A couple’s relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence.
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, and Ed Harris
Directed and written by: Darren Aronofsky
Oh “Mother!” this has to be one of the strangest movies I’ve seen. You might be wondering why I even bothered seeing it. Besides the need to see another horror movie (shocking), I was just curious about story, and how it would end. Sometimes it’s fun to see a movie, and guess where it’s going.
So where did this movie ultimately end? Well if you want to play the guessing game like me I suggest you stop reading here. For those who are ready for tons of spoilers, here we go! This is one of those movies that shows you a scene at the beginning that the ending comes back to. Why movies keep doing this I don’t know. This one presents a slight and almost unnoticeable change to it at the end. I’ll just say notice her face.
But there’s a lot to discuss before we even get to the ending. Most of the movie is centered around Mother (Jennifer Lawrence). So much so, the camera is focused right on her face for a majority of the time. That must have been crazy for her to be in the focus so much. Mother is kind of reserved to start, just wanting to fix her house, and take care of her husband. All that changes when the first of many visitors comes to the house. Her husband, as referred to in the credits as Him (Javier Bardem), yes Him, makes Man (Ed Harris), yes referred to as Man in the credits, stay the night. (Just go through the credits and amuse yourself with the character names!)
This is where the weirdness begins. After being sick at night, Man wakes up fine, and his wife even shows up. Soon enough his two sons follow, and beginning fighting. One of them eventually kills the other, all while Mother is just trying to please everyone, and quietly suggests they leave. However, Him seems to love having guests over, especially those who know he’s a poet, and admire his work. All this eventually leads to their family inviting people over to the house to hold a wake for their deceased son. The wake soon turns into an odd party, in which Mother has no choice but to put an end to.
Alright, it might not sound that strange to you yet, but it only gets stranger. As these kind of moments unfold, Mother sometimes pauses and touches the house. They kind of zoom into the walls where we see what appears to be a heart beat. She has some connection to it, is obsessed with her work on it, and preserving it. At this point, you’re just wondering what’s her story, and when the true horror in this movie is going to come out.
Well the shit really hits the fan in the last act of the movie. If you thought the wake scene earlier on was crazy, you haven’t seen anything yet. She’s now pregnant and life is good again with Him. However, Him just wrote his latest masterpiece, and this soon drives an army of people to the house. It starts off like the usually paparazzi mess, and then escalates to madness. People upon people come to the house. They start tearing it apart because they want a piece of the poet. Mother is just bouncing around from room to room trying to get people to stop, but they won’t. Every time she runs into Him she begs him to get them to leave, but he just can’t enough of the people’s love.
She starts to get labor pains as this madness breaks out to a literal war between police and party goers. People are getting shot, and executed left and right. A cult quickly forms and Him uses their help to finally get Mother in a room to give birth. After she gives birth, she refuses to let him hold the baby knowing he would show it to the lunatics outside. Well, she’s correct cause he does that, and as crazy as it has been to this point, the movie goes extreme with the baby. Seriously, as this unfolds you’re just thinking what the hell am I watching? How did this movie just flip to utter madness that still isn’t making complete sense?
So at a certain point in the movie I just had a random thought…is she mother nature? I didn’t take it seriously especially after that wild ending. However, after doing some reading about the movie it seems I was correct. It looks like I guessed correctly at least for some aspect of the movie. It turns out there is a whole theme of mother nature and religion going on. Seeing it from that stand point gives me a little more appreciation for what they created here. If you just watch this movie, and don’t know that, then you are really going to be like “that is the worst movie I’ve ever seen.” I mean, when the movie ended, I couldn’t get over how strange it was. Even knowing the meaning behind it, I still think it’s strange, but it’s comforting to know at least there is a method to the madness.
Speaking of strange, this isn’t the way I typical write my reviews. You might not even call it a review and more of my experience with “Mother!.” Well a strange movie calls for a strange write up about it. It’s funny to see some people call it amazing, and others saying it’s the worst movie they’ve ever seen. Regardless of what you think about it, I think getting people to both extremes of the spectrum might be a sign of success from the filmmaker’s point of view. With all that said, it’s hard for me to even rate this movie. 5 pools of blood for the meaning behind the madness, or 0 pools of blood for it being extremely odd. I guess I’ll wimp out and give it 2.5 pools of blood.
HorrO
