A couple’s blissful existence is disrupted when two strangers come to stay at their home.
I think that’s as far as I’m going to go with my synopsis of mother!. I feel as though if I go on to describe what happened in any more depth than that, I may spoil it for people, and that is the last thing want to do, believe me. It’s a funny old film this – I left the cinema not having much idea of what I had just been subjected to for the past two hours, but after thinking long and hard about the film for the rest of the afternoon, I think I finally got it.
Neither of the two main performances here was what I’d expected. I watched the film because Javier Bardem was in it, and I’m a huge fan of his work. For some reason, I had thought he was going to be a bit of a villain, but he wasn’t. Saying that, however, I wouldn’t have said he was exactly a good guy either. When you begin to understand the symbolism in the film, I think that this kind of portrayal of Bardem’s character was the best way to play it, because we do question whether or not the figure who he is possibly playing in the film is actually good. I’ve now just realized that a lot of what I say in this review is probably not actually going to make sense (if anything I say in any of my reviews ever does). Jennifer Lawrence also played a character that we generally wouldn’t have her down for. Lawrence has become known for playing strong female leads. In this, she was very meek for the most part, but gradually she got back to her usual self until, in the end, she decided she’d had enough and destroyed everything. Both were good performances, but I’m not convinced they were my favorites from either actor.
On the surface, this entire film looks like a complete mess, I’m not going to deny that. As I said, I didn’t know what to think for a good while after the film. However, once you accept that everything in the film is symbolic (I think, anyway), you can hopefully start to make sense of it. I’m not going to go into every little detail, but if I say that Bardem’s character is supposed to be a metaphor for God, you’ll hopefully begin to see what the whole thing is getting at, or at least what I thought it was getting at. The film is swimming in religious connotations, and maybe because of this, it comes across as pretentious. But when you think about it, religion itself also tends to be that way inclined, so I think it is one of those rare occasions where a film’s own pretentiousness has worked for it.
In all fairness, I think mother! was sold short by the trailers – it’s not the film trailers make it out to be. It also was not as horrific as I had expected, although, granted, something does get eaten in the film that will mean you’ll never view baby back ribs in the same way again. There were definitely horror elements, but I think to pin this one down solely as a horror film doesn’t work.
Overall, mother! is a very strange film that will most likely mean nothing to anyone who takes what they watch at face value. As a result, this probably isn’t one for everybody, especially casual cinema-goers. However, if you have patience and are willing to think about what everything actually means and represents after watching the film, you might find that you like it quite a lot. I for one was certainly not sure how to feel about spending £11 on seeing this film for the first couple or three hours after seeing it, but after a while, things clicked into place and I’ve now come to the conclusion that it was actually very impressive. Of course, that’s not to say that if you do get it, you’ll love it, but it definitely helped me to appreciate it on a whole other level.
If you’ve seen mother!, let me know what you thought – I think it’s a film that’s going to start some interesting conversations, and I really would love to hear what your impression was.
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