sense of safety and monotony slips away. Her imagination shifts into high gear. It becomes impossible to distinguish hallucination from reality.

All because of an unexpected guest (Ed Harris) who crosses the threshold of their home. For him, it is salvation from the suffocating idleness; for her, he is an intruder disturbing the seemingly—but still—controlled harmony of the house, though it would be more appropriate to write House with a capital letter. This mysterious building possesses its own sensitivity. It is a separate organism, reacting to what happens within its walls. The house is much more than a setting; it is rather a separate planet, another character in the film.

Aronofsky deprives the characters of names. He places the action somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where no road reaches. The house is filled with artifacts—carriers of meaning—and its multi-storey structure corresponds with the levels of the characters’ consciousness. This gives the American’s film not so much a universal character as it makes it something to be read as a grand allegory.

It is cinema of exuberant form, but also one that engages the viewer in an intellectual game. It can be evaluated in two ways. On the one hand, the metaphors used by Aronofsky seem overly explicit, leaving little room for interpretive freedom. On the other hand, I see it as a focused and self-contained creative statement, contemplating one specific issue. The latter alternative is even more appealing.

Mother! is a philosophical film, but not a pretentious one. A film confronting the Old Testament image of God, rewriting the parables contained therein into the framework of another genre, constantly revolving around themes from the Book of Genesis. Aronofsky, however, avoids banality and, in several cases, poses intriguing questions, casting familiar issues into a slightly different realm. Thus, after the uncanonical (and not entirely successful) Noah, the director continues his journey through this text so fundamental to Western culture.

Mother! also possesses a uniqueness and peculiarity, but in no way is it a hermetic film. Every viewer should be able to find themselves in the intricate code of symbols and metaphors used by Aronofsky. It can certainly be considered controversial, but it is far from being an empty, scandalous manifesto. Even the most horrific events of the final act are connected to the previously introduced threads.

The film constantly moves in a specific direction. It is not about scaring or shocking the viewer. What impresses me in Mother! is the director’s staging audacity and Lawrence’s acting dedication—an actress capable of finding a tone of performance that allows her, within this absurd vision, to be both someone real and different for the viewer, while fitting perfectly into this small, specific universe.

I perceive the multilayeredness of the world presented in Mother!—both in terms of the purely physical construction of the setting and the depth of Aronofsky’s text. The final twenty minutes are an exhausting journey through space and time. It is a purgatory through which we must struggle alongside the titular heroine. At the end of this elaborate, overwhelming sequence, one can truly breathe a sigh of relief. Such a feeling of release is provided only by great cinema.

Mother! is a film that requires patience, but also the right attitude. However, a properly prepared viewer can take a great deal from it. It is a film that eagerly paraphrases other texts and directorial styles, trying to condense various human fears at once—from the fear of motherhood and emotional atrophy, through loneliness and invasion of privacy, to the collapse of a lasting relationship. Mother! is bold and extreme cinema, and at the same time, one of a kind. There can never be too many such projects.