Wild Card Wednesday: mother!

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Year: 2017

Genre: Drama/Mystery/Psychological Thriller

Summary: A couple's relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence.

5/5 Pineapples

Review:

Every minute that passes, is another minute that I remain blown away by this film.

I watched mother! about a month ago and it's still at the forefront of my brain, because there's simply nothing else like it.

mother! is a rollercoaster of emotions, raw honesty, pure intensity, and a complete overload of information that's up for you to decipher, unscramble, and connect. This is the one and only film I've ever seen that, after the credits began to roll, I sat glued to my chair, with my heart racing, and mouth wide open, still digesting everything that I had just seen. I was left completely and utterly overstimulated. By the end of 121 minutes, I was physically shaking and I was completely dumbfounded. This is what films are SUPPOSED to be. This is art.

That being said, let's recognize other reviews and ratings. mother! got a lot of hate. There's been a lot of feed back, and many of the people I personally spoke to that saw it still don't understand what was actually going on in the film. Receiving a 6.7/10 on IMDb and a 69% on Rotten Tomatoes, it's obvious that many people didn't know HOW to feel after leaving the theatre. Something I've noticed about myself though, and something my readers may come to notice about me, is movies that fall right in the mid-range percentile on popular media platforms like IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes tend to be my absolute favorites. I think the only reason anyone could hate this particular film is that said person didn't understand what Darren Aronofsky was trying to tell us. And perhaps you're one of those people, so let me break it down for you. Starting with a - as brief as I can make it - overview. (I'll bold the clues/metaphors/important bits.)

The opening scene is a woman burning in a fire.

I'm already hooked.

The scene fades out into a man placing a beautiful and seemingly precious stone on a display stand.

Jennifer Lawrence (whose character's name is Veronica, though I don't believe that's ever mentioned, and nor is anyone else's name in the film) wakes up in bed for one of - what we come to find - many nights of sleeping alone. Her opening line, "Baby?"

She finds her husband has been in his study, where no one is allowed to be but him, trying to work through what's been years of writer's block.

The overall premise of this story as we're lead to believe, and as mentioned in dialogue, is that Veronica is restoring the house that her husband grew up in that was involved in a tragic fire. The stone he holds so dear is all that was left of the tragedy. At one point Veronica refers to the hard work and restoration she's putting into their home as wanting to create a paradise. And, it's very literally clear that her heart is involved in this restoration process - as well as the house itself - when she's choosing between colors to paint one of the rooms; She rests her hand and head on the wall as if asking the house what it thinks the color should be.

There's a knock on the door, her husband answers, and the man on the other side of the door is a stranger who was under the impression their house was an inn. The husband laughs it off and tells the man he can stay with them. Never asking Veronica how she feels about the fact.

This is something you come to find is very common in their relationship.

Another side note: Veronica's character was one that was very hard for me to understand, relate to, and appreciate, because she's incredibly meek. She does all of the work around the house, cares for her husband so deeply she'd bend over backwards to make him happy, never once asking anything of him, and he treats her like she's hardly important and her opinions are not valued. Insert eye roll. Girl, this relationship is not healthy, whatchew doin?

Even after putting up a bit of a protest because this man is a stranger, she's still waved away by her husband as if she's overreacting, to which she so obediently drops the issue and goes along with. Her husband and the man hit it off and start drinking. Veronica's husband, giving the man a tour of the house, shows the man his study and his precious stone, without letting the man touch it. The man is clearly fascinated, but her husband is stern about no one being able to touch the stone. Veronica eventually goes to bed, and she wakes up in the middle of the night. Alone. Again. She goes looking for her husband and finds him in the bathroom with the man hunched over the toilet getting sick. As her husband consoles him, we catch a glimpse of a huge slice on the man's side. Veronica reacts, but is again waved away with a poor excuse of, "he drank too much", which Veronica again obediently accepts as gospel.

The next morning there's another knock on the door. The man called his wife and invited her to stay with them. The woman is extremely disobedient, selfish, and doesn't care for Veronica or her husband's things. Veronica's anxiety is growing, but the more she protests the more her feelings and behavior are shut down by her husband.

At this point, I started asking myself, "is she overreacting? Would I be upset about this? Is she just uptight or is there truly reason to be uncomfortable?" This film had me second-guessing MYSELF. Not to mention, Veronica periodically has episodes of shortness of breath, where she takes this strange orange powder (which I found out later is supposed to be Amber) mixed with water to subside the symptoms, which made me feel as if I couldn't entirely trust HER perspective either. What if all of this is a side-effect of whatever she's taking? Who's to know? This film really has you engulfed in the same emotions as Veronica: fear, panic, discomfort, doubt...etc.

Eventually the woman and the man, who start deliberately acting out towards Veronica, are found in her husbands study with his very precious stone. Like children, they insist to touch it, and her husband sternly says not to touch it and not to go into his study without him present. I'm forgetting the exact play by play, but as I'm sure you could have guessed, they go into his study anyway, the crystal gets dropped, the husband freaks out... Things are getting very tense.

It's around this time that two more people storm into the home. Two men are fighting in Veronica's foyer, and it's gathered that the two men are sons of the strange man and woman that are already overstaying their welcome. The fight gets out of hand, the older brother keeps yelling about not getting what he deserves, his parents abandoning him and stealing money from him, he's accusing them of loving his brother more than they ever loved him... etc., when things get too violent and he accidentally kills his younger brother.

Is any of this ringing a bell yet?

Still not getting it?

(Oh, fun fact: the siblings in the movie are played by two actual brothers, Domhnall Gleeson - a personal favorite actor of mine, and Brian Gleeson.)

The older brother runs off, and everyone rushes the younger to a hospital. Veronica's husband insists she stay even though she's now frightened and wants to join them. She is instead left alone to clean the mess that the brawl left behind. Some weird things happen: the blood can't be scrubbed out of the floor, there's a weird unidentifiable organ in the toilet, there's a small hole where the blood seemingly ate away at the floor... She goes to the basement to assess the damage of the hole, and it's right in line with a ceiling light meaning that all the blood and soapy water was leaking onto it. She discovers too late that the wires have been effected by the liquids, and it explodes when she flips the switch.

Such a beautiful and clever shot.

Anyway, Veronica goes back up stairs to realize that the older brother is still in the home. When he sees her, he says, "They left you here?! ...You do understand." As if to say that Veronica understands what the older brother has gone through, how he thinks, and maybe also realizes there's more than meets the eye to the people that claim to love and care for you.

Veronica's husband returns and confirms that the boy is in fact dead. He takes a shower, they both go to sleep, and she's awoken in the middle of the night to a door slam, and an empty right side of the bed. Strangers dressed in black are flooding into their home, and the man and the woman are directing them where to sit and where to set things down. Her husband emerges from the bathroom, getting dressed, and seems to have been expecting the family back - unlike Veronica. Basically, her husband told them they're welcome to stay with them longer and to grieve in whatever way they find necessary - again without asking Veronica how she felt about it. They invited seemingly every single member of their family and everyone they know to share stories and grieve with them... Things soon get out of hand. Veronica tries to give the woman her condolences but is met with a clap back, "how could you possibly understand when you don't have a son?!", some guy calls Veronica a cunt, a couple is making out in her bedroom upstairs, people insist on sitting on a sink that "isn't braced yet!", and these guests start literally painting her walls - which is the beginning of the end.

This is where I've accepted she has every right to be upset, and I am just as upset as she is.

She tries to talk to her husband about the people painting the walls and he again negates her feelings with a, "but honey, they're our guests." She's feeling incredibly alone, and for the millionth time asks this couple to not sit on her sink, when they start deliberately bouncing on it - causing pipes to burst.

Come on, guys. It really clicked for me when the two brothers entered. But you've GOTTA see where this is going now, right?

Veronica justifiably flips the hell out and demands everyone leave. Once they're gone, and the water main has been turned off, she and her husband get into a big argument. I'm providing the actual script to describe this moment, because the exchange in dialogue is too perfect to try to alter or summarize.

She starts to clean. He enters, and says, "They’re gone." She ignores him.

"Come, let’s go to bed." She continues to clean. "You don’t need to--"

She cuts him off, "Do what? Clean up their mess?"

"We did a good thing. They needed a place to celebrate life. They needed tonight."

Finally sticking up for herself, she counters, "What about what I needed? A boy died here today! I mopped up his blood. And you abandoned me." She storms away into the stairwell and he follows her.

"No. I didn’t abandon you. They just lost a son, they lost two sons. I was helping them. This is not about us, it’s about them."

She spins. "No, it’s not about them, it’s about you. It’s always about you and your work. You think that’s gonna help you write? Nothing does. I re-built this entire house, wall to wall, you haven’t written a word."

He snaps, "I know! I know! I’m sorry. I can’t. I can’t write. I can’t think. All I’m trying to do is bring life into this house." He charges to the front door and flings it open. "Open the door to new people. New ideas. You think you can’t breathe? I’m the one who’s suffocating here. While you pretend that nothing is wrong. 'Everything will be all right.' 'Everything will be good.' 'You’ll be fine.' You know what? Life doesn’t always work out the way you want it to."

"You’re right. Mine certainly didn’t."

"Excuse me?"

She spits, "You talk about wanting kids, but you can’t even fuck me."

Their rage turns to passion, and the next morning she's pregnant! Her pregnancy inspires him to write, and he writes an incredible book that's recognized and adored around the world months later. People from far and wide come to interview him, have him sign their copy, fan-girl, and all that jazz. Veronica soon becomes uncomfortable when the evening she had planned for the two of them and his publisher gets bombarded by thousands of fans. And just as the last time they had guests, her husband welcomes them with open arms while she's left tending to their needs and messes and neglecting her anxieties.

This party really does get out of hand though as people begin stealing from them and as each room becomes something of a war zone. We catch glimpses of women caged in by chainlink fences, men in military uniforms exploding walls - and other men, shooting at each other - there's chaos everywhere.

Veronica can't escape and no one will help her. She begins going into labor and insists on leaving, but her husband encourages her to stay. He's nice enough to give her his office where the two, and soon to be three, of them can be alone together. She asks him to make his guests leave, but he insists that they want to be here to see the baby. She gives birth. It's a boy. she still wants their guests to leave but her husband shows her that his guests brought them food and other offerings. He asks to take the baby to show the crowd outside the office door, and she sternly says no. She tries to stay awake as best as she can but eventually falls asleep.

When she wakes up, he's taken the baby and is showing their many guests his son. She throws herself up off the ground and chases after him, doing her best to get her baby back in her grasp, but the child is being handed over and passed through the crowd. The crowd begins to excitedly chant and cheer and TOSS the baby up in the air. Veronica is screaming, begging to have her baby given back to her, when the baby is tossed in the air another time, and a hand hits the baby's head the wrong way.

I never thought I'd ever see an infant's neck break on film. This is exactly where my mouth dropped. And it stayed open until after the credits began to roll.

The baby is still being passed, and Veronica is screaming and still begging to hold him, probably with the hope that he may still be alright. When she finally gets to the front of the crowd, she pushes the last few people out of the way that are holding a funeral ceremony that is a bit of a mockery of the last grieving ceremony we saw in regards to the man and woman's killed son. But when she pushes everyone out of the way, the baby has been pulled apart, guts thrown about. She spins around and everyone in the room is eating pieces of him.

She picks up a stray glass shard from the chaos that had occurred prior and starts stabbing all of her guests. She's thoroughly lost her cool at this point - as to be expected when your baby was just tossed in the air, pulled apart, and eaten by strangers.

I'm STILL processing that scene. It's so shocking and grotesque, it's something my brain is begging to block out from my memory forever.

The mob begins to beat her, tear her clothes, defile her, when her husband emerges and tries to calm everyone down. From the script again:

To the crowd, he says, "What are you doing?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

Veronica says to him, "They killed my baby. You killed him. You killed him."

"I am so sorry. They just wanted to see him, they just wanted to touch him, and then they... It’s horrible. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry." They are overwhelmed by grief. They sob. He holds her tight. Blood drips from her face. "But we can’t let him die for nothing. We can’t. Maybe what happened can change everything, everyone."

"What are you talking about?"

"We have to find a way to forgive them."

"They BUTCHERED our son."

"I know." She pushes him away. She crawls away backwards.

"You’re insane."

He says, "They are so sorry. They are truly sorry. Please have faith in me. We need to forgive them."

She presses herself to the house again, like she did in the beginning when painting a room, and it's barely alive any longer. This is a complete contrast from how alive it was at the very start of the film. She can bare no more. She screams from the very pit of her soul, calling everyone murderers, including her husband, and begins demanding they all get out of her house. She charges down the basement stairs, her husband and a few others following behind her. She grabs a wrench and punctures the oil tank then pulls out a lighter and lights it. The script maps it out the best:

He begs her, "Don’t. Please don’t. I love you."

She responds (with my favorite line from the film), "You never loved me. You just loved how much I loved you. I gave you everything... And you gave it all away."

"No! No! NO!"

She drops the lighter. The oil ignites. Fire rushes into the tank. Explosion.

And just like that, it's a repeat of our opening scene, but with Jennifer Lawrence in the center of the flames. Right when we think it's over, her body is being carried through the charred remains of the house. Nothing sums out the last scene like the script itself:

She asks him, "What are you?"

"Me? I, am I. You? You were home."

"Where are you taking me?"

"The beginning." He lowers her down on his desk. She cringes in pain. "It won’t hurt much longer."

"What hurts me the most is that I wasn’t enough."

This chokes him up. "It’s not your fault. Nothing is ever enough. I couldn’t create if it was. And I have to. That’s what I do. That’s what I am. And now I must try it all again."

"No. Just let me go."

He replies, "I need one last thing."

"I have nothing left to give."

He disagrees. "Your love." He points at her chest. "It’s still there isn’t it?" She starts to cry.

"Go ahead", she says. "Take it."

She lets it all go. No more emotion. No more ever again. He plunges his hands into the remnants of her chest. She gasps. He pulls out a mass of beating ash. The last drop of life fades from her body leaving only an ashen husk. Alone now, he squeezes the mass in his hands. He squeezes hard until it solidifies. Then, with more force, it breaks apart leaving a new crystal formation. Just like the one at the beginning. But this one is different. Beautiful and amazing, but different. He places the crystal on a burnt shelf in the charred bookcase. He closes his eyes. Wishes. Slowly color repairs the shelf returning it to an un-burnt state. Now, dawn light reveal glimpses inside a slightly different

home. A burnt front door comes back to life. It fades into a burnt hand rail which comes back to life. The hand rail fades into a burnt wall which comes back to life. The wall becomes the burnt sheets on a bed in a master bedroom. They come back to life. A body emerges before us. A young, new woman emerges in a comfortable bed, hugged by white sheets. She is different. Beautiful and amazing, but different. She spots his pillow. He’s not there. She asks, "Baby?" There’s no answer...

FIN.

(DISCLAIMER: My personal beliefs and the material I was presented brought me to the conclusions ahead. My perception of the film, as well as the film itself, are completely controversial. But I am by no means saying that anyone who has faith is an awful human being who is wrong in what they believe, or anything similar to that. Peace among worlds. This is a safe place. I'm not trying to drag anyone, so please don't respond to this by attempting to drag me. This is simply my opinion of the film and nothing more. Deep breath. HERE WE GO!)

NOW FOR THE ANSWERS:

I hope you're familiar with Christianity and/or Catholicism in some form or another - otherwise this is going to go way over your head.

• Veronica's husband is God (Him).

• The man is Adam. The slice on his side is where god removed Adam's rib to create Eve.

• The woman is Eve.

• The Precious Stone is the forbidden fruit that God tells Adam and Eve not to touch, which as we know from "The Good Book" and the film, they touch anyway.

• The Sons that enter the home arguing are Kane and Abel. Kane kills Abel.

• The pipes bursting due to the negligent guests sitting on the sink is symbolic of The Great Flood.

• The incredible book her husband (god) writes is the Bible. Everyone from all around the world worships this book.

• The war zone that manifests inside the house, I believe, was Darren Aronofsky's way of portraying the literal wars that are fought today and have been fought for years over religion.

• Veronica is 'mother', to which the title refers. She gives birth to a son, Jesus. That being said, I don't personally believe that Veronica's character is a portrayal of the Mother Mary. My personal belief is that Veronica's character is a portrayal of someone that blindly follows an unhealthy act. But as we saw in the film and read in my overview, she becomes self-aware and begins to pull away from Aronofsky's portrayal of god. She begins asking questions, and is aware of the pain, betrayal, and manipulation happening around her because of this god's selfishness. By the end of the film, Veronica truly does understand the older brother/Abel's perspective. Also, A friend of mine believed Veronica's character to be Mother Earth. I'm not sure how to support that, but I felt it was interesting enough to mention.

• Veronica's heart was very literally the house itself as we're shown on film, but also as referred to by Veronica's husband when he says, "...you were home". Veronica mentioned wanting to make it a paradise. I believe that's a reference to Heaven.

• When the child is born, their guests bring food and offerings, just like in the nativity: The birth of Jesus Christ.

• Eating the child symbolizes The Body of Christ: Jesus' words "This is my body" over the bread during The Last Supper which is why the consumption of bread (the body of christ) and wine (the blood of christ) is practiced during mass.

• The Fire in the end and in the beginning of the film, in my opinion, represents The Rapture/Divine Retribution. The fire serves as a purification before a new beginning/hard reset, which is why at the very end, we see a new girl starting the exact cycle over again.

• The line "Baby?" in the beginning and the end of the film could be more than mother simply calling out to her husband, but rather her calling out to her child, as her baby is her last memory.

Aronofsky comments about writing the concept state that he was, "...taking a piece of a world and confining it to a space and making it a conversation about society, lined up with a personal human story, and [he] figured out how to structure it with a biblical core...”

I believe this film definitely created conversation about society as he intended, and also reflects our society's biblical foundation. I perceived mother! as a dark, honest, and raw allegory of the negative influences of, and deep connections to, religion in society today. I think the brutal slaughter of the infant is a reflection of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, but I also believe it was a metaphor for the carelessness and selfishness perpetuated by those who blindly worship a god that ultimately gives nothing back in return but chaos and war. The selfishness of the god is seen throughout the film in the way that Veronica's husband treats and interacts with her. Her interactions with her guests are all reflections of different kinds of people in our society today that are influenced in their own ways by religion: selfishness, obsession, war, segregation...etc. And despite all of that we're expected to forgive - much like Veronica's husband (god) expects her to forgive everyone after they butchered her son - as if forgiveness negates evil. The last hour of this film, involving the wars, chaos, slaughter and the consumption of a child's body, was a metaphor for the most disgusting, blind, self-serving aspects of humanity that could be caused by and linked to religious beliefs and followings. This film highlights aspects of humanity that destroy precious (like the stone), innocent (like the infant), and beautiful concepts (like Heaven), that start out hopeful the way the house in the film did (with restoration), but then grow corrupt and self-serving (like all of the guests), ultimately bringing the world's structure to mayhem and destruction (like fire).

Lastly, I have a theory that mother! was purposely entitled with a lowercase 'm' rather than a capital as a direct contrast to the way we typically refer to God with a capital 'G' or a capital 'H' for Him, and to bring to light the insignificance that we place on the literal mother (whether believed in or not) of Jesus Christ, earth, and everything sacred and beautiful.

For more thoughts on mother!, a friend of mine, Brendan Jesus, has a podcast called '1000 Wives of Weird' where he too discusses the many mind-bending concepts behind mother! If this topic interests you at all - which I hope it does after making it this far in the reading - I encourage you to check it out!

I know, that was heavy. What were your thoughts? Think I'm totally off base? Think I missed something? There's a lot to cover on a film with so many metaphors on such a controversial topic, so I may have missed a few and/or been too brief with some. Please, let me know! Thanks for reading!