Note: Look, I just want to apologize from the get-go if weird punctuation things are going on in this essay. When you decide to name a film mother! it creates a lot of issues. I’m trying.

***

This is not an essay – well, that’s a lie, it is – but it’s really a purging. Since seeing Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, try as I might, I have not been able to stop thinking about the film. This is not necessarily a good thing. I didn’t really like the movie too much. Sure, I like the camera work, the set design, score, etc., but I didn’t like what the film said. I found mother!’s point to be didactic, oversimplified, and preachy in the worst possible ways. But the thing is, is I didn’t feel like that at first. My first reaction to the movie was a sort of abject-horror mixed with utter awe. I could not believe it existed. I couldn’t believe I just saw this movie in the blockbuster theater in my town (there are four theaters in town, each getting more and more indie-centric than the last). I couldn’t believe the Thursday night pre-show was sold out. There is so much about the sheer existence of this film that baffles and insights endless discussion, excluding consideration of what the movie is ostensibly about, that it’s understandable that I would continue to think about this film a full two-weeks later. But that’s all window dressing. That’s just the side-show. Here’s the real meat:

mother! might be the best argument ever about why creators should never explain what their art means. To take it further, I think mother! might also be the best argument AGAINST the use of straight allegory in film, or even just art in general, that I’ve ever seen.

Now, look, I understand that these might seem like extreme statements – and they are – but I plan to back them up. It’s just going to take a lot of unpacking because this topic doesn’t just include the movie mother!. So, bear with me, because this is a doozy.

Explaining Films:

The first part of this whole process that I want to talk about is how, following (and even somewhat before) the release of mother!, Aronofsky took to a press tour in which he straight-up laid out what the movie was about. He spilled the beans. For me, this kind of ruined the film. I don’t mean to suggest that it should ruin it for you, but it had a genuine effect on my experience, and, hey, that’s what I’m here to talk about.

There is this propensity amongst film viewers and fans to think that a movie needs to be explained or understood. While I agree with this for a certain subset of movies, i.e., traditional mainstream narrative focused films generally benefit by having relatively clear meanings, I think this is ultimately a reductionist viewpoint on film in general. See, the thing about film and art as a whole is that part of the understanding comes with you, the audience, being willing to engage and do a little work. Sticking with the general line of thinking in which we consider the artist to be effectively dead, thus rendering their views and history moot in a discussion of the relative merits or meaning of a film, any interpretation that a person comes away with from a film is equally valid; assuming it’s an interpretation or reading supported by the text. This notion of constructing meaning from a piece of art can be taken further into the realm of semiotics, the studying of symbols in the goal of constructing meaning. But stepping back from the technical nature of semiotics, I think there is a broader understanding at work here. See, films are personal things: they mean a lot of different things to many different people. Sometimes the simplest scene in the world can say something to someone that was never and could never have been planned or engineered by the director or writer or whoever. There are things that just simply happen because, when a film is good, its characters and scenes and story become applicable to numerous facets of the human experience.

For a quick anecdotal example, the movie Little Miss Sunshine meant a whole lot to me, but it meant a whole lot more to my mom. That’s because the relationship between Alan Arkin’s character and Abigail Breslin’s directly mirrored my mom’s personal history and experience with her recently passed away grandfather. While this isn’t a moment of clarity on the nature of the profound and difficult to parse meaning of the film Little Miss Sunshine, it is an example of a film’s general applicability (note this term) to the human condition as a whole informing a new meaning and connection, a new interpretation, from its viewers.

Now, imagine if the director of Little Miss Sunshine came out and said the entire film was actually an allegory for, just spitballing here: child slavery (look, I know this is a weird movie to use but just go with it). Wouldn’t that sort of sour the taste of the character relationships? Now imagine if that allegory, running with this example, was already incredibly easy to pick up on in the film. Imagine you see the film, and you get it, and then you keep looking because, well, why the hell would a film only be reducible to one understanding? Rather than trying to interpret and understand the meaning and message presented in the movie, you might end up in a position where all you can think about are the allegorical implications that have just been rammed down your throat. And I don’t mean to say it would be impossible to really connect with the film if it was revealed to be an allegory, but it would certainly change the relationship. This is what happened to me.

This is the issue with explaining a film. Art’s interpretability is part of its magic. There is a reason that David Lynch refuses to give any insight on the meaning of his films. It would be moot. It would reduce the nuanced avant-garde into the mundanity of one experience, one understanding. This extends beyond David Lynch. Andre Tarkovsky is widely considered to be one of if not the greatest directors to ever live. Imagine if he had just come out and told you “no, Stalker is about this,” or “that’s wrong, actually Solaris is about blank.” That would be the artistic equivalent of shooting himself in the foot. Tarkovsky’s films are magical because they manage to strike such a broad yet nuanced view of humanity and our endless complications that they become mirrors for each of our souls (I still intend to write an essay explaining how Stalker is one giant metaphor for imagination). Explaining the meaning of a film shunts creativity and stamps out the unique possibilities of art.

Another example for this is Stanley Kubrick. More specifically his 1979 adaptation of The Shining. Can anyone else think of a film that has inspired more interpretations, running the gamut from Native American genocide to faking the moon landing? I don’t mean to say that these are good interpretations or wholly factual ones that work on a semiotic level, but the continued obsession with explaining the film is honestly inspiring. People try and explain The Shining because it’s a masterpiece, not because explaining it somehow justifies its placement in the hall of our greatest films of all time. The film justifies itself without any need for exact interpretation.

This all can be summed up as saying essentially this: when movies aren’t constrained by the interpretation of their creators, they become vessels, open to a multitude of engagements and understandings limited only by the limitations of us as a species. And I think that’s wonderful.

But to peddle this back to what we were initially talking about, let’s talk about mother!.

So, Aronofsky decided to explain his movie. I think this probably came from a fear of being misunderstood. This is understandable, and ultimately I empathize with the viewpoint – hell, look at how many words I’m writing right now just to make sure I’m fully understood – but I think that he sort of, kind of, almost definitely shot himself in the foot by explaining the whole thing. To stop beating around the bush, let’s jump into what exactly Aronofsky thinks his movie is about.

***SPOILERS***

It’s an allegory for the Earth. Even further, it’s an allegory about the nature of the Bible, Christianity, and our continued use, abuse and discarding of the natural gifts of our planet.

…

Look I’m just going to come out and say it: this is not a hard allegory to get, and it really did not need to be explained. Seriously. Not at all. I figured it out in the first act. Now I might be an exception to the “regular person,” because I spend all my free time obsessing over the details and meanings of film, but I think it’s a fair assessment to say that, by the end of mother!, it is really really really damn obvious what the film is about. In case it wasn’t, I’m now going to break it down for you.

Jennifer Lawrence, and by extension the house, is Mother Earth. Javier Bardem is God. Ed Harris is Adam. Michelle Pfieffer is Eve. Brian Gleeson is Able. Domhnall Gleeson is Cain. Javier Bardem’s old work is the Old Testament, and his new book/poem/art is the New Testament. All the people that start to invade the house represent the different sects and splinters of Christianity. Lawrence’s baby is Jesus. You get it by now if you didn’t before. I’ll stop with the blunt sentences, but you can see why it’s so baffling that Aronofsky would have to come out and explain his movie when the connections are so startlingly clear that it’s kind of absurd for him to be so worried about his audience missing the obvious one to one connections. I want to be absolutely clear right now; I do not mean to insult anyone who didn’t get this movie. I really don’t. I’m just frustrated with a director who so clearly does not trust the intelligence of his audience. But this lack of trust isn’t the only issue I have with this whole situation.

Aronofsky considers this movie and its meaning, and really all of his films, to be incredibly serious. I don’t need anecdotal evidence from him as a person to say or prove this – although watching any interview with him will give all the evidence a doubter would need – because his films do the talking for me. Aronofsky’s films are so absolutely serious about how important what they are saying and doing is, and how important their existence is, that I sometimes find myself edging into hysterical reactionary laughter at moments that lean so hard that I just can’t help myself. Case in point: there is a part in mother! where everyone is fucking with JLaw’s house and no one is listening to her, and she’s pregnant and in distress, and she comes around a corner, and a guy is using a roller to paint an unfinished section of her entryway/stairway area. I laughed out loud in the theater and was subsequently shushed. Now, you might be inclined to argue, “well obviously that moment was meant to be absurd.” I can understand that interpretation – I mean who in their right mind (spoiler: it’s Aronofsky) would be so self-serious that they would ever consider playing a scene like that straight – but the film itself doesn’t support that interpretation. Everything that happens in the movie is played with the same kind of straight-faced self-seriousness. Every. Single. Scene. It’s all so critically important to Aronofsky that we all take this seriously, and I don’t intend to imply that the nature of our planet’s imminent destruction at our own hands is not serious, but his insistence edges into the absurd so often I can’t help but point this out. Which then leads to a worse issue:

When everything is serious, nothing is serious. It’s the kind of critical understanding of storytelling that I generally take for granted until I see someone who is so obviously talented mess it up so absolutely horribly. It’s kind of like Michael Bay (no, I don’t mean to say Aronofsky is the quality equivalent of Michael Bay). If you’ve ever seen a Michael Bay film you know that from start to finish they are go go go, stakes stakes stakes, action action action, and that because of this they become incoherent messes that lack any breathing time; and rather than have the intended effect of propulsive cinema, they end up as horrific slog-fests. Aronofsky’s issue is far less pronounced than this – for starters, his films are infinitely better than Michael Bay’s – but the same principle applies. When everything in the film is played to be so vital and to be held with so much gravitas, there comes a point where the levee breaks and you just can’t help but let out a little laugh at the whole endeavor (I did the same thing during Requiem for a Dream, and that’s my favorite of his films). Not to harp on this point for too long, let’s go back to Tarkovsky for a second.

Tarkovsky made long, existential, and artistic films and they’re all perfect. Any single film in his oeuvre is a candidate for his best film depending on the veracity of argument, and that’s because every single one is incredible. For my money, his best is Stalker, so let’s focus in on Stalker. Stalker takes place in a near-future Russia that looks like the worst possible extrapolations of the Soviet Union as it was when he made the film. Sounds like pretty serious stuff, right? Sure, but guess what? One of the things people always fail to mention about Stalker, and all of Tarkovsky’s films for that matter, is that Stalker is hilarious. It is. There are some great jokes in his movies, and they all tie into characterization, character motivation, and character psychology. Discussion of his films often focuses on the dramatic moments of sheer gravitas and meaning (reasonably so), but this discussion often misses why these moments play so strong and become so memorable and meaningful. The reason is two-fold. All of Tarkovsky’s films are character driven (an important point for later), and all of his films balance the philosophically weighty scenes with equally well written and realized moments of downtime. He genuinely understood the rhythm of his films and his stories in a way that, in my estimation, Aronofsky does not. Aronofsky mistakes the necessity for gravitas and weight to mean that the whole movie has to have the same tone (I don’t even want to get into the insane myth of tone-consistency), and because of that, it makes it so the truly important moments often don’t hit the way they should. But this discussion brings us to a new point: the importance of characters and the crippling effect of ill-used allegory.

How Allegories Work Best: Characters are Key

This section is going to get a bit semantical and weird and sort of just a series of my issues with one term being used to describe multiple different versions of similar things, so please bear with me because I really do have a point in all the noise, it’s just going to take a bit to get to.

To start off this section, let’s talk about mother!’s characters. Or, rather, the lack of characters. One of the most critical problems with the movie is that, without the allegorical implications, it barely functions. It’s a shanty town of ideas, string-tied together by separate-feeling scenes that don’t add up to anything. If this movie wasn’t an allegory, what would it be about? Seriously, let’s break this down. A woman is renovating her husbands home, and he, like, doesn’t care about her? And people destroy the home because he’s good at writing? Also, she gets pregnant, but all he wants is her baby? What does she want? To fix his house? Why does she love him? Are we ever shown convincing proof of their relationship? Everything is just presented as a given as if we should obviously empathize with Lawrence, but I honestly have no idea who she is, what her psychology is, what she wants, what she needs, or even like, anything about her as a person other than her devotion to her husband. You might be inclined to argue that this is the point, which granted it is, but again imagine if this film wasn’t an allegory; would we forgive it? The whole film adds up to the semblance of ideas and plot and characters, but none of these aspects actually amount to anything. This might seem harsh, but it is, unfortunately, the case with this movie. As you can tell, I think this is a deal-breaking issue. A lack of functionality. The movie only exists as a vehicle to preach an allegorical idea, and that’s exhausting and wrong-headed. It’s one of the few examples where the word pretentious actually fits. Even the most circuitous and obscure art films, the best example being David Lynch, still function on the most basic levels of character psychology and plotting. Greater meaning can be gleaned from a David Lynch movie because the movie itself is a, you know, movie. The meaning is supplemental on top of the pure experiential nature of his films. I think one of the biggest issues here is that Aronofsky put all his eggs in the allegorical basket, and that’s a dangerous gambit, one that I think doesn’t pan out for him.

To further clarify my confusion/anger, let me explain my relationship with Christianity. I am not Christian, I was not raised in a Christian household, and I have never read the whole Bible. Now, I don’t mean to imply that my issue with the film is entirely on a religious basis because it isn’t. I’m pointing this out to show that you don’t need religious sympathy/understanding to connect with spiritual/religious movies. All you need is a functionally good film. One of my favorite movies ever is Angel’s Egg, a movie that works as an exploration of Christianity and the nature of belief. I have no problem finding incredible meaning in things that don’t exactly line up with my beliefs, but the common thread between all those films that don’t is that they don’t devolve into a didactic sermon on how bad we treat the planet using point by point transference of the Bible to facilitate it; a sermon that really talks down to the viewer, and is then undermined by a creator’s lack of faith in the intelligence of his audience. So, I’m going to suggest a possible solution to this issue, because I think it’s incredibly helpful to just tear something down without offering alternatives. I believe that this movie would work better as an applicable narrative, rather than an allegorical story. What does that mean, you might ask. Hold on, I’ll explain:

So, you know how an allegory is a story in which plot and character elements line up with certain real-world people/places/events? Like, for example, how Animal Farm IS and CANNOT be argued to NOT be an allegory for Communism, and how each animal in the book lines up perfectly and is understood through the context of what they are commenting on? Well, that’s a bit constrained, wouldn’t you agree? Not bad, mind you, just constrained. While I understand, and like, the use of allegory in works of particular criticism like Animal Farm or 1984, I think that the uses and relevance of these works become diluted with time as the flow of human history moves on from the appropriateness of the allegory. Please don’t take this as me saying that you can’t get anything out of 1984 today. You absolutely can, which is a testament to both its relative quality and insightfulness, and because of the applicability of the regular old story and characters present within. So, what is applicability?

Applicability is essentially where you make art that is set up in a way that is relatable and insightful for viewers but isn’t reducible to one interpretation/understanding. The greatest practitioner of this currently alive is George R. R. Martin. The progenitor of this line of thinking is J. R. R. Tolkien. Yeah, that guy. Now, I think it’s fairly obvious what the inspiration for certain aspects of both these author’s works are. Like, it’s impossible to read/watch Lord of the Rings and NOT think about the context of post WWI soon to be WWII England. Art is drawn on a person’s experience, and Tolkien was most certainly a man of his time. The Christian influences on his work are also undeniable. But is Lord of the Rings an allegory? Hell no. Not in the slightest. Lord of the Rings is a story about the possibility of even the smallest members of society being able to enact great change through sheer tenacity of will. Doesn’t that sound really god damn inspiring? Lord of the Ring’s importance to me could not be summed up in this essay so I won’t try to. I know I’m not the only one who has been affected by this story in this way. This is a book series that was adapted into three incredible movies six decades after they were published, and we are still talking about both the books and those movies. Lord of the Rings resonates through the endless forward march of time, reaching out and gripping the hearts of people in every generation. Why? Because Tolkien wrote a story that is applicable. It comments on the corrupting nature of power, the tragedy of parents outliving their kids, and the value of even the smallest person. Those are just a few things bouncing around in Lord of the Rings, and the reason all of those various aspects of the book can come out and connect with people is because the ideas are all supported and exemplified by some of the most memorable characters in the history of media. This applies to another crop of characters that are even more famous and beloved: Star Wars. Star Wars is a perfectly applicable story.

And this is what I want to argue for because I think that this distinction is relatively misunderstood. I don’t mean to say that we shouldn’t use allegory because that is not at all what I am arguing. I think there is absolutely a time and place for an allegory. Often, like in the previously mentioned 1984, the use of allegory is the most important part of the text itself. But the important part to understand is that when an allegory is employed, it constrains the meaning and possible messages gleaned by a piece of art to the tight confines of what it’s inarguably about. This is a case where applicable narratives come into play. And there is absolutely overlap between these categories, and one of the primary cases in which an allegorical work is also a functionally applicable work is the case in which the characters and story transcend the confines of the allegory; 1984 and Animal Farm are both examples of this. They function without the need of allegorical understanding. Alien is one of the most enduring horror films of all times, a progenitor of a genre, ground-zero of so many movies (and video games) that would come after. But, guess what, Alien is also an allegory for rape. Yeah. Bet a lot of people didn’t know that. But do you need to know that to understand Alien, or even more simply, to ENJOY Alien? No. Absolutely not, because it functions as a film on its own. Want to know another one? Aliens is an allegory for the Vietnam War. How about another one? Spirited Away has allegorical implications with child sex-workers. Yeah, that’s right, Spirited fucking Away. Perhaps the best modern example of allegorical storytelling that transcends the simple reductive understanding of the allegory is District 9. All of these movies are incredible films, and all of them function as allegories, but more importantly, I would argue, they are all built on strong characters and themes that relate to the fundamental human condition, and that makes them absolutely applicable. They stand the test of time, even as Vietnam allegories lose their potency as history moves on. And that’s a testament to just how damn good those movies are at the most fundamental level.

And that’s not something I can say about mother! It’s a mess. What in the actual fuck is that movie saying or about if it’s not an allegory? Does it even have a point when the allegory is taken out of the equation? Well, let’s explore that, and one particular scene that made me incredibly angry.

The More Interesting Reading of mother!:

So, I’ve established already that, according to Aronofsky, mother! is an allegorical story about the Bible and our relationship with and abuse of our planet. I think there is a far more interesting reading of this film nesting within that. This reading, coupled with a better core functionality, could honestly be interesting and elucidating enough to elevate this film for me to the status of “liking” it.

I think mother! is a far more interesting film when it’s read as a commentary on the historical abuse of women by men; how men use women as tools to prop themselves up, and how they discard women for younger models once they are used up. This totally works within the confines of what we are presented in this film. Given better and more realized characters, I think it would be the most interesting interpretation of the film. Bardem plays the perfect tortured artist supported by a loving, doe-eyed, complacent wife who gives up everything, even her freaking heart, to support his artistic pursuit. Wow. Powerful stuff, right? Like, this is so incredibly fascinating when it’s extrapolated beyond the film to consider the real world implications of Aronofsky, a 48-year-old man, dating his lead actress (they started dating during the filming of this) who is 27. Like, how does Aronofsky not see what he made? Or does he, and that’s why he insists on the Bible/Earth reading of the film? I have no idea, but it’s endlessly fascinating to me that an artist essentially made the most critical possible work of his real-life relationship, a relationship that exists BECAUSE HE STARTED MAKING THIS ART CRITICIZING IT! I could go on and on about this, and that’s just the part that applies to the real world implications. Just on the purely textual level, the film makes such apt metaphorical commentary on the nature of all-consuming narcissistic art and how Lawrence perfectly encapsulates the Madonna/whore complex. She glides wraithlike through this film in billowing white dresses that encapsulate the perfect image of virginal purity. This movie is ripe for this kind of interpretation, but at the same time, it ultimately hampers itself. The lack of discernable character beyond just the interpretable messages the characters are completely hamstrings this whole reading of the film. And that’s a damn shame because it could have helped to smooth over the most problematic and anger-inducing scenes in the movie.

*** Last Spoiler Warning ***

So, in the third act of this movie, the people who have invaded the house and are worshipping Bardem’s New Testament kill JLaw’s baby and eat it. Yeah. And then, and then get this, Lawrence takes a piece of glass and starts fucking de-mapping the adherents in the most brutal way possible, only to be knocked to the ground and be kicked and beaten and spit on while being called “slut” and “cunt” and “whore.” Yeah. That happens…

Look, I’m not going to say that you shouldn’t or can’t put a scene like this in a film, because I genuinely think it’s possible to make it work and say something, but god damn is this not the way to do it. Violence against women is such a problematic topic, in regard to over-saturation in film and what it says about the way we treat women, that to put this in your movie, and then to say come out and say it’s only about the planet Earth and the Bible, is the most tone-deaf shit I’ve seen in years. Aronofsky is ostensibly asking for you, the viewer, to be both at once sympathetic to the real-life person getting the shit kicked out of them in front of you while also being able to abstract the violence against her to somehow NOT be about her as a woman being beaten and abused and instead understand it as a metaphor for human being’s misuse of the planet. I understand his intention, but this whole thing is so damn wrongheaded and poorly thought out that it makes me wonder how this was even filmed and put in the final product. It is impossible to abstract what is being seen entirely. It is just not something that can reasonably be asked for. Human beings connect with each other as people, and no matter how much a person insists that the violence against that person, this woman, is metaphorical and an allegory it is fundamentally impossible just to see the metaphor.

This is even more problematic because, as shown earlier, Lawrence doesn’t have a character. The male gaze is an often misunderstood concept, but it so readily applies to the way that Aronofsky is depicting Lawrence in this movie that I can’t help but bring it up. This would all be a lot more stomach-able if this scene were specifically targeted as a commentary of the worst possible extenuating circumstance of the toxic relationship between this woman and her husband, or as a commentary on the simplified, trope-y way we present stock female characters on-screen, but it isn’t. I think this would all be smoothed out, relatively, if this film was read as commentary of the cyclical abuse of women throughout history (not to say it would excuse this scene or something because I think that’s a hard argument to make), but Aronofsky has effectively ruined the possibility of this reading by both making a film entirely bereft of characters and plot other than the obvious allegory, and by literally doing a press junket to explain said allegory as the meaning.

This entire situation makes me feel insane. I just don’t understand how someone could be so absolutely clueless about what they are putting on screen. It boggles my fucking mind. And this all comes back around to the way that Aronofsky imbues his films with such fucking weight and importance as if we should be right along with him in his belief that this is the greatest movie you’ve ever seen or at least the most important since his last movie (and until his next). It’s so baffling I am left spinning endlessly within my head, day after day, thinking about how this guy can just not get what he is doing. I genuinely believe that just ONE conversation with a woman about whether or not they saw anything in this movie that was perhaps male-oriented or problematic or lacking in nuanced understanding could have possibly avoided the issues present in this, and so many other, scenes in the film. And I want to be absolutely clear right now: I am not saying that movies should not depict violence against women. That is not what I am arguing. There is a clear and distinct difference between depiction and endorsement. I don’t have to agree with the politics or message or meaning of a film to enjoy it or understand it or even just get something out of it. That said, there is absolutely a certain amount of awareness necessary in the depiction of certain things. There is an inextricable link between depictions of abject violence against women and entire millennia of real-world violence against women, a link that you have to work damn hard to justify depicting. Aronofsky doesn’t do the work, and the scene itself ends up in this weird middle area, this obfuscated grey of understanding that can’t help but tip into the realm of endorsement because of the complete lack of any context or built-in semiotic meaning around the depiction.

Again, I’m not saying that a better plot and characters that function without the allegory would fix or make this scene okay, I’m just trying to show that it would at least help. It would make its inclusion more understandable. The sympathetic and empathetic connection to a character experiencing abuse and violence is far easier to develop when there is an actual character to connect with, especially if that abuse is then thoughtfully explored after the fact. You can make it about the act. You can explore why it is still so pervasive in a society that prides itself on forward leaps in human rights. You can explore how it fits into the historical context of the cyclical abuse of women, or how it fits into the dynamic of power inherent in all relationships. It would make it something more than exploitative and manipulative. It would make it a statement. Whether it would be right or wrong is up to the film and the viewer, but it would at least be worthy of debate then. As it stands, I see no redemption for the inclusion of that scene. None at all.

To construct the semblance of a point:

It might seem weird to say at this point in the essay, all the way down here near the ending, that I don’t hate the movie mother!. I really don’t. I also don’t begrudge anyone who liked the movie or got something out of it. That’s never my intention because the fact of the matter is it is way easier to sit here and write 5000 words tearing something apart than the indescribable difficulty of actually creating something like mother!.

The truth is, I never want to dislike a new film. Every movie I go watch has the possibility of being the best thing I’ve ever seen. Every movie can surprise me. A lot of them do, and a lot of them don’t. I also never want to hate a movie. It’s just not worth it. Film Crit Hulk has an excellent essay about a piece of wisdom he learned from Quentin Tarantino about never hating a movie. Every film is a gift, and often the bad ones are the greatest gifts of all. They offer examples of what not to do, and they teach you, the viewer, how doing things differently, even the smallest things, can have powerful effects. And that’s true of mother!. I might begrudge the fact that the film, for all its technical flourishes, actually says very little, but I don’t hate it. I find it baffling, as I’ve repeated over and over, but to hate it would require a level of energy and commitment that is just not worth it. It would lose sight of the reality that this is just a movie, and it would inhibit my ability to learn everything I possibly can from my experience watching it. And that would be a travesty.

Every movie, whether it’s aware of it or not, says something. There is a meaning that comes out of a film. Our best movies, the ones that truly stand the test of time and scrutiny, are the ones that have an honest clarity and understanding of what they are saying. I think that mother! is a film that doesn’t. For any number of reasons that I’ve listed above, it’s a movie that is confused about what it is and what it wants to ay. And ultimately, I’m sad that the film says so very little. Because at the end of it all, it’s just another gem left unpolished. And that’s nothing to be happy about.

I want to end this by recommending a movie/book that manages to tread similar territory as mother!, but does so with incredible nuance and understanding. One of my favorite books ever written is John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. It also happens to be a wonderful movie. I don’t want to talk very much about it because I think it’s better left experienced, but I can say this: I’m confident that anyone who takes the time to read the book or watch the movie will be positively affected and changed by it (in my opinion the book is superior, but both are delightful). It is one of those special stories. I had hoped mother! would be one as well, but who knows, maybe Aronofsky’s next film will be that kind of film. Maybe it will be the best movie I’ve ever seen. Only time will tell.