Review – mother!

I saw Darren Aronofsky’s mother! a week ago.  Usually, I am pretty good about reviewing movies right after I see them or within a couple days, but mother! was different.  This was a movie that had me thinking before, during, and after, and I am still thinking about it a week later.  I don’t exactly know what to think about this movie.  I will say that my opinion has shifted slightly, which why the movie has a middle-of-the-road rating.  But that doesn’t mean it is a bad movie.  The reason for this rating is because of something else.

A few hours after I saw mother!, I would say my rating was closer to 3.5/4.  Aronofsky created something that is wildly ambitious and as original as any film this year.  He makes movies that challenge us and make us feel some sort of emotion, whether it’s the disturbing Requiem for a Dream (2000), the heartbreaking The Wrestler (2008), or the haunting Black Swan (2010), we feel something, which most filmmakers rarely have the power to do.  Here, he created a movie that evokes all kinds of emotion, both while watching and well after you leave.  You feel anxious, scared, and shocked during the movie.  When you leave, you can’t help but be shook by the horror you just watched and be in awe of the balls on Aronofsky and his bold filmmaking.

After leaving mother!, the person I saw the movie with and I had a twenty minute conversation about what we just saw.  We discussed the themes of of the movie, like the pressures of fame, writers block, religion, the collapsing of a relationship, the price of love when being famous and how we each interpreted the movie from beginning to end.  We discussed how the movie made us feel and how great the performances from the cast were and the great filmmaking from Aronofsky.  The person I saw this with is not a cinephile like myself.  They aren’t a fellow critic and they don’t see 100+ movies a year.  They are the average fan and it is rare to have a conversation this deep and intellectual about an ambiguous movie like this one, which solidified for me how great mother! was.

But my feelings for mother! changed over the last week.  Over the weekend, a number of videos and articles surfaced of Aronofsky and stars Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem discussing the meaning behind the movie, which ends up being essentially about global warming with religious undertones.  This absolutely crushed me and ruined the best part of the movie.  Instead of allowing the viewer to pick the movie apart and analyze it for ourselves, Aronofsky decides to give us the answer, which is so frustrating.  mother! could have been one of those movies that gets discussed and analyzed for years.  But instead, we now know what Aronofsky was trying to say, and now the power of the movie has fizzled away.  Because of this, mother! went from one of the most interesting and best movies of the year to a well made, creepy message movie that is an overall disappointment.

Did you see mother!?  What did you think?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter and Instagram, @kevflix, or on Facebook by searching Kevflix.