Mother!
Who’s Afraid of Hieronymus Bosch?
“What a perfect escape the return to the womb was. Better by far than Religion or Art or the South Sea Islands. It was so snug and warm there, and the feeding was automatic.”
“The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies”.
-William Faulkner, Interview with The Paris Review
“Lee was such a fine, high-class boy. If my son killed the President he would have said so. That’s the way he was brought up.”
- Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother.
After viewing “Mother!” I considered contacting social services to report the writer/director Dareen Aronofsky for domestic abuse. Judging by the final cut of the film his off-screen romantic partner, Jennifer Lawerence, must have spent days screaming in pain at the top of her lungs as his ingenue . She is the consummate professional and shines as THE VICTIM! Not since the auteur Lars Von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves” has a heroine been so savagely beaten as a sacrificial lamb for the pleasure of a deranged spouse. Aronofsky’s villain has an Iago-like opaqueness. This is the problem with connecting to this dense allegory. The storyteller has descended to a private world of grimness and despair peppered by allusions to Catholicism, classic horror films and Star Trek Next Generation. There is one terrifying takeaway: Mr. Aronofsky might be so isolated as to believe that the nastiness of celebrity culture is something that is unknown to the public at large. How else can one explain the laboriousness of relentlessly hitting the same note for two hours? When you peel away the special effects and first rate performances, there is a dull realization: superstar artists are narcissistic socio-paths who feed off a deranged, vacant fanbase. However there is scarier thought: Aronofsky might enjoy this private power-trip to the dark side.
Aronofsky put his heart into “Mother!”, along with the part of his brain that houses his “id” . It is a film filled with passion… signifying… what? It’s certainly chockablock with MEANING! The action of the film is entombed in a creepy mansion. It is a latter day “Long Days Journey into Night”. Eugene O’Neill’s mother was sacrificed for art and now Aronofsky’s partner will be. “Mother!”’s house invokes Norman Bates’ house… but on steroids. It is as isolated as an Edward Hopper mansion. There are no paths or roads - it simply springs from the landscape. It literally comes to life at the beginning of the film, then returns to a burned out shell amidst the ashen trunks of a charcoal forrest. Then it rises again. The talisman that makes this all possible is a crystal heart… found in the debris with each passing cycle. The film is bookended by highbrow camp, retrieving/restoring the the magical glass. The in-between is an a play about terror, which mistakes itself for horror. Aronofsky is clever enough to understand the kistch. This director has produced first rate entertainment such as the “Black Swann”. ““Mother!” shows him to be as cut off from the world as the other lead in the story, a writer played by Javier Bardem. The idea of an isolated author twinned with a abused spouse in a spooky house might bring to mind Kubrick’s “The Shining”. They both use the trope of the house as a grand puppeteer and the characters as hapless marionettes. Aronofsky’s writer is a success with the general public whereas Kubrick’s author is a hack who is driven mad and ends up producing pathologically repetitive art. Strangely Aronofsky himself is stricken by the same affliction. The film endlessly oscillates between quiet family moments and the 9th circle of hell. Perhaps two scenes of a doting spouse morphing into an insatiable egoist would suffice. But after the 10th reenactment of Lawrence tolerating unforgivable abuse the action loses power and becomes boring. Bardem’s well played “werewolf” is less disquieting than Lawerence’s rendition of a beleaguered, bewildered and brutalized spouse. Add to this Mobius strip of dysfunction a never-ending stream of set piece characters. They are, like the director, imbued with passion and the suggestion of story. There is the “doctor” and his jaded wife played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfieffer. They are a sort of matching pair of marriage gone awry akin to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” The difference is that their children, despite the alcoholic rage, are real… or as real as the parents. The siblings are a ready made Cain and Abel. The primordial murder reenactment in “Mother!” yields an army of one dimensional worshipers. They falsely claim to be funeral mourners but are revealed as celebrity-stalkers. They grow and grow and disappear, then grown again and take over. They are a mob re-creation of the group that arrives at the end Nathanael West’s “The Day of the Locust.” Their “swarm” is markedly more destructive and, once again, completely opaque. West gives us a maddening crowd fueled by being swindled by a failed American Dream. He was making an honest statement about average people being devoured by a heartless ruling class. Aronofsky’s army are simply zombies, born of no particular grievance. They hate, devour and worship as automatons while they tear the mansion board by board. The audience is mesmerized by the first rate choreographed horror, but it unfortunately reveals itself as meaningless spectacle. Our poor heroine is the only thing that possesses any hint of humanity. Sadly her suffering is exhaustive, rather than redemptive.
Jennifer Lawrence’s is a chimera of characters from various high/low neighborhoods in the cultural landscape. At times she is reminiscent of Catherine Deneuve in Polanski’s “Repulsion”. This horror classic portrays a beautician who finds those who are attracted to her… repulsive, in the extreme. Her mental illness creates a creepy meshing with her surroundings. Her apartment actually comes to life. Her dark manifestations are in her head but the body count, born of her slashing her suitors, is completely real. Aronofsky gives us a mirror image of the mad lady of swinging London. Jennifer Lawrence is beautiful, stand-by-your-man, modern spouse who is a cook and house contractor. She will take care of everything while Bardem tends to his literature. He has no appreciation of her slaving away as a baker, carpenter, plumber, caretaker… She, unlike Deneuve, wants to consummate her relationship not only with her aloof spouse, but, more importantly, with the house itself. Whereas the walls of the apartment in “Repulsion” grab and abuse, Lawrence spends many moments caressing the plaster. This leads to the revelation that the house itself has an actual beating heart. Lawrence, unlike her spiritual forebearer in London, is completely passive.. until the final scene. Her timidity in face of the hordes of cannibalistic fans and worshipers brings those behind the fourth wall to the brink of exasperation. She is Penelope, in the Odyssey, failing to reign in the unruly suitors. That frustration is brought to an epic scale, without that epic’s greatness. The culmination of “Mother!” is, yet another, borrowed moment from a Polanski horror classic, “Rosemary’s baby”. Once again Aronofsky plays characters in reverse. Satan’s spawn becomes the sacrificial lamb. It takes the slaughter of the innocent for our heroine to put her foot down. This audience member felt the breaking point an hour and 45 minutes earlier. The claustrophobic, steady-cam cinematography had the feel of a National Geographic documentary about insects. It might be important to highlight the intricate mechanics of an ant’s mandible in the context of a science film. Unfortunately the super-close up camerawork obscured this cast of humans.
This is not to say Lawrence et al weren’t fantastic. They were superb as was the supporting cast and technical crew. They did EXACTLY! what Aronofsky demanded. The problem is the director seemed possessed of the same pathological narcissism as Bardem’s character. There is no upside to throwing your lot with a deranged sociopath. The writer/director proves the point. Just not in the way he intended. “Worship the art, not the artist” is a lesson that requires a simple story rooted in familiar themes. “Mother!”’s aphorism is a completely abstract internal affair. It is as if the bible’s story of loaves and fishes was illustrated by a group of billionaires failing to secure the proper number of limousines for an A list event. Everyone experiences charismatic egoists who corrupt. Few people carry the burden of fandom. An even more exclusive group are romantically involved with the object of this misplaced adoration. Aronofsky, Lawrence and the supporting cast suffer these problems. The rest of us can only imagine the horror of waking every morning knowing that a crazed fan might smash your window in order to slice you to pieces. They might devour you on the spot or sell your morsels on Ebay. If you think this is hyperbole, consider the two gentleman who were arrested in the home of Joss Stone. They carried a samurai sword, hammers, knives and a body bag - the plan was to decapitate her and carry off the body. “Mother!” does nothing to forge a bond of empathy between us mortals and gods of stage and screen.
An example of a thematically similar work that successfully bridges the gap would be a Star Trek Next Generation episode entitled, “Man of the People”. It features a magical diplomat with a god-like ability to charm and create peace. This correlates with Bardem’s literary seduction of his followers. Both character’s rely on psychically and physically devour a female partner to power their “beautiful” magic. Both callously dispose of their spouses after they have been sated. The difference between these two modern vampire tales is motivation. We can clearly see the reason behind the diplomat’s predilections because they are carefully delineated. He single-handedly untangles various Gordian knots of hatred and wins legions of fans for, literally, bringing peace to the world. Aronofky’s beloved villain reminds the audience of Kurt Cobain’s lyric, “I’ve found my friends, They’re in my head”. There are no clues to answer such questions as: Why does Bardem care about fame? What is at the heart of his writing that gives calm to the dystopia? Why is Lawrence so passive? Why are the hordes attacking his house? The logic might have been self evident to superstars in the prison of privilege. The audience, however, is left as outsiders pushing their noses against the glass, desperately trying to decipher the entrails… at least for the first 15 minute. The cardinal question that goes answered is, what is this film about?
Boosters of “Mother!” see a brilliantly crafted warning against the current zeitgeist, where self-promotion and aggrandizement are mistaken for virtues. Others see it as a revival of an obscure French theatrical movement that centers around cruelty being a force to move the audience out of complacency. Aronofsky has stated the film is about global warming. This brings to mind Grant Wood’s managing of criticism of his painting “American Gothic”.
Eyebrows were raised when the public felt the woman was far too young to be the farmer’s spouse. Suddenly Mr. Wood spoke of a portrayal of a, “father and daughter”. “Aronofsky” is seeking cover, consciously or not, in the issue of our time, the destruction of the planet. It makes sense to want to hide the personal musings behind his creation. It seems self-evident the film has much more to do with male egos feeding off the subjugation of their partners. The structure of the house, with it’s heartbeat and menstrual cycle stained floors, stands as the matriarch whose indulgence gives rise to this diabolical “momma’s boy.” The house-mother is always forgiving, - no matter how many bodies are left strewn in the ruins. She graciously gives space so that the monster can begin the cycle again. It is a bleak topic that might have been interesting but the director seemed lost in reveling in the endless carnage. Imagine if Spielberg, when making “Lincoln”, extended the exquisitely rendered Civil War battle scenes, at the expense of Daniel Day Lewis’ performance as the President. Lawrence gives her soul to lifting the film from the grotesque.In the end she is overcome by her partner's myopic vision.
The real problem with this film is honesty. When you are a powerful, well connected artist you can manipulate friends in high places to participate in private thrills that are better left behind closed doors. You can seduce your crowd with the promise of being included in your hip statement about the horror of being privileged. You can shield your selfishness with a panache of “making a grand statement”. Unfortunately the work speaks for itself. This should be a warning to all Hollywood executives regarding personal projects. Ask the question, “does your mother like your work”. If the answer is, “She’s my biggest fan”, just smile and say, “NO!”. "Mother!" is a tired Saturnalia of misogyny, gore and camp designed to please a very isolated artist. There is the old adage that “scoundrels take refuge in the flag”. It is also true that momma’s boys, no matter how seemingly tough and powerful, always end up screaming for….. MOTHER!
