Title: Mother!

Year: 2017

Genre: Drama | Horror | Mystery |

Runtime: 121 min

Director:  Darren Aronofsky

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris

 6,6/10

 

 

 

 

AN SURREALISTIC AND CONFUSING LSD-TRIP

 

It’s rather easy to be intrigued when it comes to a certain film director, only because you’re familiar with this filmmakers style and precision when it comes to storytelling and some directors have a certain approach when it comes to telling their part of the story.

Darren Aronofsky is that kind of director that you might be comfortable with mostly because you’re familiar with his style. His Black Swan (2010) provided the most crucial horror element in a natural form. It’s a very messy and uncontrollable, partly confusing told movie about a girl living with her husband in a house where she redecorates the interior and he struggles with the writing.

It didn’t have abstract horror that this movie showcases clearly with a fairly confused Jennifer Lawrence and a distant Javier Bardem. The dialogue between these two actors feels operantly distracted all the time or most of the movie. The whole concept is constructed as a dream and it might be a sort of illusion as the nameless mother experience throughout the whole movie. Bringing a whole family of actors into the mix is an interesting move from Aronofsky, bring drama and no one does react consequently on the absurd events that constantly occur in this house. It has a lot of driven characters but it’s a fairly amount of dynamic applied to these characters.

As they’re nameless for some reason and just an image of this illusion, it confuses the audience to a greater cause. It doesn’t have depth and doesn’t seem to supposed to up bring that as well. As much that happens throughout the movie, mostly is from Lawrence’s character point of view and therefore it’s really difficult to understand their actions or emotional ride. Most of The movie contains Lawrence screaming and shouting at her husband and the visitor. It works to a certain degree until it suddenly explodes to an extravaganza that is really hard to comprehend and to melt.

It quite understandable that these characters share a symbolism of some sort; that she’s would-be mother nature and he would be the God. Even so, most of their action is unexplainable. Things just tend to happen and most of the movie, there is no explanation behind it. There is no idea on why they behave the way they do. For being a well-known cast, you only see the actors and actresses they portraying, not the role they try to pursue the cause of the movie. An actor like Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brian Gleeson, and Domhnall Gleeson, all providing solid performance, but their character doesn’t feel enough complete or dignity to be appealing or are even authentic to the story.

There is not that much horror to it as it could’ve been as it tries to show a beautiful world that is about to collapse whenever and with a long runtime it still makes it interesting. The visual doesn’t all feel that appealing to me. It’s therefore not the best movie that Darren Aronofsky has directed. He’s a decent filmmaker when he wants to, but this wasn’t his best try.