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Mar 12, 2018therhiannamater rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
I'm not sure when Aronofsky made his transition into Lynchian archetype, but I have to say that I'm not entirely against this metamorphosis. Mother! is a visceral migration into the dark depths of the human condition. Sound pretentious enough for you? Good. If I'm a take-no-prisoners reviewer, Darren Aronofsky is a hold-your-entire-family-hostage-and-make-you-chose-who-lives filmmaker. This film is unapologetically grim, with a slow burn plot that leaves you wondering where exactly you went wrong in life to except this to be a typical isolated house suspense story. I'm definitely a fan of freak out bizarro films, but even I was expecting more Straw Dogs than Rosemary's Baby. Jennifer Lawrence was beautifully wan vision and if, like myself, you can't separate Javier Bardem from his role in No Country For Old Men, well, you wouldn't be that far off. To be honest, I can see why people didn't like the film. It's certainly not The Fountain or Black Swan, heck, not even Requiem for a Dream. "Brutal" is too kind of a word to describe the last 45 minutes of the movie and the intense tracking close-ups of the cast are at the very least unsettling at strange times. The overall allegory is painfully obvious and the progression of the story is like a Tom Wolfe fever-dream. But what Aronofsky manages to present is a maudlin allegation against the viewer themselves, and, boy, is it a harsh one.