There was a point during mother! when I remembered that not only did Aronofsky direct Black Swan (whose sheer getting-under-the-skin power[*] was the biggest reason I went and saw this new one on its first night of release, despite knowing nothing about it except having gotten a vague sense that it might be intense) and Requiem for a Dream (which pretty much pulverised me when I saw it back in high school), but also the craziness that was The Fountain. Little did I know that mother! was just hitting its straps at that stage, and about to get even wilder and more off the hook.
It was the bit with the baby that made it undeniable not only that the film is allegory writ as large as Aronofsky can manage - he both wrote and directed - but that the subject is not primarily artistic creation but rather Creation per se, at which point everything, both in retrospect and from then on, becomes very biblical (making Noah another interesting reference point).
The whole tenor of the film is heavy and unsettling, in the sense (among others) of being destabilising, and the visceral imagery around the house and the people in it, are part of that. There genuinely is something of the claustrophobic trappedness of a nightmare to it. It's undeniably forceful - and maybe also a bit blunt, in that once you know what it is, it really is quite direct and overt, rather than operating at a more sinuous or subterranean level. But that's in the nature of what it is, I think, rather than a failing as such, and it also makes more sense of the characterisation of not only Lawrence's and Bardem's characters (who are otherwise a bit oblique, if understood in more traditionally psychological terms) - never named except, meaningfully, in the end credits - but also those of the others who enter their house, especially Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer (wonderful) and their two sons.
***
[*] Over time, I've come to think of it as one of that very small number of films that I'm not sure I could say I particularly liked but which has a lingering effect that puts it in the vicinity of greatness. Melancholia is the other that I always think of in those terms.
It was the bit with the baby that made it undeniable not only that the film is allegory writ as large as Aronofsky can manage - he both wrote and directed - but that the subject is not primarily artistic creation but rather Creation per se, at which point everything, both in retrospect and from then on, becomes very biblical (making Noah another interesting reference point).
The whole tenor of the film is heavy and unsettling, in the sense (among others) of being destabilising, and the visceral imagery around the house and the people in it, are part of that. There genuinely is something of the claustrophobic trappedness of a nightmare to it. It's undeniably forceful - and maybe also a bit blunt, in that once you know what it is, it really is quite direct and overt, rather than operating at a more sinuous or subterranean level. But that's in the nature of what it is, I think, rather than a failing as such, and it also makes more sense of the characterisation of not only Lawrence's and Bardem's characters (who are otherwise a bit oblique, if understood in more traditionally psychological terms) - never named except, meaningfully, in the end credits - but also those of the others who enter their house, especially Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer (wonderful) and their two sons.
***
[*] Over time, I've come to think of it as one of that very small number of films that I'm not sure I could say I particularly liked but which has a lingering effect that puts it in the vicinity of greatness. Melancholia is the other that I always think of in those terms.
