I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as galvanized to write, yet left utterly at a loss for words, inarticulate, and stricken with indiscriminate thoughts racing too fast for my hands to type or my mind to make coherent, than I am now, having seen mother!
It’s this same kind of protracted, grandiloquent language that I’m using now, that Darren Aronofsky employs in mother!, so if you’re weary of my prose now, I can assure you, this same “affectation” will make the film insufferable for you. But while it is undeniably grandiose and indulgent in its symbolism, metaphors, and loose narrative, there’s one thing you should do when you decide to plant yourself into your seat for 121 minutes, which is to suspend all your beliefs about how to watch a movie–this is a fairy tale of sorts; a gruelling, sickening one. Through intense sound, sights, nameless characters, and most of all, trauma after trauma after trauma, Aronofsky tells his own version of a creation myth, or if not quite that, he most certainly evokes profound rumination on the contradictions of pious zealousness, and a misanthropic, pessimistic, reflection on the cruel and selfish, destructive nature of humanity. It’s dividing critics–some call it pretentious, bombastic, and an assault on viewers. But, isn’t that what the world has devolved to? Into madness, violent images, horrific news, videos upon videos of real life trauma and brutality? mother! invokes all the ugliness of ourselves and compacts it, winds it up, binds it in so tightly, that eventually the tension of our existence, of every living, breathing thing, implodes unto itself. It’s an allegorical film, biblical, social, and political, so blunt at times, that it’s a wonder how anyone could walk away from the theatre, confounded, asking each other what the hell happened–how the fuck did the film make you feel? If that isn’t the kind of question you want to ask yourself after seeing a film, then mother! is a futile, masochistic, and deeply unsettling filmic experience, bearing no reward. Otherwise, watch for yourself what happens, and the questions you ask yourself will surprise you.
There is plenty to analyze, to dissect, and to discuss, so many think-pieces to be generated and debated. While mother! may not be a pleasant film or even warrant the extreme distress of suffering it a second time, it succeeds in its profound visceral engagement and urgent message.
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
dailybridgerton
kianamaiart
vaporwave
