“Mother!” Review

Mother! [2017] – ★★★1/2

Aronofsky “recycles” others’ and, ironically, his own previous film ideas, resulting in Mother! appearing an unoriginal horror concoction & also an uncomfortable reminder of other, much better films.

<<<I took care not to reveal any specific spoilers, but some discretion when reading is still advised>>>

The story centres around Him (Javier Bardem) and Her (Jennifer Lawrence), a couple settling into their married life in a country mansion, until another couple (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer) arrive and become their pestering lodgers. Ironically, the main flaw of Aronofsky’s psychological horror film Mother! is that it is not his first film. If it were, it would have been a masterpiece of an achievement. Instead, Mother! is simply the “recycling” of all the elements and narrative tricks present in Aronofsky’s other filmography. How does this affect this film, one may ask? Well, Aronofsky’s “recycling” of his own ideas reduces the overall effect, impact and unpredictability of Mother! by as much as eighty percent. The Mother! formula is quite simple to understand. The film is structurally and archetypically Black Swan (2010), plus touches of some “over-the-top” home invasion (The Exterminating Angel (1962)) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968). This is all to it. And, where it is not all, it also incorporates, quite evidently, Aronofsky’s artful, orange bursting creativity, the philosophy we have all previously seen in The Fountain (2006), and biblical/allegorical references. The saddest thing here is that the film is quite entertaining and even ingenuous in its small parts, and the premise would have been unforgettable had Aronofsky been more original in his work.

The film begins by showing Her (She) and her husband (He) living peacefully in their country mansion. While the husband struggles to write his novel, She is concerned with decorating their house. The husband’s most precious possession is a mysterious stone-like object which he keeps in his private room. Things start to get out of control, when a visitor, a doctor (Ed Harris (A History of Violence (2005)), arrives at their doorstep. Soon, the doctor’s wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) follows him to our main couple’s home, and things start to get uncomfortable and even spooky. There are a number of elements at play here: the “external” threat/danger, the “internal” threat, and the focus on the relationships between the main characters. The “external” threat is the visitors which arrive to stay at the writer’s home. They start to probe into the family’s affairs, and unsettle Her in particular. The “internal” threat is the fantasy element deriving from the house itself. Putting aside any biblical and symbolic meanings, this first half of the film is relatively weak and ineffective. The camera is often positioned at, and looks from Lawrence character’s shoulder, demonstrating the impact of the home invasion as experienced by Her. There are mysterious noises, strange, hallucinatory experiences, blood appearing out of nowhere, and spooky apparitions. However, the main problem here is that, since the audience is introduced to something unsettling happening every thirty seconds or so, they may become quite “immune” to these happenings. By the film’s fifteenth attempt at inducing an internal cry from the audience, the viewers become desensitised to the horror. Most of the cinematic tricks employed are predictable and unimaginative, with Mother becoming “too much of a victim” for any real sympathies.

The second part of Mother! has some of the most controversial and talked-about sequences. The sequences are horrific to the point of being hysterical, but the main problem is that, if one has seen Aronofsky’s previous films, there is almost nothing new here to watch. In Mother!, the philosophical/puzzling elements seem to be taken straight out of Aronofsky’s The Fountain; and Mother!’s “home invasion” theme is just the replaying (although now on a grand-scale) of one of the final key scenes of Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. The similarities between these two films and Mother! are overwhelming, from drugs references and a merciless descent into sheer madness present in both Mother! and Requiem for a Dream, to the focus on the colour orange present in both The Fountain and in Mother!.

Regarding the similarities between Aronofsky’s Black Swan and Mother!, it is safe to say a book series can be written on the topic. Aronofsky said that he wrote his draft script to Mother! in only five days, and I am surprised how he did not write his script in only thirty minutes, so similar it is to his Black Swan. Structurally and archetypically, Mother! is Black Swan, and, of course, Black Swan, in turn, drew inspiration from Repulsion (1965) and Perfect Blue (1997). In Mother!, the character of Lawrence is Nina Sayers from Black Swan. Both characters are presented as “innocent victims”, with the camera in both films often closing up on their faces to show the horrors they are living through. Lawrence even has the same mannerism and demeanour as Portman in Black Swan. If Nina in Black Swan undergoes transformation herself, in Mother!, it is the house which undergoes a metamorphosis. Moreover, Bardem in Mother! plays the role of Thomas Leroy from Black Swan. In both films, Bardem and Cassel play characters that are much older than the main innocent heroines, and both of them try to protect the younger heroine who is battling internal and external dangers. There are other similarities between the two films, and include some particular scenes (for example, the scenes involving blood/wounds/toilets). Other clear “inspirations” of Mother! are Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and surreal The Exterminating Angel (1962). Why these similarities matter? Well, because they are one too many, and it becomes quite impossible to watch and enjoy Mother! without constantly having in mind many scenes and elements from other movies.

The cast and acting in Mother! are good, even though Bardem and Lawrence make an unlikely pairing. Bardem is a pleasure to watch as his character remains enigmatic throughout, and Ed Harris is always good playing a guy who is just too eager to crash a family’s peaceful existence (A History of Violence).

It is a pity that Aronofsky so blatantly and all too obviously borrowed his own previous material to make this film, with him taking the essential “body parts” of his (and others) films, cementing them together, and producing this latest “horror scarecrow”. Thus, sadly, Mother! is not as effective as it would have been otherwise. Especially in the film’s first half, there is a feeling that a novice film student suddenly decided to write and shoot a parody on Aronofsky’s cinematography. The amazing fact here is that this student ended up to be Aronofsky himself. Though the film’s first part suffers from predictable moments, with Lawrence playing the role of the innocent, victimised Nina of Black Swan, the second part of the film proves that Mother! is still a relatively enjoyable and terrifyingly memorable experience overall. 

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**SPOILER ALERT**

While considering both Aronofsky’s Black Swan and Mother!, I could not help but notice another artistic “influence” here: Stephen King’s novel Carrie. While the relationship between Nina and her mother in Black Swan mirrors the relationship of Carrie and her mother in Carrie, with both mothers being single, domineering and controlling, the endings of Mother! and Carrie are also similar in that both finales end in an explosive fire – caused by the main heroine who tried to avenge the wrongs done too her. An inspiration? Well, with a pile of his films on one side of his desk and with a pair of other films on the other, and Stephen King’s books tucked in a corner, I am now surprised how Aronofsky did not write his script in only ten minutes.