Review of Mother (2016) by Vincenzo P — 05 Oct 2017

If there is a justice in this world, Michelle Pfeiffer should get an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and should finally win it. (Honestly, it is inexplicable how such an iconic actress, despite her three nominations, has never won an Oscar, and then we have Gwyneth Paltrow who win as a Best Actress for Shakespeare in Love, Geena Davies for Accidental Turn, even Emma Stone's victory for La La Land looks unjust, especially if compared with the shocking interpretation of legendary Isabelle Huppert). Here Michelle Pfeiffer is simply spectacular, dangerously seductive and devilish.

That said, this movie had a deep impact on me as a viewer. Aronofsky understands the rules of surrealism and absurdism very well and knows how to apply them to the cinematic mean. Many people complain about the weirdness of the movie, but actually "Mother!" has a pretty "classical" structure, inherited, among (many) others, from the works of Sartre, Pirandello, Apollinaire, Ionesco, Beckett and Jenet.

The symbols are not really that hard to interpret, although a univocal interpretation might be too difficult to achieve. Again, this is not a problem per se and, after all, ambiguity and multiplicity of possible interpretations are consistent with the style of the theatre of absurd.

The only problem of this movie is the way it has been put on the market. People went to see a horror/invasion movie and they found themselves in the middle of a surrealist play. I can understand the strategy behind this (they needed to make money, but no one would have gone to see a movie marketed as "a piece of surrealism"), hence the (understandably) negative reactions of many viewers, who felt cheated (and rightly so).