50 Sentences About mother!

(1-6.) mother! is an annoyingly-punctuated movie that came out about a week ago. It’s a rather complex artsy flick that is either sneaky-dumb or sneaky-smart, and it’s hard to say which. Because the movie has had so many strange reactions and has birthed both severe hatred and unbridled awe, it can be challenging to discuss, and even think about. So for this exercise, we’re going to take things as simply as we can: one sentence at a time. Let’s talk through mother!. (Are you supposed to put a period after that?)

7. I saw mother! last week.
8. On the surface, it’s about a husband and wife who face some unexpected challenges in their marriage.
9. On a deeper level, it’s about a husband and wife whose relationship is threatened by their diverging desires and commitments.
10. On an even deeper level, it’s about climate change and humanity’s relationship with the planet.
11. There are also Biblical references in mother!, but they don’t help clarify much of anything.
12. Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem (big creep in the movie) star in mother!, but there are also appearances by Ed Harris (bigger creep in this movie), Michelle Pfeiffer (the biggest creep in this movie), and Kristin Wiig (not a creep, but still WTF-ey, because it’s Kristin Wiig in an artsy movie, you know?).
13. There’s also a part in mother! where—spoiler alert for sentences 13-15—a baby is killed.
14. You don’t see the baby die but you do see the remains of the baby.
15. The remains of the baby, it’s worth saying, are defiled, which makes it worse.
16. Just because a movie shows you things you are uncomfortable with doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it is important to note how a movie made you feel when you want to figure out if that movie managed to do what it was trying to do.
17. In that sense, mother! made me feel squirmy, and I think that was the point.
18. I checked my phone a lot during the movie, but more in a “how much longer is this thing gonna last?” way than a “I have better things to do right now” way.
19. Checking my phone also had the added benefit of taking my eyes away from the movie screen, which in the case of mother! is a very relieving thing.
20. The movie is hard to look at because it’s about 70-percent comprised of close-ups of Jennifer Lawrence’s face.
21. Now, I know what you’re thinking: That doesn’t seem so bad; Jennifer Lawrence is nice to look at.
22. Yes, she is, but in the case of this movie, in which she yells a lot and pants and moans and cries and chokes and generally is miserable for two hours, it’s very not fun to look at and in fact makes you feel quite out of sorts.
23. That’s one thing I feel comfortable saying with certainty about mother!: I didn’t like looking at it and I don’t want to watch it again.
24. That reminds me: I also can’t figure out if Jennifer Lawrence is any good in this movie.
25. Her performance is dedicated, to be sure, but dedication does not always indicate quality.
26. For example, Indianapolis Colts head coach Chuck Pagano is very dedicated to running a successful franchise, but that dedication doesn’t mask the fact that he oversees the most misshapen team in the entire NFL.
27. For another example, there is a Mexican restaurant near my house that has an owner named Don Juan who is just the nicest, most proud guy in the world, but no matter how dedicated Don Juan is to running a successful small business in the Lehigh Valley, his burritos just have way too much rice.
28. Everyone knows rice is filler.
29. Applying this logic to Jennifer Lawrence, we know her dedication does not guarantee quality, so we have to look elsewhere to figure out if she was good.
30. Again, her primary job was to scream and be upset and be high-strung, and after a while it becomes very tiresome.
31. But, keeping in mind that she plays Mother Nature in this movie, and Mother Nature is under attack by humanity, that tiresomeness is probably what they were going for, so therefore I suppose Jennifer Lawrence did a pretty good job.
32. I do know that there’s an obvious list of people who are way more interesting and fun to look at than Jennifer Lawrence in mother!.
33. That list is: Javier Bardem (dormant, powerful), Ed Harris (you always look for him at the edges of the screen), Michelle Pfeiffer (68-percent chance she dropped acid before her scenes, but you’re super okay with it), and Kristin Wiig (again, WTF is she doing here).
34. So we know the acting in mother! is pretty good.
35. The harder thing to unpack about mother! is the way its Biblical allegory merges with its climate-change allegory.
36. The most common explanation seems to be: Jennifer Lawrence is Mother Nature and wants to protect her house, but Javier Bardem, as God, compromises the tranquility of the house by pursuing a relationship with humans and letting them inside, upon which they just wreck everything.
37. This seems simple enough, but there’s also some Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and original sin and ten plagues imagery.
38. The Old Testament stuff leads to some how-God-relates-to-people stuff, and this seems to rub up against the humans-destroying-the-earth stuff in some conflicting ways.
39. Really, it feels like Darren Aronofsky, the director of mother!, wanted to make a movie that both condemned climate change but also sort of shook its fist at God, which feels sort of unfair.
40. I mean, because, if you’re gonna be mad at humans for destroying the planet, why are you mad at God?
41. Darren Aronofsky went to Catholic school, I would guess.
42. Another way to say all this—and this is a bit more academic—is that the movie seems to have two different missions that never quite come together.
43. Ultimately, looking at the movie’s climax, the God stuff kind of gives way to the climate change stuff, which is good because that stuff feels more urgent than the God vendetta, and that’s when Aronofsky kinda flexes his muscles and lets a bunch of wacky stuff happen.
44. That wacky stuff includes the whole thing with the baby, but there’s also a bunch of other psycho poop-hitting-the-fan scenes that actually are the most exciting and engaging parts of the movie, because you’re just watching a director cook up a huge pot of whatever he wants, and it smells good even if it isn’t like anything you’ve ever tasted, if that follows.
45. In a way, those climactic parts of the movie, which are definitely the most divergent among viewers, actually feel like the best parts of the movie, because that’s when the most Eff-It decisions are made, and Eff-It decisions are fun to talk about in movies like this.
46. Oh, and I suppose that’s a final thing: mother! is really fun to talk about.
47. That’s probably its primary value, really—even though mother! didn’t make any money, the people who did see it are talking about it and thinking about it with a lot of intention and thoughtfulness, which is a neat little slice of sophistication in a season full of kinda dumb-seeming money-grabs like American Assassin.
48. I didn’t see American Assassin, but I still feel pretty confident saying it was a skid mark.
49. The point is: mother! was good (kinda?), but its real value comes as a conversation piece instead of an in-theater experience, so see it if you want, but maybe don’t pay for it.
50. On the other hand, two people walked out of my theater after the first five minutes, so maybe that’s all you really need to know.