Well, that was…something.

I am not entirely sure what to think of mother!, and as of this moment, I am still trying to wrap my head around this film, which may just be crowned the most audacious and shocking film I have ever seen. Considering I have seen films by Gaspar Noé, John Waters, and Takashi Miike, it clearly takes quite a bit to actually shock me to the extent that I’m legitimately disturbed and uncomfortably meditative on the virtues of a particular film (or rather, the lack thereof). mother! is the exact kind of film that may be controversial, and I don’t think I’ve encountered a film that has been as divisive as this since I’ve been writing about cinema. In no uncertain terms, mother! is a provocative, utterly strange and extraordinary brilliant piece of cinema, that is one of the most exhaustingly complex and uncomfortable films of the year, as well as one of the most hypnotically brilliant.

mother! is a very difficult film to write about, precisely because it is something that has puzzled critics and audiences alike since its debut, and has consistently been a very enigmatic film that raises plenty more questions than it answers (if it even answers any questions). It is a film that does not seem to have any solid plot, but rather a skeletal structure of a story onto which the audience projects their own interpretations, as well as attempting to unlock the multitude of concepts and themes that occur throughout this film. mother! is not a film with any sense of a coherent plot, and whatever storyline there is, it is secondary to the happenings in the first and third acts that can only be described as intense and insane. I won’t even attempt to summarize the film in terms of its plot, because there really is not much that can be summarized, and I thought the synopsis that was used during the production and pre-release phase of this film, claiming at a couple is disturbed at their country home by unwelcome visitors, was intentionally vague and mysterious, and was only to create a sense of mystery and intrigue that would entice audiences to watch this film. Now, having watched it, it becomes very clear that the synopsis was the entire plot, because everything else is just on the supra-narrative level, and there is absolutely no way to describe what happens in this film without giving anything away, as well as the fact that it is impossible to know exactly what this film is about.

 In all honesty, mother! is a film that I wish I could write something meaningful about, whereby we can have a discussion about this film’s virtues and messages. However, like the majority of people, I am simply confused by this film, and the frequent puzzlement and inability to actually understand what this film was attempting to say does truly bother me. Despite this (and because I am clearly making a meal out of discussing this film as a confusing and enigmatic work), mother! is also one of the most audacious and fascinating films I have seen in years. Deeply troubling and endlessly riveting, it is possibly the most visceral cinematic experience I have ever had. Darren Aronofsky is an unbelievably daring filmmaker, and he has made some very provocative films over the course of his career. Yet, he has never once approached the grotesque and shocking corporeality that he did in mother!, and it proved to be Aronofsky once again pushing the boundaries of cinematic technique, narrative structure and what can be considered acceptable to convey in a film, and once again positions the director as one of the most iconoclastic and maddeningly brilliant filmmakers currently working today. I am not entirely sure how to approach mother!, and I certainly cannot look at it like an ordinary film and talk about it as such, because mother! is not only anything but “normal” – it is a complex, abnormal and freakish deviation from everything that is cherished in terms of cinema, and I loved absolutely every minute of it.

Jennifer Lawrence is an actress who interests me immensely because she is not only a wonderful actress, she is also a bit of a folkloric figure, with her off-screen persona being as beloved and endearing as her career that has defined her as a truly extraordinary talent. Very few actresses are able to ascend to the amount of acclaim that Lawrence has. However, mother! offers Lawrence the opportunity to give a performance that truly challenged her as an actress, allowing her to explore a type of character she has rarely been given the chance to portray. The majority of the film sees Lawrence reacting to the events around her, growing increasingly agitated and disturbed as she sees the absolute terror happening around her. It is a performance that initially seems to lack nuance, and simply force Lawrence to play a reactionary, but it is far more complex than that, and her growing uneasiness and eventual relent to the insanity that has entered into her home, and by proxy her life, is a lesson in astonishing acting. mother! is most certainly Lawrence’s best performance yet, and she certainly gives the best female performance of the year so far.

Lawrence shares most of this film with Javier Bardem, who plays a character known simply as “Him”. Him is a character who is deeply ambiguous and very sinister, while still being endlessly charming and fascinating, moving between being a heroic and courageous man, to a malicious being who the audience is lead to believe is not even completely human, but rather some deity-figure who relishes in destruction, and rebuilding from anarchy just to allow for chaos to continue to run rampant. Bardem is quietly malevolent throughout this film, and his character is so vague and unclear, but the performance is deeply disturbing and highly effective. Michelle Pfeiffer (who is the epitome of class and sophistication as far as modern actresses go), is also wonderful in this film, and despite appearing only in the first act, she makes an indelible impact. Her role as Woman is deliciously rancourous and virulent, with her biting critique of the protagonist being gloriously venomous. Pfeiffer is in a bit of a career renaissance at the moment and her performance here in mother! is nothing short of awe-inspiring, playing a complex and nuanced character, who is able to overcome her catty, vitriolic nature as a result of Pfeiffer’s effortless charm and class in playing a character we are supposed to hate, but just cannot look away from. Ed Harris is also great, but he is overshadowed by Lawrence, Bardem, and Pfeiffer, who have far more interesting characters to work with. Kristen Wiig is also in this film. I am not sure why she is in this film, but she is, and she adds to the panoply of oddities present throughout mother!

One aspect of Darren Aronofsky’s career as a filmmaker is that he is consistently a very strong visual filmmaker as well as a narrative film, and mother! is not an exception. He managed to accentuate the demented nature of the story with the raw and naturalistic visual aesthetic of the film, which not only highlighted the distressing nature of the film, it amplified it to a blindingly disturbing level. mother! was filmed on 16mm, and lensed by Matthew Libatique, who has worked with Aronofsky since the beginning of his career, photographing every one of his films with the exception of The Wrestler (most likely because, at that time, Libatique was working as cinematographer on an obscure independent film known as Iron Man), and it only makes the film even more distinctive, with the aesthetic showing both comforting warmth and unhinged terror, which works alongside the narrative, which can be described as conveying the same. The demented beauty of this film comes in the berserk descent into terror, and how the camera is used as a tool to convey this deterioration into sheer madness, never attempting to hide anything, yet not revealing anything that will aid in understanding this film. It is difficult enough to watch mother! because of the twisted and perplexing nature of the narrative, and the unflinchingly stark visuals do very little in helping in making mother! any less daunting and terrifying.

mother! is, most obviously, a film squirming with Biblical allegory, and the most overt and obvious references in this film are the countless allusions to religion, which is also merged deeply with a statement against environmental destruction. The entire film takes place in a country home, and throughout the film, the character of Mother (quite obviously a direct allusion to the trope of Mother Nature) sees her home, which she has so lovingly restored and made beautiful, torn apart by savage visitors who take advantage and claim the home as their own space, expressing their fraudulent belief that they are allowed to ransack, pillage and corrupt the home, as if to say their presence there was enough to justify such a belief. Characters steal whatever they desire, begin to alter the house by both breaking it down physically, and altering its appearance (such as two visitors deciding to paint the house as a sign of appreciation). The way in which Aronofsky weaves Biblical allusions with an overt environmental message is fascinating. There are countless allusions present in this film, such as a murderous brother (a clear allusion to the story of Cain and Abel), and one particular scene that left me nothing short of nauseous: Mother gives birth to a baby, who is subsequently taken away by Him and presented to the cult who has formed in the house, who hail him as the Saviour, and subsequently slaughter him and consume his flesh (it is exactly as grotesque and macabre as it sounds, believe me). It is unclear why Aronofsky chose to weave these two themes together (although, to be honest, the reasons for Aronofsky doing many things in mother! are very unclear), but it was meaningful and effective in conveying the message that this film was trying to show throughout. Very few films are able to be this effortlessly complex – and furthermore, despite its complexities, mother! is not convoluted or pretentious, and while it may be puzzling and enigmatic, it is very clear in its intention and the direction it wishes to progress towards.

Very rarely has a film made me feel the way mother! did, and judging from the highly-divisive reaction the film has received from audiences and critics alike, I am certainly not alone. It is a film that leaves the audience visibly shaken, being nothing short of an attack on the emotions of the viewer. Occasionally very absurd (but not in the heightened and elaborate theatrical way, in a far more sinister manner – imagine Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie or The Exterminating Angel, just without the darkly comical undercurrent and vaguely coherent storyline), but also deeply disturbing and dauntingly dark. There were scenes that alternated between making me feel profound awe at the beauty of this film’s message as well as the execution (the entire second act, which is relatively and uncharacteristically short, is delightful and brilliant), where I marveled at the sheer beauty of this film, followed by scenes that left me utterly disgusted and feeling beyond queasy. The third act is composed of some of the most baffling and deranged moments ever produced in cinema, and the tranquility of the second act (clearly designed as an antidote to the unsettling first act) is juxtaposed with the psychotic recklessness nature of this film’s demented climax. There is a reason why mother! is one of the most polarizing films of the decade: the audience simply does not know what to feel, and despite all the visceral, disturbing moments that would normally drive audiences away, one can only stare at mother! with a wide-eyed gaze of vexatious awe.

mother! is a film that has clearly been inspired by previous films, and there is a multitude of references to previous horror films, intentional or otherwise. The main core of this film is clearly influenced by Roman Polanski’s towering masterpiece, Rosemary’s Baby, a film that covers similar themes of a pregnant woman struggling against the forces of a deranged cult who want to take her baby away, as well as a husband who is loving to her, but also undeniably sinister in the revelations towards his connections to the cult. There are allusions to works such as Don’t Look Now, Night of the Living Dead, The Last House on the Left and the provocative works of Dario Argento and other horror filmmakers that made ample use of corporeality and surreal horror to convey specific messages. There is clearly a lack of any indication that this film was inspired in any way by these films, but it is difficult to imagine that Aronofsky did not draw inspiration from works that came before in constructing mother!

I found mother! to be one of the most daunting films I have ever seen. It is almost indescribable in its complexities, and whatever Aronofsky was trying to do here, he succeeded unequivocally. To call mother! disturbing is a fatal understatement. It is a film that not only disturbs the audience – it brutally terrorizes them, manipulating them to the point of palpable uneasiness and perhaps even physical repulsion. It relishes in the unhinged terror that it presents, but it remains steady and consistent throughout, never failing to deliver on the unnecessary promises that it makes right from the outset. Brilliant but unsettling performances, masterfully-disturbing filmmaking and one of the most twisted, demented narratives of recent years, there is very little doubt that mother! would be a controversial and divisive film, and I fully understand everyone who despises this film, and it is films like mother! that interest me, because it is a provocative film that challenges everything that is cherished, and blurs the lines between the sacred and the profane in a truly extraordinary manner.

Personally, I found mother! to be nothing less than a masterpiece, something that is emotionally-resonant and deeply disturbing to the point where it lingers on the mind for far too long. Regardless of whether you love it or hate it, mother! is a memorable film (for better or worse), and the intention of this film is clear: to make audiences feel something visceral and real, and whether that be complete and utter awe and amazement at the sheer audacity, or absolute disgust and horror at something that is somehow so unbelievably shocking, I’d say mother! succeeded incredibly well, and forged itself as one of the most unique and unexpectedly moving films of the decade, and proves that Darren Aronofsky is one of the most talented and fearless contemporary filmmakers working today. Watch mother! at your own peril: it is not an easy film, but why should things always need to be easy, especially when they can be as bold and peculiar as this film? Without any shadow of a doubt, I can call mother! one of the best films of the year, for the sheer intrepidity of actually pulling it off and creating something so…daring.