Mother!(which should really be lower case) is about an unnamed man and woman living in an idyllic house in the middle of nowhere. The woman (Jennifer Lawrence) is fixing up the house, occasionally communing with the literal heart of it. One day, a man comes to the door thinking the house is a bed and breakfast. The Husband (Javier Bardem) invites the man (Ed Harris) to stay with them and immediately, things get strange. Harris smokes in the house and invites his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) to come stay as well. Pfeiffer is really out of bounds, asking personal questions and throwing Lawrence's laundry on the floor. Then, of course, there is the thing in the toilet. Things continue to get weirder and more nightmarish from there.
I don't want to say too much about the plot of the movie because it goes to some crazy places you can't imagine from the beginning. There are at least two layers of metaphor working here. One of which is religious, and that becomes very clear in the second half of the movie. The other of which is that these strangers invading the couples' lives are children. They smoke, they intrude, they get inappropriately sexual, and they just don't listen. The first half of the movie seems very set on making the experience of parenthood look just horrific. The movie absolutely works on a metaphorical level but doesn't completely hold up as a straight narrative. The metaphor gets so heavy handed at times, it takes over the narrative and brings you out of the movie. I understand what Aronofsky is doing here, I just wish he had underplayed his hand just a little in the last half hour.
All in all, I like this movie. Even though there is horror in it, it is hard to call it a pure horror movie. I would still recommend it to anyone interested in this type of allegory.
No comments:
Post a Comment