Review of mother! (2017) by Evan J — 18 Dec 2017

I was able to avoid all spoilers and went into this movie completely blind. Well, I am very conflicted with Darren Aronofsky's mother!. I think the film is VERY well made and the performances are really good. However, for me something was missing and I can't pinpoint what that something was. I understood the metaphors. Javier is God. Jennifer/the house is the Earth. Ed Harris is Adam and Michelle Pfeiffer is Eve. Before Eve comes into the picture we see this big cut on the back-side of Ed Harris (in the Bible Eve is made from one of Adam's ribs). They break Javier's stone thing despite being told countless times not to go into Javier's office (aka Eve eating the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden). The Gleeson Brothers play Cain and Abel, one of them kills the other because of jealousy. Everyone invading the house and doing whatever they want is a reference to people in today's world doing whatever they want whenever they want to do it with no regard for their surroundings. Also, all these people are obsessed with Javier's character (God) and they're all bad people. This tells us that religious people aren't all good people, which is the case in real life. There are tons and tons of bad people who believe in a higher power. Through out the movie Javier continues to allow these intruders to do what they want, he never attempts to stop them. This is a reference to God allowing people to make their own choices. People have their own free will, God doesn't tell us right from wrong. We're also taught God forgives. Javier continuously brushes off what these people do and never kicks them out of his house, which shows us God's forgiveness and compassion. And that lead's us to the death of Jennifer Lawrence's baby. Bardem gets ahold of the baby and wants to show him off the all of his followers and the followers end up killing the baby. This is God sending his son Jesus to the world where he is ultimately killed and betrayed by his own followers.

Everything is here. I understood it. I just didn't find it that compelling and I honestly can't tell you why. I was expecting to be thinking about this movie for days to come and now just a few hours after seeing the movie, it's already left my mind. I liked the metaphors and I liked how they did them, but like I said they didn't stick with me. Maybe it didn't translate well on screen? Somethings are better left written. I think this would read much much better. I'd be interested to read the script and see how I feel about it then. Seems like it would be a more impactful read opposed to seeing it play out on screen. Then again this is working for a lot of people. So who knows?

It's been said that Darren wrote this entire script in 5 days and I think that shows. With a more fine tuned script I think mother! could have been an exceptional film. I give Aronofsky a ton of credit for going for it though and the studio allowing him to do so. I plan on rewatching this in the future, so we'll see what happens then!