Mother! (2017) was utterly disappointing from start to finish, I have never sat through a film and wished for it to end more than this. I felt no emotions or feelings towards any character within this film, it felt so bland and almost badly comical that I could not take the film seriously. Although Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem do a good job playing the most one dimensional characters ever, I felt like they weren’t challenged as actors and this must have been a very confusing role to take on.
The narrative is described as; A couple’s relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence. For a start that is not the case for me, after reading that this film could have very well been a romantic comedy. I had no idea what the narrative was or where it was going. After doing some brief research if director Darren Aronofsky wanted us to understand that this had biblical meaning then he is delusional, this film just plain and simply made no sense. Whether that is me being ignorant and not understanding the narrative or not, this made no sense and it was unnecessarily secretive, confusing and at times just gory.
The narrative outline also does not tell me if this film is a horror, drama, mystery or a thriller? And still after watching I have no idea which it is. I love horror but this film had zero horror elements to it, I felt like the director himself had no idea where he was going with this. This film in a nutshell is basically a bad, weird version of Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and I actually feel rude comparing these two films.
For me, I take in every second of a film and I try to find the good in every movie I see. This time it is hard to find the good, I did not enjoy the narrative at all. I did not enjoy the acting as much as I would have liked to and I most certainly did not enjoy the bland, simplistic way of filming and editing. Everything about this film just fell flat for me and I’m disappointed to say that I do not think it deserved the recognition it got. Jennifer Lawrence is a great actress and she will attract a lot of people to the movie theatre, I think her name saved this film. And by saved I mean not let it loose too much money in the box office.
Overall, I feel drained and stressed after watching this film. If that is the effect they wanted, fine, but I don’t feel like I want to tell people about this film and I most certainly do not want to encourage anyone else to spend two hours trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
I’m saddened, I thought I would have enjoyed this film a lot more than I did. But at least I’ve officially learnt I’m not a fan of Darren Aronofsky’s writing or directing.
I would not recommend this film, unless you want to watch something that will leave you utterly bewildered.
2/10 probe points
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