Butler's Cinema Scene

Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem

“MOTHER!” My rating: C 

121 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Darren Aronofsky is a master filmmaker whose grasp of movie technology and cinema’s esthetic possibilities has few equals.

But  you’ve got to wonder about his choice of subject matter.

There are moments of pure genius on display in “mother!”,  along with a sustained depiction of madness to equal anything ever seen on the screen.

But they are in the service of an eschatological puzzle that will leave most audience members scratching their heads.  The movie is clever to a fault, but at the risk of emotionally alienating all but the most die-hard theological geeks.

You know we’re in the world of heavy-duty (if not pretentious) metaphor when all the characters are denied names and identified in the credits as Mother, Him, Man, Woman, Younger Brother, etc.

Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) lives in a remote, formerly splendid country home with her husband, the considerably older Him (Javier Bardem). Him is a novelist with a bad case of writer’s block; he can’t make the ideas flow and it’s making him pathetic and cranky.

Mother, meanwhile, busies herself with restoring the old mansion, a job she has taken on singlehandedly.

Michelle Pfeiffer, Ed Harris

Their isolated lives are interrupted by Man (Ed Harris), who claims to be a physician doing research nearby. He’s been misinformed that Mother and Him are running a b&b.  When Him learns that Man is a big fan of his writing, he invites the visitor to move into a guest room.

Mother isn’t thrilled, and is even more upset when Man’s wife, Woman (Michelle Pfeiffer), shows up as well.  They are the guests from hell:  smoking, drinking, acting like they own the joint and making out like horny teens. This part of “mother!”, at least, is wickedly funny.

Woman is a nosy meddler who wants to know the nature of her hosts’ sex lives and presses Mother for an explanation of their childless state.

Mother pleads with her husband to evict the interlopers, but his ego is desperate for their fawning praise. Moreover, Man appears to be dying of lung cancer. What kind of person would toss him out?

The first half of the film climaxes with a murder.

In its wake Him finds inspiration, writes a new novel and impregnates Mother.

All seems copacetic until the night thousands of Him’s fans descend upon the house and begin a riot, holding orgiastic ceremonies, stripping the house for souvenirs and, eventually, turning their attention to the infant  Mother delivers in the midst of these cabalistic reveries. (Shades of “Rosemary’s Baby”!)

So what’s going on here?

Araonofsky’s script never spells it out, but anyone who’s read Sartre’s “No Exit” or seen Alejandro Amenabar’s “The Others” can guess that Mother and Him are living a purgatorial existence.

Though characters come and go, we never see a vehicle, the glare of headlights, or hear a car door slamming. Aerial views of the house — in the middle of a meadow surrounded by thick forest — reveal that there’s not even a road leading to the residence.

Araonofsky’s unique visual style (the images are by his longtime cinematographer Matthew Libatique) centers on looming closeups of Lawrence…cleaving to this smothering affectation even when tracking her through the house or around a room. Clearly this is meant to be her story.

Except that Lawrence isn’t given a character to play — other than that of bewildered victim driven slowly to insanity. Who is she? Nothing is explained.

The film’s last half hour is a tour de force of visual madness as the old mansion is inundated with Him groupies…but by that time we’re edging up on the two-hour mark.

By this point most viewers will be taking a clinical approach to the craziness on display.  But as for caring about the central character or her dilemma…well, that just isn’t in the cards.

| Robert W. Butler