Darren Aronofsky and a descent into hell.
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I first watched Darren Aronofsky’s biblical descent from the narcissism of celebrity fame into the very pits of hell via a Hammer House of bloody horrors during the first week of its initial UK release in September of 2017, and via the medium of a date with the fairer sex. Even back in those halcyon days of an ever faraway 2017, I sure could give a young lady a whirl of a time! I could embellish this tale further but I have no need as my memory, for a recent change, remembers clearly and distinctly the young lady in question exhaling heavily as we left the reassuring darkness of our local cinema, and away from the blood drenched walls of an Aronofsky creation of immense heightened intensity that relentlessly follows you around a living and breathing house of horrors, a house her mother desires to be an Eden like “paradise” but which has descended into the pits of an unimaginable, inescapable and grotesque hell, by looking me square in the eye and saying “Well that was bloody weird!”.
Bloody weird it was. Bloody weird it still is. And brutally bloody brilliant it is too!
When I was showing that young lady the time of her life by subjecting her to this macabre and surreal dizzying descent into the destruction and re-birth of a virginal Madonna, a Mother Earth Goddess if you will, I didn’t enjoy the story being told (largely because I hated every character bar one and still find the story a little befuddling) but I LOVED the oppressive intensity, the no room to breathe or take stock of what is really happening. For this, Aronofsky takes immense credit. The house of soon to be bloody horror is open plan, under renovation, the mother, building a nest and a “home” for generations to come. Aronofsky follows his Mother Goddess, forever dressed all in white or light, dowdy grey, constantly in extreme close up or just over her shoulder, as doors are opened and doors are closed, conversations tail off between rooms as the inhabitants of this beautiful house walk amongst it, through it, live it, breathe it, consume it whole. The house is alive but the occupants are deathly wraith like figures, Mephistopheles reaching up to grab them from the fire pits of hell as their Mother Goddess, exploited, abused and mis-treated, is dragged into hell with them.
Here are your detestably unlikeable, bar one, principal players:
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“Mother” (Jennifer Lawrence) Framed constantly in a stifling extreme close up, I’d argue this was the zenith of Jennifer Lawrence’s stratospheric rise to the cream of motion pictures with a quite astounding performance of bewilderment and betrayal. Immediately a stranger within not only her own magnificent, sprawling mansion house but with the awkward and unexpected company her husband revels in, mother is treated appallingly, an objectified slave girl and servant demeaned as “She” and “Her” and “Not just a pretty face”. A medicinal potion ensures she keeps the discombobulating tremors and painful discomforts at bay as she stumbles from room to destroyed room of the Eden oasis she’d planned, before there was an unexpected knock at the door.
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“Him” (Javier Bardem) Another career highlight for the Oscar winning man (sorry, “Him”) from the idyllic island of Gran Canaria in Spain. After working with Michael Mann (Collateral), the Coen Brothers (No Country for Old Men), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Biutiful) and Sam Mendes (Skyfall), Bardem was Aronofsky’s distant, aloof and frighteningly interchangeable poet and writer consumed with writers block and the adulation and courting of a gushing, ego massaging audience. Far older than the mother he treats like a servant and takes for granted, he is a somewhat master manipulator in a grotesque power dynamic who (under Bardem’s masterful performance) dissolves from a smile into a scorn in a second, kind to callous in an instant. Unless the approval he so desperately seeks comes from the visitors unexpectedly knocking at his door to paradise.
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“Woman” (Michelle Pfeiffer) and “Man” (Ed Harris) Startling, career high performances continue here with a hateful performance of detestable unlikableness from a horribly inappropriate Michelle Pfeiffer on top form, accompanied by the wheezing, near death and miraculous recoveries of her partner in abusive crime, Ed Harris. “I must be going” he announces before coughing and spluttering into another room before recovering Lazarus like to drag the besotted, lovelorn author away on a hike into a world we never see. “Why aren’t you pregnant?” the woman badgers and sneers at the mother, and owner of the house she’s taken over with her scorn and uncaring disregard for the paradise being created around her, and a paradise descending into hell.
“The poet says it’s everyone’s house” a stranger doth proclaim. Everyone’s that is but the Mother Goddess aghast at the strangers now invited to stay “for as long as you want” and maybe, just maybe, they always have, and they always will.
Mother! (deliberate use of the exclamation mark) is the devils and dust of life and death, birth and re-birth, and a house of unspeakable bloody horrors descending into the very depths of hell. The biblical tales are here but what is more starkly apparent are the angst ridden cries for help from a violently abused Mother Goddess, and an earth raped and pillaged as society descends into the abyss of its own violent and bloody creation.
I concluded my recent review of Aronofsky’s The Whale but stating that, on the grimness scale, his current Oscar nominated film ranks a little higher than Black Swan and just below Requiem for a Dream. Mother! pushes his year 2000 opus to obsessions, depression and destructive addictive compulsions very, very close as this is as grim as it gets, and way, way before a truly unspeakable act as we head towards the denouement of the film ensures we head, directly, and without passing go, into the very pits of the darkest hell imaginable.
Horribly grim. Highly recommended.
Mother!
Thanks for reading. Just for larks as always, and always a human reaction rather than spoilers galore. With my Darren Aronofsky odyssey now complete, I present to you, should you wish to read about yet more obsessional and destructive existential angst, his 2023 Oscar contender The Whale as well as his entire cinematic back catalogue, together with a final link to my entire Film Library here:
Darren Aronofsky and 6 films for your consideration.
Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler, Black Swan and Noah. All lovingly appreciated and spoiler free.medium.com