I'm not sure how many people out there have seen the teaser trailer for the Darren Aronofsky directed "mother!", but if you have you'll know what I'm talking about- big, bold red text and a gravelly, 'trailer-man' voice bellowing that "You will never forget where you were when you first saw 'mother!", and that "mother!" will be the most horrifically shocking movie-going experience you've ever had. It goes without saying that Paramount Pictures put "mother!" out into the world with the hopes that it would be the next "so F'd up you gotta see it, dude, it'll give you brain damage it's so bananas" kind of movie. Think "Human Centipede"- something so shockingly grotesque that you feel compelled to sneak a (2 hour long) peak to check to see if a movie can really like permanently damage you (spoiler: it can't, and doesn't). Banking a movie, anything really, on shock value alone is a bad, no good way to go about putting out a piece of entertainment, and while "mother!" does have more going for it than its visceral, over-the-top elements, the good of the movie is ultimately bogged down by that 'LOOK HOW F***ED UP THIS IS BRO!!!1!!' mentality that takes over the movie's final act.

"mother!" comes to us directed and written by Darren Aronofsky, most notably known for his films "Requiem for a Dream," "The Wrestler," and "Black Swan." I myself have only seen his 1998 film "Pi" (which I thought was an odd, swell little flick). From an outside perspective, Aronofsky seems to have shades of David Lynch about him and his film making, with maybe more of a straightforward, commercial bend to him than Lynch. "mother!" stars Jennifer Lawrence (credited as "Mother") and Javier Bardem (credited as "Him"), and is basically about a man and woman who live in a newly restored home, one that Bardem used to live in until he lost 'everything' in a fire. At the beginning of the movie, Lawrence has almost entirely rebuilt the destroyed home. Bardem's character is a writer of some sort (some in the movie call him 'The Poet) who cannot produce, suffering a bad case of writer's block (a circle of hell all to its own), while Lawrence plays his much younger wife(a fact stated in the movie itself). There seems to be an odd tension and disconnect between the two, in which maybe Lawrence loves Bardem more than he loves her. This tension is only exasperated when unexpected house guests show up, strangers who turn out to be passionate fans of Bardem's writing. Lawrence wants these people out, while Bardem finds enjoyment in their company, in their love and even devotion of him. From there, the story unspools in interesting turns and bends.

Most of what I'd heard about the movie before I saw it were pretty bad things. That it was too weird, or gross, or messed up and pointless, which I think is all kind of unfair. There was a good bit of this movie I enjoy, and I think it's only fair to mention the good and the bad. So hey, that's what I'm gonna do.

As well, it's important to put this movie on this sort of 'spectrum' I've discussed in some of my previous reviews (which you can totally click here and here). "mother!" is an 'art film'. As opposed to the recently released "IT", "mother!'s" main goal is to impart a kind of 'message' or feeling to the audience, to in essence 'change your life', whereas "IT's" main goal is to entertain you. Neither is better or worse than the other, but it's obvious when comparing the two that they differ in their 'goals'.

THE GOOD

-THE FIRST TWO-THIRDS: "mother!" has a lot going for it at the start. It has this eerie, dream-like and surreal feel to it, where things kind of just 'happen,' like they do in a dream. Example: Bardem's character had just finished his novel, and shows it to Lawrence before anyone else. She cries, says it's wonderful. A moment later, he gets a call from his agent, saying how much she loved it, implying that she (the agent) has already read the novel, even though Bardem just finished, which upsets Lawrence. There's definitely a lot of "The Shining" to the first few chunks of "mother!" too- these two characters, stuck in one location together, and the mounting tension and frustration that they both feel, the paranoia and dread in isolation. I would honestly go so far as to say that I loved the first two-thirds of this movie. It escalated the tension and nightmare-qualities in such subtle, engaging ways, that it's a shame that that deft touch sort of disappears by the end of the movie.

-AESTHETICS- VISUALS, AUDIO, CAMERA WORK, ETC: You can't deny that "mother!" is at least a very well made movie. The whole movie takes place in one location: a big, lavish house, a sort of summer home out in 'the country' somewhere. This one location could have been the downfall to a lesser made film, could have left everything looking same and boring and flat, but Aronofsky keeps things very engaging to look at, both with the creepy, uncanny special effects (when tensions seem to rise, the house, repaired from a fire, will go grey in front of Lawrence's eyes, will look burnt again, and then change back), as well as the way Aronofsky uses his camera. There are a lot of times where a character, most often Jennifer Lawrence, will be walking through the house, and the camera will hang right behind her, close, almost over her shoulder, as if we the audience are following her in this creepy, frantic way. As well, there are moments when Jennifer will be standing still, and a character will be walking around the house (whose main room is built circularly) talking to Jennifer, and the camera will follow this character as they move through the house, won't cut away (except to extreme close ups of Jennifer's face for reaction shots). In this way, we get a really good layout of the house, a good sense of the location spatially. This is further enhanced by a lot of the sound design, wherein a conversation will be happening in one room, while Lawrence walks away from it, and we hear as the conversation becomes muffled, but still audible. It's hard to explain but the way the conversations trail off into the background just make sense, and in a weird echo-location kind of way, give us a better sense of the house's physical layout.

-THE THEMES(SOME OF THEM): While there is some obvious symbolic, Judaeo-Christian stuff going on here (I'll get into that later), I enjoyed a lot of the other stuff happening in the movie, theme-wise. Bardem and Lawrence's relationship is one doomed from the start, one where the fault lines, razor thin they may be, are visible to the audience from the get go, but are things that both Bardem and Lawrence fight and cover up through the rest of the movie. There is a reoccuring plot thread about this kind of rotting 'hole' that appears in the house, one that seems organically alive and oozing. Lawrence knows about this hole, but Bardem does not. Instead of doing something about it, talking to Bardem about this obvious problem, she covers it up with a rug. Ignores it. And there are multiple instances of that kind of subtext here, of this failing relationship that both parties would rather stay in and ignore the problems of, rather than do anything to fix it. As well, the cultish, insane thralls of people who flock to Bardem and his writing, who quite literally look at him like a God among men, has some nice subtext about fascism and hero worship, which has some obvious ties to celebrity culture, but also speaks to some obvious themes that I don't have to tell you are always relevant today in D.T.-U.S.A.

-THE PERFORMANCES: It goes without saying, but Javier Bardem is a fantastic performer. He brings this odd sort of tranquility to his performance as a frustrated, almost repressed writer, a character who, played by someone of lesser talents, could have come off as cliched and trite. As well, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer (who play the first couple who just kind of show up at Lawrence and Bardem's doorstep) put in some very good performances, riding the line between real, layered people and bizarre, nightmarish wraiths. Now, I have no qualms in saying I am not a fan of Jennifer Lawrence as an actor. I don't think she's bad or untalented by any stretch of the imagination, just that Hollywood (or movie-casters, I guess) seems to tout her as this amazing, unique performer, throw her in every role that they can. To me, so many of her roles come off as the same person, this 'serious-Jennifer Lawrence-character' (Hunger Games, X-Men, Passengers), that comes off as sort of stiff and unreal. She reminds me of her Passengers co-star Chris Pratt- sort of a one note performer (granted, I have not seen her in Winter's Bone, which is supposed to be a dang good performance). However, in "mother!" she actually brings more range to her performance, and commits to a lot of her (oftentimes horrifying) scenes. She showed me a different kind of character performance, which was refreshing. However, this brings me to the start of-

THE BAD

-JENNIFER LAWRENCE'S CHARACTER, AS WRITTEN: I dig the performance, not the character and that is entirely Aronofsky's fault. Her character not only comes off as someone completely defined by the people and circumstances surrounding her, but as someone with nothing (other than the passion of home restoration, and a drug addiction) to her character, internally. Which ever way you cut it, regardless of who played this role, a character like that comes off as boring, unbelievable, and dull. And I get it- this has some sort of symbolic resonance, as Aronofsky wanted the character's here to be kind of archetypal, representative of something, symbolic, but in a movie like "mother!", a movie with larger than life, surrealistic elements to it, you need a fully fleshed out, developed character to believe in and see the movie through. Which brings me to my next point.

-ON THE NOSE SYMBOLISM: Aronofsky has said in an interview that Jennifer Lawrence's character in "mother!" is supposed to be 'mother earth', Bardem is 'God,' and that various other characters that show up in the movie have other biblical roles (Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel), and for the house itself to represent the Earth. That's all fine and good, but it does come off as pretty dang obvious, if not, as Jay Bauman of Red Letter Media says, very 'film school,' And it's this sort of importance that's given to the movie's symbolism that not only makes it come off as pretentious rather than emotionally affecting, but also hinders the movie's characters from coming off as real, and therefore allowing the audience to care about them, especially when things ramp up and get crazy.

-THE ENDING: Things get kind of 'different' at the end of "mother!" (Aronofsky has said that the title "mother!" having an exclamation at the end of it is supposed to symbolize the intense change in direction at the end of the film- make of that what you will). Look, I respect the turn in direction the story took. You don't see a lot of movies out there willing to let their 3rd acts take such a wild, roller coaster drop, especially ones with such a mainstream-studio (Paramount) backed release. And it was all really well done too, on a film making level- the rather apocalyptic elements, people being executed on the ground, begging to be saved while sardined inside barbed wire cages, a whole war taking place within the confines of a home, were all really quite frightening. However, the madness sort of became gratuitous, way too over the top, a little self indulgent. For instance:

SPOILERS

A baby dies. It accidentally has its neck broken by a crowd. We see this. And then the crowd eats its remains. And again, I get it. It was purposeful and symbolic (the baby is supposed to be Jesus- eating the body of Christ and such). But it just becomes too much, especially when it's supposed to be this terrible thing that we are supposed to feel devastated by. But, since we don't particularly care for Jennifer Lawrence's character, or any of the characters, really, it just doesn't matter. Instead of feeling emotionally devastated, we feel just grossed out. We feel shocked. And that, in my opinion, isn't a good thing. It makes this movie seem more like it was meant as a one-time watch, instead of something of sustenance that someone could go back and watch again and find enjoyment out of.

IN SUMMARY

So. Recommending this movie is kind of a tough one. I didn't hate this movie at all. I also didn't love it. I think 'good' or 'worth a watch' is what I would throw out there. But, "mother!" ends up being the kind of movie I wouldn't recommend to everyone. Like, Grandma shouldn't watch this one. If you're a fan of the weirder side of movies, or even of Aronofsky's other films, give "mother!" a watch. But one watch is probably all you'll need. Because in the end, "mother!" seems to be a movie that would rather emphasize its face value shock and symbolism (as pretentious as it sounds) than try to get at anything deeper than that. And hey, I bet there are parts of "mother!" that I will never forget, so hey that obnoxious promo that told me I'd never forget "mother!" might've been right.

Oof. My gut is telling my that "mother!" has to get a:

Don't Eat Babies/10