“mother!,” Darren Aronofsky’s tour de force of allegorical misdirection, is about many things, in succession and simultaneously. What begins as a creepily insinuating chamber piece of domestic discord quickly takes on more metaphorical meanings, with drama giving way to outright horror: Here, a parable of marital anxiety becomes a lurid, Boschlike meditation on environmental destruction, idolatry and – ultimately – blind devotion to a greedy and insatiable god.
Mostly, though, this intriguing but ultimately frustratingly undisciplined experiment is about Jennifer Lawrence, who proves once again what a supernatural screen presence she is, delivering a performance of transparency, stillness, physical grit and self-sacrificing courage. As the enigmatic title character, she’s our surrogate and guide through the highly charged environment Aronofsky has conceived: In this case, it’s an elegant Victorian house, standing regally in a serene field, that Lawrence’s character is restoring as an idyllic home and creative cocoon for her husband, a famous poet played by Javier Bardem.
But even Lawrence’s magnetic powers can’t keep “mother!” from going off the rails, which at first occurs cumulatively, then in a mad rush during the film’s outlandish climax. Shot by Aronofsky’s frequent cinematographer Matthew Libatique with the intimate close-ups familiar from “Black Swan” and “The Fighter,” this is a movie whose sense of claustrophobia becomes woozily stifling, its dreamlike shots and pans, always from Lawrence’s point of view, growing more nauseating by the minute.
As the visual language becomes increasingly nightmarish, the message of “mother!” becomes exponentially more obscure. There’s a Cain-and-Abel subplot suggesting that Aronofsky wasn’t finished with the Old Testament after his 2014 movie “Noah,” but then again, maybe this is his own viscerally graphic version of the Jesus story. Or, as he has intimated in comments to the press, perhaps this is the cri de coeur of an artist overwhelmed by environmental, social and cultural destruction.
Whichever it is, “mother!” seems assured to divide the filmmaker’s fans, many of whom will celebrate another audacious statement from a master of cinema as dreamscape of our darkest unconscious, but some of whom will think he misses the mark in the interest of pulp excess and flamboyance. Wherever you land on that spectrum, it’s difficult to argue that, while it lasts, “mother!” flies its freak flag with intensity that is bracing, febrile and uncompromising.
mother!
(Playing at Stadium 9)
Rating: R
Genre: Drama, horror, mystery & suspense
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
Written by: Darren Aronofsky
Runtime: 1 hr. 55 min.
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer: 77%
