Review of mother! (2017) by Justin K — 24 Jan 2019

Mother feels like Aronofsky's reward for Noah, there doesn't seem to be an ounce of studio restraint touching a single frame of this film. It starts off feeling like a home invasion thriller but sort of morphs into a really sort of on the nose allegory that thinking back was under the surface the whole time. The themes are messy due to the sheer amount of striking imagery and references being made, clearly there's biblical influences, especially Genesis and possibly a commentary on global warming?

In any case, the film is highly unconventional and frankly kind of a mess with far more being thrown at the viewer than they could hope to keep up with, you experience the majority of the film from Mother's (Jennifer Lawrence) perspective usually through tight shots on her face or over her shoulder, keeping the audience confined to her experience which is held up by a strong performance from Lawrence are probably the films saving grace as it gives the audience something to latch onto in an otherwise deeply slippery film.

This is definitely a film best experienced knowing as little as possible about the actual plot, it's certainly a challenging and frustrating experience at points but I think as an experiment in film-making it has artistic merit.

Would recommend to art film geeks if they don't mind the lack of subtlety but kinda doubt general audiences will find anything but frustration here as all the conventions of traditional storytelling are largely ignored.

6/10.