mother! (2017)

[baumer]

Discuss

[WrathOfHan]

Aronofsky has crafted an absolute mindfuck of a film. There are so many ways to interpret mother!, yet none of them feel quite right. This is a movie that requires you to digest what you've watched and think about what it means. Everyone is on their A-game in the film, especially Lawrence. Filming the entire movie from her perspective (save for a couple of shots) immerses you into this home and immediately lets you sympathize with mother. Michelle Pfeiffer gives a hilariously bitchy performance too despite some limited screentime. mother! is a piece of art that I will be revisiting many times in the future. 10/10 | A+

[AndyLL]

3 hours ago, WrathOfHan said:

Aronofsky has crafted an absolute mindfuck of a film. There are so many ways to interpret mother!, yet none of them feel quite right.

 

Seems like many on Redit feel this is a pretty good interpretation:

 

https://www.bustle.com/p/the-meaning-of-mother-will-make-perfect-sense-to-anyone-whos-read-a-certain-famous-text-2336644

 

[somebody85]

Rather then go on an extremely long rant about how much I hated this movie, I'll let this picture sum it up.



I avoided all marketing for this movie and Black Swan is one of my favorite horror movies of the last decade. Requiem For A Dream is an iconic classic. So Darren Aronofsky and Jennifer Lawrence in a horror film? I'm there! I had this in my top 10 anticipated movies of the fall!

This was the hardest film that I have had to sit through in theaters this year (Congratulations on easily beating It Comes At Night!). If Jennifer Lawrence asked "Why are you in my house?" or "Get out of my house!" one more time......fuck man, nope this movie is not worth it. Goodbye $15. 

Oh near the end I heard "Take It" and couldn't help to be reminded me of another horror movie I had just rewatched a day earlier...I feel so sorry for all the people who can't get into IT tomorrow and have to see this instead thinking it's a horror movie or will amount to anything at the end. This is going to have AWFUL WOM. Heard numerous people walking out of the theater telling their friends "That was the worst movie I've ever seen".

D-

Edited September 15, 2017 by somebody85

[somebody85]

"Bardem is the Creator and Lawrence is mother nature and the house is the paradise that she creates and upkeeps which is why her heart is embedded in the house. Ed harris is Adam and Michelle Pfieffer is Eve. Mother Nature is very concerned with these two intruding and disturbing the order of things. Their two sons (ironically played by Dohmnall gleeson and his real life brother) are Cane and Able, where Cane grows jealous of Abel and kills him. The Creator begins to obsess over the worship from man and abandons Mother Nature. When the creator continues to make man to worship him which leads to the further destruction of the paradise that Mother Nature created. Every time the Creator (God) creates man, they destroy what he creates but doesn't care because of their love and worship of him. This leads him to start over again and again (since there are three mothers in shown in this movie) until he gets it right."

That's basically it minus a baby being eaten and Jennifer Lawrence having her face stomped in before burning herself alive.

I was forced to see one trailer for it in front of Logan Lucky...besides that the only thing I saw was that it was supposed to be an arthouse psychological thriller which I was totally down for.

The marketing of this thing is what pisses me off. Hollywood keeps asking why no one was going to the movies before IT? Maybe it's because of bullshit like this.

Mother! is not a horror movie or a psychological thriller. I get marketing this movie to be what it actually is, is hard but stop aiming these films at the horror crowd and cutting trailers in deceptive ways (You'll Never Forget Where You Were When You See Mother!). This is the second time I've been baited and switched this year and left extremely pissed off. This would be like going to see IT for Pennywises scenes in the trailers and having him never show up in the actual movie. It's not cool to do this to horror fans.

I was really looking forward to seeing mother! due to all the names involved. I thought it was going to be something special for the genre...instead it has nothing to do with it other than some gruesome imagery that is supposed to depict what people do to this planet. 

This felt every bit like it was written in 5 days. - Sorry there's that rant. Couldn't hold back.

Edited September 15, 2017 by somebody85

[The Panda]

This is what I have for the movie:

 

Lol. Wtf was that?

 

D

Edited September 15, 2017 by The Pumpkin Spice Panda

[TalismanRing]

12 hours ago, somebody85 said:

Mother! is not a horror movie or a psychological thriller. I get marketing this movie to be what it actually is, is hard but stop aiming these films at the horror crowd and cutting trailers in deceptive ways (You'll Never Forget Where You Were When You See Mother!). This is the second time I've been baited and switched this year and left extremely pissed off. This would be like going to see IT for Pennywises scenes in the trailers and having him never show up in the actual movie. It's really not cool to do this to the horror crowd.

 

Where's the lie?  Your disgust and anger will probably fuel your memory of this movie for decades to come.

 

 

[dxmatrixdt]

I really liked this.  I like the ambition of Aronofsky, the performances all around, and audacity of Paramount for putting this out.  All the technical stuff was great.   Camera focused on J-Law and from her POV.  Great ambition = A from me.  There were a few things I did not understand, but that is okay. 

[somebody85]

4 hours ago, TalismanRing said:

 

Where's the lie?  Your disgust and anger will probably fuel your memory of this movie for decades to come.

 

 

lol you might be onto something (at least for the weekend). Honestly I might watch it again in a few months but now is definitely not that time. 

[Nova]

The sole purpose of this film is to literally provoke and divide, based on the numerous interpretations that one can make. It throws a bunch of shit at the wall, and just wants it to stick by hopes of people interpreting the film different ways. It's unnecessarily upsetting and cruel. Like a film can be vile, it can be upsetting and unpleasant, nicety is not required of great cinema (or even good cinema). But mother! isn’t just unpleasant, it’s vain and willfully provoking in the manner of a middle-schooler seeking attention. And that's the biggest problem with this film. It has no identity. It's like a middle schooler navigating life, trying to decide who they should be based on how others view them not based on how they view themselves or who they want to be. The movie has no clue what it wants to be. It wants the audience to decide what the movie should be. Where as I think if the film actually stuck true to one single thing, it could have actually been good. 

 

If I'm being honest, I stopped giving a shit about what type of movie I was getting the moment I knew the characters didn't have names. Mother, him, man, woman....yea that's how pretentious this film is. It thinks it's being super artsy by being secretive and leaving doors open for interpretation, when really it's nothing more than a Bible story papered over with a terribly obnoxious relationship drama.

 

PS now I get why they were hiding secrets. Because the movie sucked so bad that if they advertised as is, no one would go watch it. 

 

D-

[AniNate]

I guess I'm gonna be the one guy who thought this was "pretty good". Yeah, it's not a horror movie; honestly, Black Swan was more horror than this. But I was still very entertained by the story's gradual descent into insanity and I felt there was good thematic material to chew on; most notably relating to celebrity culture and religious fervor. 

 

I didn't get the adoration for Black Swan, but I don't get the vicious hatred for this.

[Webslinger]

mother! summed up nearly in three parts:

 

First 40 minutes: Almost conventional despite sinister undertones.

 

Next 40 minutes: Progressively stranger, clearly building up to something bananas.

 

Last 40 minutes: WHAT THE SHIT IS HAPPENING?!?!?!?AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[dxmatrixdt]

Can someone please interpret these parts for me

 

Spoiler

- the Black Swan-like schitzophrenia stuff how she is always seeing shit that gets under the skin.  How does this relate to the story and the allegory that the characters are.

- the scene with the dead flying bug that is by the window. this scene is in commercials too

- the red spot on the ground

 

[DeeCee]

interesting!

[DeeCee]

2 hours ago, Webslinger said:

mother! summed up nearly in three parts:

 

First 40 minutes: Almost conventional despite sinister undertones.

 

Next 40 minutes: Progressively stranger, clearly building up to something bananas.

 

Last 40 minutes: WHAT THE SHIT IS HAPPENING?!?!?!?AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

The entire movie is an allegory for the Bible. Adam and Eve. Cain and Able. Some literal transubstantiation. And finally the apocalypse. 

 

Sarah Connor summed up the meaning of the movie best. 

 

"Fucking men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you thought it up. You think you're so creative. You don't know what it's like to really create something, to create a life, feel it growing inside you. All you know how to create is death and destruction..."

Edited September 16, 2017 by DeeCee

[La Binoche]

I don't give a shit that it was an allegory for the bible, it sucked. an incoherent clusterfuck. too bad for JLaw because was actually good in it (though Pfeiffer was MVP). 

[That One Girl]

3 A's, 1 B, 4 D's, and 1 F.  Talk about divisive.

[MinaTakla]

Watched this as Venice.

One of the most pretentious films I've ever seen. And this is coming from someone who watches so many art/indie films per year at film festivals.

D

[ddddeeee]

Oh, this was great.

 

!

[WrathOfHan]

11 minutes ago, ddddeeee said:

Oh, this was great.

 

!

How much did you love Pfeiffer in this?