Review: mother!
In the character posters for Darren Aronofsky's mother!, an angelic Jennifer Lawrence holds her heart in her hands and Javier Bardem is in flames. As images in and of themselves, they are provocative, intriguing and utterly enigmatic. Their meaning becomes clearer - and the posters ingenious considering how much they actually reveal - once one views Aronofsky's insane psychological horror film.
The premise couldn't be simpler - a man and a woman, both unnamed, married to one another, living in a house situated in the remote countryside. He (Bardem) is well-known author whose creative wellspring has currently run dry; she (Lawrence) is his younger wife in the midst of renovating their home, his home, which once burned to the ground and destroyed everything he had, including his first wife (presumably the woman whose burning face opens the film). Their life appears tranquil, a close enough approximation to the paradise that she wants to create, though one doesn't have to look too hard to see some cracks - his writer's block is a source of frustration, she is clearly more besotted with him than he is with her, which is not to say that he does not love her, but merely that such imbalance is almost always a dangerous thing in any relationship.
Even in its relatively serene first half, there's already a creeping sense of dread. It's there in the way she feels the heartbeat of the house. It's there in the sound of her bare feet creaking the floorboards as she wanders through the house searching for him, eyes darting, breath catching at sounds that flirt and tease. As with Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, of which mother! is a direct descendant, Aronofsky primes audiences to instinctively to expect something to surface, so that one's neck is craned, eager to discover exactly what is around that corner or in that room or in that recess. Now that Aronofsky has skipped stones and disturbed the audience's equilibrium, the descent into madness begins in earnest with Ed Harris' Man knocking on their door, soon to be followed by his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer), and then their combative sons (real-life brothers Domhnall and Brian Gleeson).
Without giving anything away, suffice it to say that these strangers' presences are only the prelude to the siege that Lawrence's Mother will experience. Her husband is more than happy to welcome these unexpected guests as they may serve as inspiration for his writing. Mother, on the other hand, doesn't understand why her husband is ignoring her obvious discomfort and why her guests, particularly the Man's wife, not only disregards her but is passive-aggressively dissecting her marriage. By the time mother! reaches its conclusion, blood will have been shed, hearts crushed, limbs torn apart, flesh eaten, and Lawrence will have been wrung through every wringer Aronofsky has concocted.
mother! can be read in a variety of ways. It's a story in which man takes and takes and woman gives and gives. It's Aronofsky's retelling of the creation story, but also an observation of fame and celebrity. It's a tale of how humankind's nature is to destroy, but also how destruction can give way to rebuilding and how that can be a never-ending cycle. It's a biblical allegory, fever dream, high art, and pure hokum all at the same time and it is a film that will either be feted or reviled; apathy is impossible with mother! It's not necessarily that Aronofsky does anything he hasn't done before, but what he has done is taken his previous work and pushed them to the extremities of their extremities. Dense with primal anxieties and suppurating with leprous intensity, the film harks back to the type of burrowing hysteria that characterised Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion and The Tenant as well as Andrzej Zulawski's Possession. Love it or hate it, there's no denying that Aronofsky is in full control of this delirium tremens of a film. The progression from the comparatively placid first half to the berserk caterwauling cacophony of its second half is nothing short of masterful.
It's no doubt that Lawrence carries the film, and much of the interest lies not only in witnessing her character slowly but surely pummeled to her breaking point, but in observing Lawrence the actress respond to Aronofsky's direction. Lawrence is an instinctive actress and one who molds her own genuine persona to a role rather than disappear into a character. Is her performance revelatory? Not quite, but it does continue to prove that she is an actress of skill and depth and that there are levels yet to be unearthed.
Better than anyone is Pfeiffer, whose presence is so ferocious and magnetic that one becomes convinced that cinema has been a wasteland in her absence.
mother!
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
Written by: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ed Harris, Domhnall Gleeson, Brian Gleeson, Kristen Wiig, Stephen McHattie, Jovan Adepo
