mother!
(SPOILERS) Darren Aronofsky has a reasonably-sized chin, but
on this evidence, in no time at all he’ll have reduced it to a forlorn stump with all that
stroking. And then set the remains alight. And then summoned it back into existence
for a whole new round of stroking. mother!
is a self-indulgent exercise in unabated tedium in the name of a BIG idea, one
no amount of assertive psued-ing post-the-fact can turn into a masterpiece.
Yes, that much-noted “F” cinemascore was well warranted.
Darren bless ‘im, who is 48, not 18, responded to the resounding audience response by claiming he “wanted to make a punk movie and come
at you”. Yeah, right. It’s a bit like Ed Wood saying “I intended to make
terrible movies - honest”. Still, it’s always worth catching an Aronofsky
joint, as the lofty plain ‘pon which he floats is as likely to turn up
something interesting as something leaving one entirely dissatisfied.
At least, I thought
so. But this makes two movies on the trot where there’s been nary a sliver of provocative
intellectual content to make up for the seemingly endless banality of his
narratives. Whatever he’s serving up clearly worked for Jennifer Lawrence, however,
still young, naïve and desperate for artistic legitimacy and to prove it she’s
willing to emphasise the “artistry” of her form and simultaneously fall for her
“old enough to be her father” director.
She’s great here, mind. Her continued success brings ever
more naysayers, but even in a project as botched as this, perhaps even more so
because of that intrinsic botch as there’s little to latch onto other than the
lead’s conviction, her giving 110% is never in doubt. And yet, all for nothing.
And she’s ably supported, no doubt about that. True, Javier
Bardem is doing absolutely nothing you couldn’t see him do as a Bond villain more entertainingly – one thing
he doesn’t have is a face for trusting, so casting him is a loaded dice – but
Michelle Pfeiffer is surprisingly remorselessly sharp as woman and Ed Harris
coughs like a trooper as man (that Eve is a right bitch, but Adam’s an oblivious
trooper? Meanwhile, their kids include Domhnall Gleeson as the oldest son on
the bad side yet it’s curiously the positive Abel – Brian Gleeson – who
comments, standing in for his director, on the nice view of mother’s J-butt).
Clearly, all concerned saw something in their director’s punk-flavoured brain
fart. And clearly the execs who funded this to the tune of $30m saw something
(J-Law signing on the dotted line?) The cosmic egg’s on them now, of course.
I’ve had my issues with Aronofsky’s fare in the past, most notably
the addiction porn of Requiem for a Dream,
with which mother! shares a certain
unalleviated nightmarish torpor. If that’s your buzz (and for some it clearly
is), more power to you. That movie at least boasts a great soundtrack. I can
barely recall anything of mother!’s.
Probably because it doesn’t have one.
I’m all for “What the hell is going on?” plots, less so when
the possibilities presenting themselves only go to make the movie less
interesting. For me, a metaphor tends to work best when the text isn’t
screaming at you “There’s a metaphor here, can you spot what it is?” In the
case of mother!, it’s the worst such example,
since there’s nothing to engage with aside from that subtext. This conceit reaches
its turgid apotheosis as ellipses illustrate the breakdown of mother’s home, by
way of her pregnancy and Him’s success, invaded by celebrants of his quickening
fame who quickly turn it into a free party, cause a flood (ho-ho-ho!) and then
a police raid (er…), around which point the endeavour begins to resemble
nothing so much as a bloated pop video, one without a catchy tune to soothe the
fraying images. My kneejerk response to a piece like this, one that leaves me
cold, is that those appreciating it are seeing it as good because it’s about
something, rather than it being about something and, as a bonus, also good. So
I won’t suggest that.
It’s been talked about how anxiety-inducing mother! is, but unless your one of the
few (and since only a few have gone to see it, that’s even fewer) who didn’t realise
it was a parable/allegory/metaphor/sink plunger up the jaxi, that very emotive
response isn’t going to be considerable and deep-felt, but tempered by a
realisation that nothing you’re watching really counts for anything, because
nothing you’re watching is “real”. Which is why Jennifer really ought to have
had (Sir) Anthony Hopkins on set to advise her not to put herself through the wringer
for an ultimate absence of a hill of beans.
There are hints of Pinter in there, in terms of the
closeted, non-sequitur-driven characterisation and interaction, but the
complete absence of a Pinter-esque sense of humour (a prick, not in the hands
of Pinter, merely becomes an Aronofosky aggravation point) soon negates such a
notion. And the queasy sensation of student theatre persists (which is probably
why most of the cast, nostalgically, latched onto the project).
Occasionally there’s something funny, like Ed coughing his
heart up (funnier if it were his lungs), and a Sam Raimi-style blood-spattered
light bulb (although they tend to be better in a bona fide Sam Raimi movie).
Occasionally it becomes dramatically involving (mainly due to Lawrence), but if
you aren’t invested in this, as you can’t be once it becomes clear these
characters aren’t relatable in any kind of empathic sense, but merely stand for
something/someone else, association is cast by the way side. So the Polanski
parallels are void. Even more obvious narrative similarities are quickly dissociated,
be they the brainscape free association of Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or the acid-reflux of 1408. None of it really matters.
So all that’s left is the viscera – something the numbing Requiem for a Dream also fell back on as
its doorstop – which equates it with any old horror movie, minus the thrills.
Sure, a wee babe can be torn apart by a mob of zealots, and J-Law can have the
shit kicked out of her, but since they represent something else, the effect is
tempered. Aronofsky wears all this on his aforementioned much-stroked chin.
The director-writer-producer-god has helpfully commented on
what his “punk” opus is all about, for us plebs out there. I was actually
tending towards some kind of mangled gnostic interpretation during viewing,
with Him as Yaldabaoth and mother as Sophia – after all, Aronofsky the self-pronounced
atheist had previously gone and done another picture about the influence of his
immaterial God – but it appears to be more mundane than that. J-Law is, simply,
Mother Nature, reviled, abused and desecrated by all who should adore her
(creation itself is not corrupt, only the blighted human element that would
seek to blight otherwise perfection, perfection being J-Law in her chiffon
nightie).
Yeah, it’s that deep. Certainly, justification for two hours
of sub-Polanski climbing the walls. Noah
also carries an environmental theme (as well as themes of child sacrifice), but
whatever its flaws (and they are legion) it does at least have a coherent storyline
to justify its excesses and indulgences. Honestly, you come away from mother! wondering if BP didn’t fund the thing,
in the hope that natural-born naturalists would be so disabused by the masturbatory
content that they foreswore all allegiance to the cause (there weren’t any representatives
that I could see of those living in harmony with mother J-Law, despite a litany
of precedents in the planet’s long history; perhaps Aronosky has been Mandela-affected).
Given his construct, Aronofosky is also suggesting, despite
his avowed beliefs, a (disavowed?) concept of a god whose general indifference
will allow that, whatever indignities Mother Nature suffers, and whatever interventions
there are along the way (albeit, even prior to giving more than a “Waaaa!”,
they will be summarily cut short), there’ll be another cycle along in just a
while, so why bother trying to preserve anything anyway? Of course, one can
also draw attention to the imprecision of his allegorical device. Mother Nature
must incorporate mother Mary for convenience sake. And what of the yellow
powder? It’s also inescapable that there’s the “artist as God” metaphor, an user
of his lover/muse who will inevitably cast her aside (Weisz) for someone new
(Lawrence) and the cycle goes on and on, for at least as long as Darren’s
increasingly splintered chin.
Having vouched on the side of the naysayers, I’ll admit mother! make a pretty decent short film
(and a better animated short film; possibly an even better comedy, although you
have to be careful there – at any rate, one needs only glance at Aronofsky’s CV
to see he isn’t one for evoking chuckles at bedtime. But hey, the New York Times
called it “a hoot”, no doubt
referencing the dying cry of a shotgunned owl), shorn of the flab and
indulgence, and self-important posturing, that only someone who has made two successive
multi-$100m successes can perpetrate. You can
do this kind of thing well, and on point, if you don’t just let it go on as
long as your lack of an editor or now-insensible producer will allow. Is being
painfully self-consciously artistic something that deserves congratulation and
reward, further cementing your position in a delusionary ivory tower? Perhaps
so. But a pseud is a pseud is a pseud, and Aronofsky has undiluted pseud sprouting
from his chinny-chin-chin.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.