mother movie reviews

Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!” is one of the most audacious and flat-out bizarre movies that a major studio has released in years. The director has never shied away from controversial filmmaking, but this deep dive into metaphorical horror finds him working in a register that feels crazy even for the man who made “The Fountain” and “Noah.” “mother!” is at times horrifying, at times riveting, at times baffling, and at times like nothing you’ve ever seen before. It both owes a debt to horror masters like Polanski and De Palma and is so distinctly a movie that no one else could make. At its core, it is a film about the male ego, the female instinct, and the most horrifying thing in the world: people who want more from you than you can possibly give.

“mother!” is a deceptively simple film in terms of set-up, taking place entirely at a remote home that was not-long-ago burned in a fire. Two people, named only Him (Javier Bardem) and Mother (Jennifer Lawrence), have been working to remodel the home, which belongs to him. He’s a once-famous writer, but has lost his desire to create. She’s clearly in charge of most of the decisions around the home, choosing colors to paint one of the still-decrepit rooms.

One night, there’s a knock on the door. As far as we can tell, these two people are miles from civilization—Aronofsky does a fabulous job of making the home feel dangerously remote—and it’s clear that she isn’t expecting or wanting a visitor, but he jumps to answer it. The person identified only as Man (Ed Harris) enters with a story and the man of the house offers to let him stay the night. The next day, Woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) arrives. While Lawrence’s character is hesitant to allow these people into their home, Bardem’s seems willing and eventually even eager. Of course, it helps that Man reveals he’s really a big fan of his writing. There’s nothing like a little stroking of the male ego.

To say things get stranger from here would be a massive understatement. Without spoiling anything, a film that starts in one register—feeling almost like it could be a movie like “Rosemary’s Baby”—becomes something else entirely, breaking all rules of realism. To be fair, Aronofsky hints at this early. Mother puts her hand on the wall and we zoom into the house to see something that resembles a dying heart. There’s a blood spot on the floor that doesn’t seem quite right. There’s more to the world of this film than you can even imagine, and Aronofsky only gets more intensely metaphorical as the film proceeds to one of the most simply mindblowing climaxes in a very long time. In an already notable career, the peak insanity set piece of “mother!” may be Aronofsky’s most remarkable accomplishment to date.

As for what “mother!” is about, you should be warned that this is far from a traditional horror film. Aronofsky makes it clear from early on that he won’t be playing by the rules, and he uses that freedom to examine gender roles and the differences between artistic and literal creation. Bardem’s writer regularly proclaims that he is inspired by other people, but he’s more of a taker than anything else, someone who thrives on encouragement as much as he does empathy or emotion. Lawrence’s wife is always cleaning up after the people in her house, working to build a home instead of just a showcase for her husband’s career. Of course, it’s remarkably easy to read a bit of self-reflection into “mother!”—is Aronofsky really the one who ignores the safety of domesticity and privacy to create? People will write lengthy interpretations, some of which will contradict each other, and I think that’s a major part of what Aronofsky wants here—to work in a style that allows for various readings of the film and no easy answers. Those looking for a straight-up horror movie should definitely look elsewhere.

Which should not imply that “mother!” isn’t often terrifying. Working with his regular gifted cinematographer Matthew Libatique, Aronofsky shoots the film with a stunning degree of close-up. We are on top of Lawrence and Bardem for most of the film, which not only amplifies the claustrophobia but allows Aronofsky and Libatique to play with a limited perspective. We stay close on Mother, and can barely tell what’s happening behind her or to the sides. The lack of establishing shots keeps us off the game when it comes to a typical horror experience. We often spend horror films looking for answers—Who’s the killer? Who’s going to die? Who’s going to live? “mother!” changes the genre rules. It thrives on horror of confusion, which is the main currency of the film. It’s a visually striking film, although we shouldn’t expect anything less from Aronofsky.

The tight look of the film puts a lot of weight on Lawrence’s shoulders, and I’m not quite sure she can handle it. Her character is a tough one for any actress in the sense that she’s often as confused as we are, forced to respond to the increasing nightmare around her, and Lawrence doesn’t quite nail every beat. And when the film demands she turn up the terror in the final act, she just didn’t sell it for me. I’m not saying she’s bad here, but I’m also not convinced that there aren’t performers who could have done a great deal more with the role. More memorable, although this is also by virtue of the juiciness of her too-small role, is the fantastic Michelle Pfeiffer. She marches into a room like she owns it, and nearly walks away with every scene she’s in. It’s the part you’ve been wanting her to get for years, and I hope it leads to more high-profile work.

“mother!” is going to make people angry. It’s going to make people ecstatic. It’s that kind of film—a movie that feels like it was purposefully made to be divisive, and completely unapologetic and unrestrained in terms of its creator’s vision. Love it or hate it, and there will be many on both sides, it’s a film people will talk about, which is both exactly what Aronofsky wants, and what we should demand more of from our movies.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

Ed Harris as Man
Javier Bardem as Eli
Domhnall Gleeson as Oldest Son
Jovan Adepo as Cupbearer
Jennifer Lawrence as Grace
Michelle Pfeiffer as Woman
Andrew Weisblum
Darren Aronofsky

Cinematographer

Matthew Libatique

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“Mother!” Review: Darren Aronofsky’s Thrilling, Horrifying, Nearly Unbelievable Satire of Fame

“Mother!” is Darren Aronofsky’s “Stardust Memories,” his vehemently exaggerated satire on the burdens of fame. And for anyone who thought that Woody Allen’s 1980 film looked a gift horse in the mouth, critiquing fame from within its comfortable confines, “Mother!” tops it—it’s the cinematic version of an equine root canal. The films’ similarities in intent and differences in degree emerge in one aspect in particular: while “Stardust Memories” doesn’t exactly flatter Allen’s character, in Aronofsky’s film the artist—freed from direct identification with Aronofsky’s own persona—comes off as an ingratiating monster. “Mother!” is the story of a mid-career male artist—a writer, played by Javier Bardem—whose conjoined qualities of celebrity and vanity give rise to a uniquely destructive power. For Aronofsky, the calculus is cruel: the adoring crowd is motivated by a greedy and cavalier selfishness that is sought, enabled, nourished, sustained, and encouraged by the artist himself. His film flirts with the ridiculous and sometimes falls into it—though to ridicule it, or Aronofsky, for doing so is to miss both the point and the pleasure.

There’s a reason the movie is called “ Mother! ”: its protagonist isn’t even the artist but the woman who is his life partner, played by Jennifer Lawrence. (The movie’s characters have no names; I’ll identify them here by the actors’ first names.) “Mother!” is essentially a two-hour, two-part film. The first hour or so is an extended exposition, one that’s so uncertain in tone as to be almost unbearably dull and empty (I’ll toss out some mild spoilers for that section, none for the second one). If I were watching as a casual viewer rather than as a critic, I might have walked out after twenty minutes or a half-hour—and it would have been a great loss. The first half of the movie is the story of sterility—of writer’s block and of sexual trouble; the second is the story of fecundity, of artistic creation and of procreation, of a teeming artistic life and a teeming family life. Not to overdo the spoilers, but, in the second half, Javier writes a new book, Jennifer gives birth to their baby, and all hell breaks loose.

The movie is set in and around a huge old house in a vast and remote clearing, in which the couple live, together and alone. The house was ravaged by fire, and Jennifer has made its restoration—along with the care and feeding of her partner, the writer—her principal activity. Javier has a fancy, book-lined study, but he admits that, at the moment, he’s hardly writing. Then, a stranger (played by Ed Harris) knocks on the door; he identifies himself as an orthopedic surgeon who teaches at a nearby hospital. Jennifer is suspicious, but Javier welcomes him warmly, and Ed makes himself at home, all too arrogantly—he smokes indoors without asking, he says that he took Jennifer for Javier’s daughter, not his wife. Invited to visit Javier’s study, Ed expresses (and, as we learn, feigns) surprise at learning that Javier is the author of his favorite book. Javier basks in Ed’s admiration and invites him—to Jennifer’s dismay and bewilderment—to stay over with them. Ed’s wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) soon shows up, too, and she, too, casually insults and defies Jennifer. Ed, Javier tells Jennifer, is a “crazy fan” of his work, is fatally ill (he does cough a lot), and “he wanted to meet me before he’s gone.” As a result of this adulation, Javier takes the side of Ed and Michelle against Jennifer in a series of dismissive, insulting, and invasive actions–call them, rightly, microaggressions. Jennifer endures absurdly extreme emotional abrasions, local dissatisfactions, and frustrations solely as a result of Javier’s vanity, his neediness, or his sense of his needs for the purpose of his creation—and she endures them willingly, because of her devotion, her support, and her love for him. The segment is raised to a higher pitch of chaotic absurdity when Michelle and Ed’s two adult sons (Brian Gleeson and Domhnall Gleeson), exemplary large adult sons , show up. They loutishly quarrel and brutally fight, resulting in serious damage to the house and causing absurdly exaggerated yet deeply consequential injury.

Soon thereafter, the movie shifts drastically. Ed and Michelle and their crew are gone, and the first part’s mournful sterility is broken by fecundity: Jennifer is pregnant, and Javier—comedically but incontrovertibly—begins to write again, and his new work is an instant success. The birth of their child coincides with his great new flourish of fame, and the fans start to show up at the house. That’s when the movie takes on a dazzlingly exciting, crazed, and apocalyptic tone as, in what should be a moment of intimate joy for Javier and Jennifer, she faces—as a result of his courting of the crowd—a new and ever-increasing series of grotesque torments that are so extreme that they’d be ludicrous, except that they’re not funny at all; rather, they virtually shriek with rage and horror.

“Mother!” is Aronofsky’s reckoning with the struggles and temptations of the life of an artist, but it isn’t a work of autobiography or a self-portrait. It is, rather, a satire on a syndrome and also a self-scourging confession, not of any actual misdeeds or abuses but of possibilities—a self-cautionary tale that doesn’t have to be rooted in stories to which Aronofsky had unique or privileged access, because it’s the hyper-exaggerated version of stories that more or less everybody knows, even if only from their tabloid distortions. Aronofsky offers, in “Mother!,” a report from the realm of art, of male artists, and both reveals and admits that many of them draw their artistic and personal sustenance from the blood of young women—that their art and also their domestic comfort depends on their virtual vampirizing of adoring young women who are attracted to their talent, their fame, their experience, perhaps even their money, but whose love is nonetheless utterly sincere and whose devotion is nonetheless utterly unselfish and ultimately proves far more self-sacrificing than they had ever intended.

In Aronofsky’s vision, the destructiveness of the artist’s vanity goes hand in hand with the destructiveness of the crowd, of the individuals whose enthusiasm, whose fandom, whose fleeting or symbolic connection to the artist gives them their own toehold on the public realm, on a public identity. “Mother!” is a grand-scale tragedy of the commons , in which an artist becomes a celebrity, a public figure and a public resource, and then gets consumed by the members of the audience who draw upon them for a sort of sustenance, albeit factitious—an illusion that the artist himself fosters for his own advantage and gratification. (Aronofsky also scathingly satirizes the cold comforts of an artist’s works of faux-empathetic pride.)

Though the tone of “Mother!” is one of freakazoidal exaggeration, the film’s underlying subject—borders and boundaries—is unfolded with earnest consideration. The firmness of the boundary between an artist’s private life and public identity is one that Aronofsky imagines, in its absence, as a crucial matter of well-being for the artist, the artist’s domestic partner and family members, and for the members of the public as well (since members of the public, no less than artists, have the capacity to turn into monsters). At the same time, Aronofsky sees domestic boundaries that divide the artist from his partner—the division of domestic labor into the art and the life, the gap between the artist and his partner in matters far more important than age, namely, experience, accomplishment, worldliness, and wealth. If “Mother!” is a vision of an artist feeding vanity through love and fame, it’s also a vision of an artist feeding vanity at home through a love that has its own inequality, its own one-sidedness, built into it.

The connection between the movie’s two sections—between the microaggressions of Ed and Michelle’s characters and the apocalyptic destruction of the hordes of fans who follow—isn’t incidental; it’s essential to the movie’s grander, even more wide-ranging discernment. “Mother!” dramatizes the inevitable connection between casual slights and grievous wrongs, the slippery slope that inescapably binds dismissive or insulting or contemptuous actions on an intimate scale with acts of grievous violence. The movie shows that Javier’s sense of entitlement or privilege asserted in private is insidious precisely because it goes unspoken; it’s a kind of action that can be masked as benign. Aronofsky catches the intention to terrify, and, thereby, to silence and to dominate, that’s implicit in the flip personal interactions in which power is asserted and expressed.

The dramatically symbolic, metaphorical depiction of the crises of artists’ struggles for fame and love isn’t new to movies; Hal Hartley achieved it in his 1997 film “Henry Fool,” and there’s a remarkable and unfortunately rare film from 1966, “The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean,” by Juleen Compton, that I saw at Metrograph on Saturday (its one screening), a deeply tender yet exuberantly cartoonish, artificial yet quasi-documentary drama about a young woman from the Ozarks (Sharon Henesy) whose clairvoyant gifts are employed by a rock band to feed their own celebrity. (The young Sam Waterston is a member of the band.) But what “Mother!” achieves, by the catastrophic reach of Aronofsky’s imagination and the grand scale of his filmmaking, is an object that fuses with its subject, a movie that thrusts its bottomless maw of voracious ambitions and desires at viewers and defies them to see his world, and their own, in it. What’s thrilling, horrifying, and nearly unbelievable about “Mother!” is that it exists—not that a studio would put money into it but that a filmmaker would think it up and realize it with such gleefully cataclysmic ardor.

The New Yorker Festival 2017 Spotlight: Substance, Style, and Sofia Coppola

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User reviews

One of the toughest films I've ever tried to review. I liked it a lot, but can't recommend it.

Jan 7, 2021

Messiness 3:16

TroliusMaximus
Oct 3, 2017

Anxiety: The Movie.

colorthekid
Oct 6, 2019

Aronofsky takes us on a wild journey with the house as the world allegory.

Jan 6, 2018

Insane, beautiful, terrorizing, epic, puzzling, intoxicating, gross, masterful. (Spoilers)

Farshnoshket
Sep 17, 2017

My god, mother is one hell of a film.

wasabiteabag
Sep 18, 2017

Thick on analogies and symbolism, to the point of overkill

Sep 10, 2017

Religious allegories abound but really it's just pretentious nonsense

joebloggscity
Jun 11, 2018

Aronofsky's mother! will be hated by many, but loved by a precious few

matthewacollier
Sep 15, 2017

Story of Life from a Religious Perspective

Sep 12, 2017

Pretentious and annoying

Jul 21, 2018

Art's Not Safe

kirkstraight
Sep 16, 2017
goddessofwar-92545
Jun 3, 2018

From Eden to Armageddon in 2 Hours

tigerfish50
Sep 30, 2017

I Loved It But Who Could I Recommend It To?

Michael_Elliott
Sep 27, 2017

Easily the most intense move I've ever seen

Moab (mother of all box-office bombs), wtf did i just watch.

chrisparker
Jun 6, 2018

a film that fails on multiple levels

jdavidpayne
Sep 22, 2017

Trigger Warning

jaywensley2004

Another dark Aronofsky movie but this one wasn't that good for me

alansabljakovic-39044
May 21, 2019
sherripadgitt-55536
Feb 15, 2018

Mother Nature, and how we are killing ourselves.

Jennifer lawrence hubris.

Sep 4, 2017

If there is a movie theater in hell, this is playing there

johnellsworth
Sep 20, 2017

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Review: ‘Mother!’ Is a Divine Comedy, Dressed as a Psychological Thriller

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By A.O. Scott

Sept. 13, 2017

The couple live in a grand, oddly-shaped Victorian house in the middle of a tree-ringed meadow — less a McMansion than a perennial fixer-upper. The work of home improvement, of literal homemaking, you might say, falls to the young wife. Her husband, who has been around longer than she has, is absorbed in his work. He’s a poet, and the torment of creation distracts him from her needs, at times rendering him all but oblivious to her presence. Neither partner is given a name. They are played by Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem. The movie is called “Mother!” The first line of dialogue is “Baby?”

The missus walks around in her nightgown, lonely and confused, especially when her hubby starts bringing home guests. “Who are these people?” she asks him. She never receives an adequate answer — they are big fans of the poet’s work, though — and for a while her bewilderment is ours as well. But we, at least, are in a position to analyze the abundantly available clues and figure out who everybody is, the poet and his lady included. Or if not quite who they are, then at least what they represent. Because though this extravagant conversation piece of a movie, written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, feints toward psychological thriller territory and spends a delicious half-hour or so in the realm of domestic farce, it plants its flag defiantly on the wind-swept peak of religious (and ecological) allegory.

I don’t mean this in the vague, Superman-is-really-a-messiah-figure term paper sense of the word. At a certain point — it will vary according to your Sunday school attendance or what you remember from freshman English — you will find yourself in possession of the key to the analogical storage room where the Real Meaning resides. Up until that point, you might have thought this was a marital melodrama set in a nightmarish version of a ’50s academic marriage. When Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer show up, you might mistake “Mother!” for a savage, scrambled “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” adaptation. But then, sometime between the first violent death and the collapse of the kitchen sink, you realize that something else is going on.

Here I must confess a different kind of puzzlement. Is there such a thing as an interpretive spoiler? Is it wrong to reveal a movie’s conceit, rather than elements of its story? Ordinarily, such questions would be absurd, but Mr. Aronofsky ingeniously braids his movie’s hermeneutic structure into its plot, making it hard to say what it’s about without revealing what happens. All of the suspense and most of the fun in “Mother!” — and don’t listen to anyone who natters on about how intense or disturbing it is; it’s a hoot! — has to do with the elaboration and execution of a central idea.

Once you grasp that idea, you are left wondering just how far Mr. Aronofsky will go with it. The answer is all the way and then some — from Genesis to Revelation and back again. The house is referred to early in the film as “paradise”; Ms. Lawrence refers to a relatively minor mess as an “apocalypse.” These are more teasers than jokes, and the punch lines arrive with mesmerizing literalness. Holy Eucharist, Batman!

Not that Mr. Aronofsky follows any known doctrinal path, any more than he did in “Noah,” which upset some believers by taking liberties with its scriptural source. “Mother!” casts a wider net, gathering influences from cinema — Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, Gaspar Noé — from literature and, most strikingly, from painting. Mr. Aronofsky and his usual cinematographer, Matthew Libatique , conduct a master class in light, shadow and Renaissance art. Ms. Lawrence glows like an Italian Madonna, while the deep lines in Mr. Bardem’s face and the sorrowful cast of his eyes suggest El Greco. The infernal chaos of the climactic sequences are pure Hieronymus Bosch, updated for the age of Kristen Wiig and automatic weaponry.

It falls to the actors to endow this highly symbolic, pictorially overloaded environment with a sense of human reality — with flesh and blood and feeling. Mr. Bardem, alpha male and omega man, is the kind of actor who can endow an abstraction with gravity and tenderness. (He did pretty much that in “No Country for Old Men.” ) The enigmatic nature of his character in “Mother!” allows him to relax, to be playful and charismatic, and to disappear. Mr. Harris and especially Ms. Pfeiffer bring a jolt of shtick and a whisper of camp, qualities that you may miss terribly when they depart.

Ms. Lawrence, for her part, bears an impossible burden. In dramatic terms, she is a passive, reactive protagonist, a cipher and, in the strict sense of the word, an icon. Called upon to embody all of womankind — and a lot else besides — she is denied the chance to be human, and her blankness empties the film of emotional power.

What it has, instead, is extravagant sensation and churning intellectual energy. Mr. Aronofsky is a virtuoso of mood and timing, a devoted student of form and technique straining to be a credible visionary. But as wild and provocative as his images can be, there is something missing — an element of strangeness, of difficulty, of the kind of inspiration that overrides mere cleverness.

On the other hand, “Mother!” made me laugh harder and more frequently than just about any other movie I’ve seen this year. I don’t say this derisively. Mr. Aronofsky’s visual wit and dexterous, disciplined camera movements create frissons of comic terror. His gift for escalation — evident in the marvelous crescendo of frenzied action that occupies most of the movie’s second half — may be unmatched in his generation of filmmakers.

It’s not clear that his gifts match his ambitions. He wants to be Kubrick, but maybe what we need is a new Blake Edwards. At a time when film comedy is mostly a verbal and psychical affair — the domain of writers and clowns — there is a dearth of funny directors with Mr. Aronofsky’s sophisticated chops. If he didn’t take himself so seriously, he could be a great comic filmmaker. But maybe “Mother!” proves that he already is.

Mother! Rated R. Washed in the blood. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute.

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‘mother’: film review | venice 2017.

Darren Aronofsky's 'mother!' stars Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem as a married couple whose lives start unraveling when unexpected guests arrive at their home.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Writer-director Darren Aronofsky wants to have his commercial cake and chomp down on some vexing personal issues, too, in mother! , a very Rosemary’s Baby -like intimate horror tale that definitely grabs your attention and eventually soars well over the top to make the bold concluding statement that, for some creators, art is more important than life. How the film’s compelling star Jennifer Lawrence may feel about this sentiment is another matter, but this is a tale that, like any number of fanciful genre outings, both pulls you in with its intriguing central dramatic situation and pushes you out with some mightily far-fetched plot contrivances. Aesthetically resembling Black Swan more than any of the director’s other previous work, but with touches of Requiem for a Dream, this Paramount release could score solidly with the public on the basis of the genre elements and the star’s drawing power. It opens Sept. 15 after festival bows in Venice and Toronto.

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mother! Reviews

Aronofsky "recycles" others' and, ironically, his own previous film ideas, resulting in Mother! appearing an unoriginal horror concoction, an uncomfortable reminder of other, much better films.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 2, 2024

If mother! lacks the refinement of a manifesto for a new breed of movie theater flick, it makes up for it in the audacity to be unique.

Full Review | Dec 6, 2023

Once movies leave their creators’ hands they often become their own thing. “mother!” benefits from that truth. While Aronofsky has a pointed personal meaning behind it, what you bring to the film will help define it for you.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 24, 2022

You may think it’s high art or garbage, but this movie is a singular experience.

Full Review | Jun 21, 2022

The problem is the hyperbolic approach that marks every aspect of the storytelling and renders the experience hollow.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 17, 2022

The anxiety-prone should beware: this might be a rough watch. For everyone else: "enjoy" the ride!

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 21, 2022

The film is ugly, disturbing, and not for everyone -- it's also fascinating, thought-provoking, and rich with religious allegories.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 18, 2021

It's a good thing that films as bonkers as this exist...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 27, 2021

It can be a frustrating film at times, but also so intriguing.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 23, 2021

Mother! is what happens when a dude has an idea he thinks is brilliant and no one checks him on it.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2021

A deliberately opaque movie. Like looking into a self-reflective mirror you will take away whatever you put into it. The only thing sure about it is that it is most confounding studio movie of the year.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 1, 2021

It all goes horribly wrong in the ridiculous finale

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 19, 2020

Aronofsky gleefully drags his audience through a bevy of carnage but maintains just the pace to gaslight viewers into understanding the film's Polanskian brand of logic.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 23, 2020

Mother! is a dense, twisting fever dream spawned from some sort of mad genius. Depending who you are, you will either end up fascinated by the whole thing or confused and angry with it.

Full Review | Jul 3, 2020

Aronofsky manages to make the film hide the narrative weaknesses under the curtain of the allegories that make up society.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jun 27, 2020

To fully appreciate the mother! experience, you must see it in a theater, where you are forced to commit. You either engage with it or you run screaming from the theater.

Full Review | May 13, 2020

It was pretty obvious what was going on to me.

This was such nonsense.

mother! dives down a dream logic rabbit hole and creates a reality where anything can happen.

Full Review | Mar 30, 2020

Still, pretentious and overblown as it most certainly is, there is enjoyment to be had while watching (or even re-watching) Mother!

Full Review | Feb 29, 2020

20th Century Fox

Summary A couple's relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence.

Directed By : Darren Aronofsky

Written By : Darren Aronofsky

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Jennifer Lawrence

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Common Sense Says
Parents Say 31 Reviews
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Common Sense Media Review

Horrifying situations in surreal, escalating nightmare.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 17+?

Realistic, explosive violence that escalates to warlike chaos and horror gore (s

See-through garments; two sex scenes (heavy breathing, but no graphic nudity). A

Infrequent use of angry curses, including "f--k," "s--t," &q

Adults make a toast with alcohol. A mysterious medicinal substance (implied to b

Any Positive Content?

The characters read mostly as representations of ideas -- except for the protago

The film is highly metaphorical; it's not really meant to be taken literally

Parents need to know that while mother! isn't as gratuitously graphic as torture-porn movies like Saw , it's definitely violent and gory -- and in a way that's actually more effective and horrifying. There are scenes of sieges and executions, but it's much more about how director Darren Aronofsky ratchets up the film's tension in subtly terrifying ways, with memorable images and ideas that might give younger viewers lasting nightmares. There's sensuality without explicit sex -- and when a topless woman is shown, it's definitely not in a sexual context. There's also some language (including "c--t," "f--k," and "whore") and drinking/substance use. But more than anything, it's the intensity of Aronofsky's movie that disqualifies it for most younger viewers (and even some older ones). Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem star.

To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Violence & Scariness

Realistic, explosive violence that escalates to warlike chaos and horror gore (sieges, executions). Though it doesn't approach the gratuitously graphic nature of torture porn, the violence is very effectively horrifying and nightmarish.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

See-through garments; two sex scenes (heavy breathing, but no graphic nudity). A woman is shown topless in a horrifying and not sexual context.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent use of angry curses, including "f--k," "s--t," "whore," "bitch," "damn," and "c--t." Also "god help you."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults make a toast with alcohol. A mysterious medicinal substance (implied to be like laudanum) is used repeatedly, in a sinister context.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

The characters read mostly as representations of ideas -- except for the protagonist, who's extremely smart and capable, with unshakable maternal instincts; she tries her best to maintain her family. But there's a sea of negative representations around her.

Positive Messages

The film is highly metaphorical; it's not really meant to be taken literally. But amidst its horrific situations is a mother fighting selflessly for her child.

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Parents Say (31)
Kids Say (22)

Based on 31 parent reviews

Gruesome, disturbing yet deep film left me speechless. Twice.

What's the story.

MOTHER! starts with a couple in a cocoon: a secluded old house, away from the world. But all is not quite well. The young wife ( Jennifer Lawrence ) is warm, beautiful, devoted, and highly capable -- she's restoring their once-devastated home all by herself -- but the middle-aged husband ( Javier Bardem ) is suffering through a long creative dry spell. His frustrations are spilling into their relationship. When unexpected visitors arrive ( Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer , for starters), their safe existence is deeply challenged in this highly metaphorical film.

Is It Any Good?

Darren Aronofsky 's mother! is superbly crafted -- and confounding. It defies easy description. It's not the kind of film you can simply call "good" or "bad," though its technique -- sound design, production design, cinematography, editing -- is certainly top-notch, instantly award-worthy. And while the film's idiosyncratic journey into surrealistic nightmare doesn't make it easy to recommend, the adventurous might find it rewarding. It begins as a deeply unsettling, extraordinarily acted chamber piece. The central couple (Lawrence, Bardem) are in an idyllic location, but there's subtle tension in their relationship as the husband struggles with his work. External forces (in the form of Harris and Pfeiffer, to start) threaten their equilibrium but also invigorate them. Aronofsky's script is purposefully underwritten to allow space for actors at the top of their game to show a great deal by relating to each other. And, just as much is unsaid, much is unseen: Meticulously arranged shots allow figures barely into the frame, creating tension as we peer around corners, down long halls, through doorways. The expertly crafted soundscape places audiences inside the beautiful and terrifying old house.

In its later stages, the film escalates in every way. Its earlier movements are marked by finely tuned ratcheting up of everything; it all occurs by degrees. As the cocoon shatters, so does reality. Without giving too much away, mother! becomes an all-out cinematic assault, for better or worse. It's a highly metaphorical film, but to discuss what its underlying themes reveal themselves to be would ruin the experience for those who haven't seen it. In a director's note, Aronofsky says this "fever dream" script "poured out of" him in five days. That's both easy and hard to believe. It has the insanity of dream logic, as well as the haggard free-association of a subconscious bombarded by news reports, phone alerts, and Hurricane Sandy, as the note cites. On the other hand, the film's execution is so precise, so expert that it feels too painstakingly layered to be spontaneous, even as it becomes more surreal. "Fever dream" is the right description for this dazzling display of cinematic skill that veers into madness.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in mother! How does it compare to what you've seen in ultra-gory or slasher horror movies? Which had more of an impact on you? Why? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

Did you notice the movie's use of sound? Were there times when what you heard didn't go with what you saw (for instance, when she opened the door to the basement and it sounded like a low roar)? How did the sounds you heard intensify the experience?

Sometimes the camera intensely follows the main character, and sometimes there are carefully set-up shots in which other characters are barely in frame. Other times we peer around corners and down long hallways. How did those shots make you feel?

Did you notice anything in the movie that you might consider sexist? Why?

What do you think the film was about?

Movie Details

In theaters : September 15, 2017
On DVD or streaming : December 19, 2017
Cast : Jennifer Lawrence , Michelle Pfeiffer , Javier Bardem , Ed Harris
Director : Darren Aronofsky
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Paramount Pictures
Genre : Horror
Run time : 115 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : strong disturbing violent content, some sexuality, nudity and language
Last updated : September 9, 2024

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Movie Review: mother! (2017)

Matthew Roe
Movie Reviews
6 responses
--> September 16, 2017

Darren Aronofsky has become a stalwart of complex themes bursting at subconscious seams with metaphor and symbolism throughout his impressive career. His darkly brutal handling of vivid despondency and ardent intentions has made his voice one of the most uniquely inspiring and eclectic in contemporary film. mother! has seemingly hit a crescendo of its director’s now-iconic stylization; blending elements from all of his previous works into a cacophony of screaming nerves and bleeding hearts. Multiple viewings and discussions of the feature may not be enough to parse the wellspring of sentiment and allusion that Aronofsky and company manages to evoke.

The daily life of Him (Javier Bardem, “ Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales ”) and Mother (Jennifer Lawrence, “ Passengers ”) inside their secluded home acts as the central focal point. Bardem is an acclaimed poet struggling with writer’s block, and Lawrence (as his wife) is in the process of meticulously reconstructing his previous home room by room, doting on him as she also evidently idolizes his work to a degree. When an uninvited man (Ed Harris, “ Run All Night ”) and his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer, “ Dark Shadows ”) arrive at their home, their pacific life is flipped on its ear in starkly barbarous fashion. Though this plot setup has been played before (“ Straw Dogs ,” “House on the Edge of the Park”), this is where the expected comes to an end. The film dives headfirst into possible themes and archetypes that could be critical of religious dogma, the creative process, the ideals of motherhood and parenting, the dangers in repressing desire, even a revision on creation itself. Though it is is imperative you should never overthink a film, it is just as damaging to underthink it. mother! abounds in insinuations that are impossible to ignore; not necessarily for the tropes picked, but for the way they are brought to task.

Relying on half-hearted horror tropes and tepid jump scares to unseat expectations throughout the first act, it quickly evolves into a different beast altogether. The always-impressive cinematography by Aronofsky’s career-long director of photography Matthew Libatique is taut and unrelenting — slowly turning from long sweeping takes to live in insular claustrophobia. This switch easily represents the ever-increasing unhinging of Mother, complimenting her character’s mental digression perfectly. Though the filmmakers use many visual techniques, edits and imagery almost directly lifted from “ Black Swan ” and “The Fountain,” the movie remains fresh in its bold use of multilayered diegetic and manipulated sound. Though Aronofsky’s brilliant sound designer Brian Emrich was absent from this film (from “ Noah ” as well), his influences are felt as Craig Henighan (“ Deadpool ”) constructs an auditory nightmare overflowing with rich hand-wringing tension.

Though the film has been classified as a horror; it really isn’t one. Just as with “Black Swan,” it seems that Aronofsky’s idea of horror isn’t through a direct attempt at scaring audiences through shock, but in the confusion and desperation of his protagonists in dire situations. The terror is the result of what isn’t understood and how the mind processes that incertitude, always compounded by questions that can not necessarily be answered. The ambiguity of the audio-visual assault editor Andrew Weisblum (“ Moonrise Kingdom ”) builds oozes with edginess and exhaustion than continually mounts with no reprieve. Perturbation evolves alongside pitch-black humor and off-the-wall incredulousness till the resulting trepidation is so intense that it bursts violently through the final moments of the work. And at the end of it all, nothing is certain or necessarily solved, which results in the film working as an effective and paralyzing experience.

Already the boiling subject of a fire-hot debate of its strategies and motifs (and rightfully so), there is nothing clean-cut about Aronofsky’s latest outing. It possesses such a raw nervousness and blistering suspense that it will undoubtedly (and continually) coax out exceptional discomfort in those who take the trip. It does not equal the same utter hopelessness and abject sorrow of the third act from “Requiem for a Dream,” but mirrors its rising tension and emotional resonance so effectively, that the result is yet another cerebral cinematic roundhouse. mother! is a haunting, enigmatic and divisive piece that should, and will, be studied long into the future for its formidable explorations in craft, narrative and overall direction.

Tagged: couple , house , relationship , stranger , vision

A Maryland-based film critic and award-winning filmmaker, founder of Heaven’s Fire Films. Has written film critique and theory for FilmSnobbery, Community Soul, The Baltimore Examiner, AXS, Men's Confidence Magazine, Screen Anarchy, and IonCinema. He writes the film theory column "Anarchic Cinema" for Film Inquiry, DVD/Blu-ray reviews for Under the Radar, and movie reviews for Film Threat.

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'Movie Review: mother! (2017)' have 6 comments

September 16, 2017 @ 12:23 pm often with clothes on

I liked mother but I didn’t. I liked the slow and methodical buildup or should I say decent into madness but that’s all I liked about it. Aronofsky needs to dial back on his symbolism, if you miss any of what he’s going for in the movie like I did, it will be lost on you, and there are better choices to play the Jennifer Lawrence role. She’s a good actress but she didn’t feel right for it.

September 16, 2017 @ 12:42 pm Funky John

I don’t watch Darren Aronofsky movies. They confuse me more than entertain me.

September 16, 2017 @ 1:10 pm drastc

Weird movie. Def creepy, lots of disturbing imagery. Reviewer is the exception, most people will not like what they see.

September 16, 2017 @ 3:02 pm Saul

Sweet review! Since the first trailer, I’ve been looking forward to this. Cinema needs more mind trip Aronofsky films!

September 17, 2017 @ 1:51 am djv124

Uh, no. Not at all. I’ve been a huge fan of Aronofsky since first watching Requiem For a Dream (Didn’t care too much fo Pi) and honestly, he’s been my favorite director ever since. I literally couldn’t wait to see Mother! and in fact went to a Thursday night showing of it at my local theater. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was, for many reasons, none of which you seemed to notice or touch upon. For starters, Jennifer Lawrence. She’s completely miscast in this film. I know you might think it was bold and daring for Darren to use a female actress who in virtually every movie role she’s ever had been this strong protagonist to suddenly play a doormat, but this role needed more… nuance to the shock of what was happening. Nothing against JLaw, but she would’ve been dead last on my list of actresses to play this role. Why not get a girl who has a very, very good emotional face? Somebody who can tell a story with a twitch of her lips? There are many actresses out there that can do that, and sadly, JLAW is NOT one of them. This film had so much close up reaction shots… you needed a much stronger face for this movie to work. Second, the actual filming of this movie. Sorry, but 16MM and iphones do not make great films. They scream pretentiousness, and most of all, it was just too distracting. I hate films that use this kind of approach to their camera work. It’s okay for some shots in a movie but nearly the entire run time? By the hour and forty minute mark, I wanted to throw up (and not from the gross as all heck sequence at the end with the baby. That’s all I’m going to say about that). The third and biggest problem with this film is that it never made its point clear. It didn’t even try. I suppose you could say the point was really clear, that Javier is God and the house and JLAW are the planet or whatever, that Michelle and her Ed Harris are Adam and Eve, their children Cain and Abel, and that as the world got more and more populated, God became more and more in love with the idea of all these people on earth loving him, no matter the consequences, but then… why have a Swat team in it, or people with hoods over their heads getting executed, or the million other graphic images that were supposed to equal to what? This idea of devotion causing death and abject misery because we choose to be devoted to God? Or something like that? Or… huh? I’m not even scratching the surface here with allegories. You could also say the movie dealt with motherhood as a whole, or as the experience between how an artist needs unrequited love to be an artist and be inspired, no matter the costs. And so on. I mean, take your pick… I counted no less than five huge allegories you could pull from this film. And hopefully you see the huge problem there. I am all for a movie being abstract and not necessarily spelling things out for you neatly. Letting you as a viewer come to your own conclusions. But at the same time, this movie felt too much like a faery tale for adults, complete with graphic horror that happens, in order to teach us a lesson. BUT WHAT LESSON WERE WE SUPPOSED TO TAKE FROM IT? I mean, requiem for a dream and Black Swan… both films had a point to their madness and horror. Requiem’s catalyst for the bonkers ending it had was drugs. Black Swan was a ballerina’s obsession to be perfect led her to die in a state of absolute perfection. But this movie… it would’ve been amazing if that WTF ending wasn’t so… WTF, you know? Like I was given SOME clue about why I sat there and endured it all. Like I said, I love Darren, always have, and I still will go see his films, but this is one that we all can pass on and forget about. The sooner the better, because it truly was a waste of his genius and talent. Why make a film that nobody will ever understand? Unless, of course, you don’t care about your audience, only about indulging yourself, in which case don’t ask me to pay nearly 30 dollars for me and my date’s tickets to see the film. Just saying. OVERALL GRADE: C-.

September 18, 2017 @ 11:59 am uihhhhhhhhhhhi

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What the critics are saying about Darren Aronofsky's completely mad/genius Mother!

The first screenings for the Jennifer Lawrence thriller have equalled terrified and confused reviewers

Thomas Ling
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The first reviews for Jennifer Lawrence’s new film Mother! are out and critics are seriously impressed. And incredibly disturbed.

Many were quick to praise Darren Aronofsky’s new “hellish” thriller, with some arguing it's the director's darkest work yet – Vanity Fair claims “It makes Black Swan look like an episode of Murder, She Wrote”.

That isn’t surprising considering the plot: Mother! follows an unnamed woman (Lawrence) and her frustrated artist husband (Javier Bardem), as their remote mansion is plagued by a series of creepy visitors.

Yet however harrowing the story, most are in agreement that the cast – in particular, J-Law – are captivating throughout.

The Hollywood Reporter writes, “There’s certainly no faulting the actors, who, with the exception of the excellent and always audience-engaging Lawrence, all trigger a significant measure of creepiness.”

And Time magazine says: “The main reason to keep watching is Lawrence, receptive and radiant.”

But apart from Lawrence’s performance, most critics left the cinema asking one question: what just happened?

The Playlist asserts: “The only way to warn you without spoiling is to say that foolhardy is the soul who believes that, having witnessed what you’ve just witnessed, the film cannot possibly get any more insane. It can always get more insane, and it always does.”

And then there’s this fantastically blunt verdict from The Daily Beast : “This is a film designed to f**k with you. And f**k with you it does.”

Many also declared that, yes, Mother! does deserve that exclamation point in its title. The Telegraph writes: "A sick joke, an urgent warning and a roar into the abyss, Mother! earns its exclamation mark three times over and more".

And The Playlist claimed: "Seldom has a title ever earned its exclamation point in more emphatic fashion. In fact it deserves a few more, so here they are: !!!!!!!!!”

Consider yourself warned.

Mother! hits UK cinemas 15 September

Thomas is Digital editor at BBC Science Focus. Writing about everything from cosmology to anthropology, he specialises in the latest psychology, health and neuroscience discoveries. Thomas has a Masters degree (distinction) in Magazine Journalism from the University of Sheffield and has written for Men’s Health, Vice and Radio Times. He has been shortlisted as the New Digital Talent of the Year at the national magazine Professional Publishers Association (PPA) awards. Also working in academia, Thomas has lectured on the topic of journalism to undergraduate and postgraduate students at The University of Sheffield.

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Mother! Review

Darren Aronofsky is known for making eclectic films that may be more metaphor than a straightforward story. His newest endeavor is mother! , a movie which may be the single most surreal thing ever made by a man known for the surreal. Mother! is unique, compelling, and remarkable. It's terrifying, bizarre, and amazing. There's about a 50% chance you're going to fucking hate it.

Mother! stars Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem as a couple (they're never given names, nobody in the film is) living in a secluded house which Lawrence's character has been single-handedly fixing up while her husband, a poet, tries (and mostly fails) to overcome his writer's block. Things begin to get strange almost immediately when Ed Harris knocks on their front door, apparently by mistake. But Bardem welcomes him into their home almost instantly and just as quickly invites him to stay the night. His wife, understandably, is shocked by this, as he never asked her, but she goes along amiably enough. The next day, Michelle Pfeiffer arrives, playing Harris' wife, and she too is welcomed into the house immediately. Lawrence's character continues to go along with it, though the new couple makes themselves a little too at home, a little too quickly, in her house.

It's difficult to say how much further to even go when it comes to the film's plot. These half uninvited guests instantly connect with the poet, while mostly ignoring his wife. There's a feeling of unease which permeates every scene. Eventually, that unease comes to a head, but that's only the first half of the movie.

Delving into spoiler territory is nearly impossible, as a large portion of mother! utterly defies description. As the movie goes on, logic, and even linear narrative, start to break down as the movie reaches a crescendo in its third act, which goes completely off the rails. There simply aren't enough synonyms for "batshit insane" to properly describe what happens here.

First, let it be said that, on a surface level, mother! certainly achieves much of what it is trying to accomplish. The movie wants to make you uncomfortable, and it does this in spades. Even before things actually get weird, you can't help but feel like there is just something off about everything you see. That feeling never lets up. There is no relief. That feeling in the pit of your stomach doesn't even go away after the movie ends.

Whatever mother! is able to successfully accomplish on screen is almost entirely due to Jennifer Lawrence and the movie's cinematographer, Matthew Libatique. The actress is in every scene, and nearly every shot, of mother! We follow her incredibly closely, as the camera spends most of its time either right in her face or over her shoulder. This means that we never learn anything more than she does about what is actually going on in the story, so our emotional path perfectly matches hers. From uncomfortable to confused to afraid to overwhelmed, we're right there with her.

That doesn't mean that everything in the movie works. The film's two halves feel less like a cohesive whole than they do two parts roughly sewn together. There are a handful of plot elements and moments introduced early in the film, before things stop making sense entirely, which are never even addressed later on, never mind explained.

Clearly, as with many Darren Aronofsky movies, mother! is trying to say a great deal more than what is actually on the screen. The primary conversation is about gender relationships, with the creative man who simply expects his wife to support him unconditionally while refusing to do the same thing for her. He's so focused on what he's doing that he seemingly doesn't even realize that he walks all over her, if he does, it's only because he doesn't see anything wrong with that, which is, of course, the problem.

There's also a lot being said about the relationship between an artist, their art, and the audience. Although, in this case the director seems less inclined to point a finger, than paint the whole thing with the same brush. Darren Aronofsky has little love for the way an audience can feel entitled to the hard work of an artist, never mind their feelings of entitlement to the artist themselves. The mass of characters we meet later in the film feel like what would happen if Twitter became sentient. At the same time, the artist here isn't exactly painted as a perfect specimen, either. He's just as obsessed with providing material for his audience to fawn over as they are to consume it, and that obsession is just as bad, if not worse. Ultimately, nobody is free of blame.

Mother! is going to be a divisive movie, to say the least. Some will love the artistic risks, while others will absolutely loathe the disjointed and gruesome final product. I can't really argue with either perspective. I didn't enjoy the film, but it seems clear you're not supposed to. At the same time, I can't say mother! hasn't intrigued me and been on my mind nearly constantly since I've seen it. Mother! is truly an unforgettable film, that seems to go without saying. Whether or not that's a good thing is an entirely separate question.

CinemaBlend’s resident theme park junkie and amateur Disney historian, Dirk began writing for CinemaBlend as a freelancer in 2015 before joining the site full-time in 2018. He has previously held positions as a Staff Writer and Games Editor, but has more recently transformed his true passion into his job as the head of the site's Theme Park section. He has previously done freelance work for various gaming and technology sites. Prior to starting his second career as a writer he worked for 12 years in sales for various companies within the consumer electronics industry. He has a degree in political science from the University of California, Davis. Is an armchair Imagineer, Epcot Stan, Future Club 33 Member.

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Review: Jennifer Lawrence's 'mother!' births an insane piece of audacious art

Darren Aronofsky unleashes the mother of audacious art films this year, and mother! is bound to polarize the masses who give this slice of winning insanity a go.

The latest in a filmography that also includes a terrifyingly dark ballerina ( Black Swan ) and a downward-spiraling pro grappler ( The Wrestler ), mother! (*** out of four; rated R; in theaters nationwide Friday) manages to be the writer/director's boldest yet: a tale of relationship turmoil and a genre-exploding showcase for its star Jennifer Lawrence . But Aronofsky isn’t subtle with the deeper meanings. Impending motherhood is seen through a horror-movie lens, there are enough religious metaphors for a particularly strange Sunday school class, and mother! thrives most as a thoughtful and angry look at modern society.

More: Five things to know about the 'pretty crazy' Jennifer Lawrence thriller 'mother!'

Related: Jennifer Lawrence's 'mother!' is even more bonkers than expected

The first act, however, is sedate in comparison to the roiling madness that awaits its audience later. Lawrence plays the mother in the title , who lives for fixing up a huge estate in the sticks with her older husband ( Javier Bardem ), a famous poet labeled “Him” in the credits. He struggles to find inspiration for his writing, while she in many ways becomes one with the house amid their peaceful isolation.

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That tranquility is torn asunder one night when a stranger (Ed Harris) knocks on their door, thinking the place is a bed and breakfast. The man strikes up a quick friendship with Him, who lets him stay for the night and also invites in the guy's wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) when she shows up.

(This is probably good time a time to explain that no character in the movie has a real name, and most are lowercase: Harris and Pfeiffer — who steals every scene with icy arrogance — are credited as "man" and "woman," while supporting characters include a zealot, neophyte, penitent, healer and soldier. Only Bardem’s Him gets proper capitalization, a nod to the Christian underpinnings of the story and the celebrity poet's status within the context of the movie.)

The newcomers turn out to be houseguests from hell, and their presence creates an increased exasperation for Lawrence's character, who really just wants to be left alone with her hubby. Pfeiffer is the absolute worst, questioning the lady of the house about her underwear choices, intimacy issues and the lack of rugrats running around.

More random people inexplicably start showing up, enough to drive mother crazy as she drives them all out. A quiet moment leads to her finally getting pregnant. Yet that just ignites the flames that envelop the rest of the film, which turns into a dizzying array of sex, violence, death, destruction, sacrifice and primal instincts with Him becoming an idol for worshippers and mother fighting for her and her unborn child’s survival.

The waves of disturbing imagery and hellish bacchanalia earn mother! its exclamation point and leave the viewer drowning in symbolism. It gets under the skin and refuses to leave; Aronofsky tosses an higher-concept grenade that waits a bit to blow your mind.

More: Jennifer Lawrence's 'Mother!' dazzles, discomforts critics at Venice premiere

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Lawrence’s performance grounds the more out-there aspects of mother! The audience is with her, in sickness and in health, more so than her husband, and we feel every bit of her bloody pain and pathos.

Impressive in its ambition, mother! doesn’t quite reach the heights of Aronofsky’s Black Swan in terms of bizarre masterpieces, yet endless conversations about what the heck you just saw will surely be born and raised.

Screen Rant

Mother review.

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22 year ago, bruce willis' first war movie was far ahead of its time, a complete unknown interview: edward norton claims he & timothée chalamet were comrades in arms on set, mother is an ambitious work that bucks traditional storytelling techniques with its aspirations, but its approach will not be for all moviegoers..

Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) lives a tranquil and peaceful life with her husband, Him (Javier Bardem), in their remote home, isolated from the rest of society. He is a famous poet who is struggling to find the proper inspiration for his next piece, while she works on fixing up the house after it had been burnt to the ground in a fire. Mother aspires to create a paradise for the two, but Him's extensive writer's block puts a strain on their relationship.

One night, a man (Ed Harris) visits Mother and Him's home, looking for a place to stay after traveling a great distance. Him is excited to have the company, and Mother reluctantly agrees to let the man spend the night. The next day, the man's wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) comes to the house to spend time with her husband, and Mother's existence continues to unravel as more and more admirers and fans of Him come and make the house their own. Desperate for things to go back to the way they were, Mother tries to convince Him to make their guests leave before all is lost.

Billed as a psychological horror/thriller, mother! is the latest film from writer/director Darren Aronofsky, who found himself in a dark and troubled place when developing this film. The auteur has made a career of challenging his viewers with unconventional narratives that typically deal with unsettling subject matter, and this instance is no different, leaving audiences with quite the puzzle to put together long after the credits have rolled. mother! is an ambitious work that bucks traditional storytelling techniques with its aspirations, but its approach will not be for all moviegoers.

Aronofsky is no stranger to incorporating Biblical themes and elements into his films (see: Noah ), and he doubles down on those influences with mother! . His script is in essence one big metaphor that aims to provide commentary on the state of the world and humanity - at times beating viewers over the head with its message. While this concept is admirable and sounds fascinating on-paper, it may not have been executed in the most compelling way. Aronofsky gets so preoccupied with the symbolism in mother! that for the most part, he forgoes setting up the characters and relationships in a way for general audiences to truly be invested in what is happening. Some viewers will definitely appreciate the director's commitment to realizing his vision, but many of roles come across as being thinly-defined and just a stand-in for something else - which make the payoffs unearned.

mother! is a mixed bag in the screenplay department, though there is no denying Aronofsky remains at the top of his craft from a technical standpoint. The film's visuals look great onscreen, with much credit going to cinematographer Matthew Libatique. A majority of the movie is shot in closeups, and the camerawork is used to instill a sense of claustrophobia and dread. In typical Aronofsky fashion, there's plenty of disturbing imagery in mother! as well, and while this can be reminiscent of his 2010 hit Black Swan , it does a good job of unnerving viewers. In some ways, the home invasion aspects of the film are grounded and more terrifying than a standard horror movie - as "normal" everyday people are used in place of a slasher monster/threat. The pure insanity of what's happening can put viewers on edge, giving mother! an unpredictable edge where just about anything is possible.

In terms of the performances, Lawrence is the clear standout as Mother, delivering an emotionally vulnerable and demanding turn as a pure, innocent woman who gets pushed further and further into madness. The Oscar-winner does her best at making the most of the material, giving mother! the closest thing it has to a protagonist viewers can see themselves in. Unfortunately, there's only so much she can do, since there aren't many layers to her character as it's written. The same can be said for Bardem as Him, who isn't bad in the role, but doesn't leave a lasting impression. What's more memorable about the leads is what they mean in terms of mother!'s overarching metaphors - not necessarily the traits and nature of the individual parts themselves. This will make it difficult for some to get attached to this couple, since there isn't much put into selling their chemistry and romance beyond the surface level.

The main supporting cast of mother! is small, with Harris and Pfeiffer being the ones with the most to chew on. For the most part, their characters suffer from the same shortcomings as Mother and Him; they work as clear allegories in regards to the film's ideas, but that can only go so far in establishing a connection with viewers. Pfeiffer does command the attention of the audience with her provocative and alluring screen presence, injecting Woman with some seductive and tempting sensibilities. Harris is fine as Man, getting the job done by being rather unassuming. Other minor roles are filled by names like Domhnall Gleeson and Kristen Wiig, but they aren't onscreen enough to make much of an impact.

mother! has already earned the reputation of being a polarizing film, and how one enjoys it will depend solely on how willing one is to buy into what Aronofsky has to say and the manner in which he tells his story. The director is attempting to tackle some lofty motifs here, and on a certain level that is respectable. However, mother! will certainly not be everyone's cup of tea, playing out as a film that's difficult to box into a specific genre or target demographic. From that perspective, it may be worth checking out for those intrigued by the marketing or Aronofsky in general, since mother! is definitely unlike anything else that will play this year.

mother! is now playing in U.S. theaters. It runs 121 minutes and is rated R for strong disturbing violent content, some sexuality, nudity and language.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments!

NEXT: mother! Ending Explained

Key release dates.

Movie Reviews
2.5 star movies

mother! Review: This Is Not the Movie You Think It Is

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As I watched mother! —my jaw descending lower and lower until it finally rested on the floor—I kept flashing back to something Guillermo del Toro said in a recent interview with GQ contributor Nicole Sperling . He was reflecting on the box-office failure of his own Crimson Peak , a gothic romance that was disingenuously sold to mainstream audiences as a scare-a-minute ghost story. The lesson del Toro took from that? "I will not force the studio's hand to sell it to a wider audience, and therefore the audience will be disappointed," he vowed. In short: When you make a movie, don’t trick people into seeing it.

In that spirit, I’m going to get this out of the way up front: The marketing campaign for mother! has been a massive trick, and some people are going to fucking hate this movie as a result. I’d be shocked if the Cinemascore doesn’t turn out to be an F. It is insane that Paramount is opening this movie in 2,000-plus theaters. Director Darren Aronofsky introduced the screening I attended, and impishly cackled about how goddamn miserable we would all be feeling about 90 minutes later. He was not wrong.

It's too little and too late for a post-White House redemption tour. But here we are.

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So in the interest of fairness, here is what mother! is not. It is not a thriller. It is not a normal horror movie in any sense of the word, though its most horrifying scenes will test the resolve of even the most unflinching moviegoers. And it is not a movie with any conventionally satisfying payoffs to any of the mysteries introduced in those chilling trailers.

So what is mother! ? I’m not going to spoil what the movie is actually about—but I am going to do my best to prepare you for what it is before you decide if you want to see it. Jennifer Lawrence (credited as "Mother") plays a young woman who spends her time painstakingly rebuilding a massive, remote country house that burned down in a fire. She shares the house with her husband—played by Javier Bardem (and credited as "Him")—who is a creative type with a severe case of writer’s block. Their lives are interrupted by a couple of sketchy interlopers (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer, as "Man" and "Woman"), who begin as welcomed houseguests and commit an increasingly awful series of faux pas. More houseguests follow, bringing more chaos along with them, until Lawrence and Bardem’s country home begins to feel like the epicenter of an unhappy and disordered universe.

From there...well, if you can think of a type of horrifying violence, you will see some version of it by the end of this movie. Much of that violence is committed against Jennifer Lawrence. And to what end? The closest analogue to mother! I can come up with is The Passion of the Christ : a massive hit that justified its bloody, torturous excesses by arguing that they needed to be depicted—in extended and exacting detail—to capture the immensity of Jesus’s sacrifice. mother! could make a similar justification for its litany of horrors. I do not think mainstream audiences will see it that way.

And frankly, I’m not sure I see it that way, either. I can’t deny the primal power of mother! ’s dense symbolism and the visceral impact of its imagery, and I’ve been turning it over in my mind more or less nonstop since I saw it. For better or worse, Aronofsky is shooting straight from the id this time, and mother! effectively synthesizes all of his favorite themes: surrealism, pseudo-biblical allegory, and fucked-up things happening to women.

It’s that last point where I like mother! least. I want to be careful here, because there’s nothing more tedious than when a critic starts indignantly moralizing so hard his monocle pops out . And some critics do this with more skill than others. Take the late Roger Ebert’s infamous pan of Blue Velvet , which largely hinges on his moral outrage about what David Lynch asked Isabella Rossellini to do on camera. "She is asked to portray emotions that I imagine most actresses would rather not touch. She is degraded, slapped around, humiliated and undressed in front of the camera," Ebert wrote. "And when you ask an actress to endure those experiences, you should keep your side of the bargain by putting her in an important film."

mother! ’s "depth" comes largely from its early inscrutability. Once you’ve cracked the code, you know where it’s going, and the only thing left to do is deepen the protagonist’s (and the audience’s) misery.

Ebert could have—and might have—written something similar about mother! , which puts Jennifer Lawrence in a similar position for a film that’s all puffed out with its own self-importance. I’m not going to imagine what emotions Jennifer Lawrence wants to touch as an actress—to do that seems, frankly, a little weird and condescending—but it sounds like the experience was hard , and she certainly gives it her all.

If anyone wasn’t trying hard enough, it’s Aronofsky, whose interviews about mother! — the script of which he claims he dashed off in just five days —have been kind of glib and reductive. "The movie has a dream-logic and that dream-logic makes sense. But if you try to unscrew it, it kind of falls apart," he said to The Guardian . "So it’s a psychological freak-out. You shouldn’t over-explain it."

Aronofsky is both underselling and overselling mother! . It’s a perfectly coherent movie once you figure out what it's actually about—but you can’t really over -explain a story that is, at its core, much simpler than it might seem. mother! ’s "depth" comes largely from its early inscrutability. Once you've cracked the code, you know where it's going, and the only thing left to do is deepen the protagonist’s (and the audience’s) misery.

And here, Aronofsky’s chosen theme doubles as a shield with which he can defend the brutality of the content. The abuse of women is both the oldest story and a painfully modern one. The abuse of what Lawrence’s Mother ultimately represents is another. And if Aronofsky's camera ultimately lingers on those images enough to make everyone uncomfortable…well, shouldn’t we be uncomfortable? Because refusing to stare at these problems hasn’t done anything to solve them.

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In the end, mother! is neither as brilliant as its supporters insist nor as empty as its detractors insist. And if Aronofsky is a little too impressed with his own warped ambition, well, I'm happy we still have a working director who can assemble a cast this good to make a movie that is explicitly designed to alienate at least 95 percent of the audience its trailers are designed to attract.

Does that sound like a movie you'd want to watch? If so, great. Go see mother! this weekend. If not...well, you'll have about a thousand think-pieces to read by Monday.

‘Mother!’ – Film Review

It’s a good thing that films as bonkers as this exist

Maybe prepare  yourself somewhere dark and quiet to have a nice sit down after watching Mother!. You’ll appreciate the opportunity to decompress, even if you emerge with no better idea of what you’ve just watched. Darren Aronofsky’s latest is an assault. Of ideas. Of religious metaphor. Of assorted human viscera. It is a whole lot of movie.

It’s the most interesting choice Jennifer Lawrence has made since her breakout in Winter’s Bone . She gives her director blood, sweat and tears – gallons thereof. Lawrence plays a nameless young woman who lives in a remote, huge, beautiful house with her husband (Javier Bardem), a blocked writer. A few minutes into the movie he invites in a stranger (Ed Harris), then his obnoxious wife (Michelle Pfeiffer). Rapidly, the young woman’s house is taken over by people she doesn’t know, who keep wrecking her stuff, then usher in violence. That’s about the first 30 minutes. After that it escalates with rocket-like force. The woman’s nightmare takes turns you couldn’t possibly imagine, nor will necessarily understand. By the end so much has happened and the film’s world has so completely changed that it’s near impossible to believe you entered this place just two hours ago. You’ll either be laughing hysterically or mute with shock.

Crucially, throughout the building insanity Aranofsky is always in control. His world may be spinning off into chaos but it’s clear he knows where he’s going. He moves around too precisely for events to be random. We can follow Lawrence’s journey as careening psychological horror, even if we can’t make sense of its detail. Trying to piece together its greater meaning is something that can only begin after you’ve got your breath back, a few hours later.

Mother! may be remembered in years to come as a monumental mess or a masterpiece, but it will be remembered. It brings to mind films like 2001, The Shining or A Clockwork Orange , films that blur your mind with baffling images then come into focus over time. Love it or hate it, or likely lurch between the two, we should thrill that movies so ambitiously bonkers exist.

Mothers' Instinct Review: Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway elevate 60s suburban thriller

They say the hardest job in the world is to be a mother, and Mothers' Instinct certainly enhances that ethos.

Mothers' Instinct is based on the 2018 French movie of the same name ( Duelles in French), which itself is an adaptation of the 2012 novel Mothers' Instinct (Derrière la haine) by Barbara Abel.

The official premise reads:

'Housewives Alice and Celine are best friends and neighbours who seem to have it all. However, when a tragic accident shatters the harmony of their lives, guilt, suspicion and paranoia begin to unravel their sisterly bond.'

It stars Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Josh Charles and Anders Danielsen Lie.

The two central performances from Hathaway and Chastain elevate this sometimes by-the-numbers domestic thriller.

Mothers' Instinct Review

Alice and Celine live perfect lives in 1960s suburbia. As next-door neighbours with workaholic husbands and young boys of the same age, they have bonded to become best friends, united by one thing they have in common - their love for their respective families.

When tragedy strikes as Celine's young son Max dies after falling from a house balcony - with neither Celine nor Alice there to supervise him - the paranoia and mental anguish begins.

In the first third of the movie, we as an audience side with Celine, not just due to the fact that she has lost her son, but due to the suspect reaction of Alice, who is convinced Celine blames her for the death of Max.

It is interesting to note the reaction to Max's death from the rest of the characters - Celine is distraught, her husband Damian turns to alcohol and becomes a shell of a man, Alice immediately and defensively gets her back up, her husband Simon is seemingly the only person keeping his head, while her son Theo is philosophically wondering what has happened to his best friend, Max.

Alice is a kind neighbour in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, but once she sees Theo on the balcony bonding with Celine, she is convinced she is being put to the test.

Up until now, it is a run-of-the-mill psychological thriller that wouldn't look out of place as an afternoon drama on weekday terrestrial TV.

But, we luckily have two expert, Academy Award-winning performers in Hathaway and Chastain, who elevate the movie to a point it doesn't have the right to get to.

There's nothing particularly shocking about the revelations that come in the final third, but it is a testament to both actors that we still find ourselves completely engrossed.

Indeed, the performances are so good by both that we find ourselves switching allegiances more than once throughout the film. Is Alice crazy and overreacting or should she be listened to? Is Celine just a mother struggling with grief, or is there something much more sinister going on?

Debut Director Benoît Delhomme is a cinematographer by trade and he certainly uses that to his advantage here, with some truly wonderful shots in the perfect 1960s setting, Shout out to the costume design also as Hathaway's Jackie-Kennedy-esque look at the start of the movie is quickly morphed into Morticia Adams, while Chastain's wardrobe also hints at her state of mind in each particular scene.

Mothers' Instinct won't pull up any trees in terms of storyline, but it is still a huge treat to get to see Hathaway and Chastain - who are very good friends in real life - have fun with a project that sees them go at each other. They clearly trust each other implicitly and that shines through in their performances as they both take turns playing crazy and then straight.

Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain in Mothers' Instinct

“Andor Was Better Than a Movie”: 'Skeleton Crew' Director David Lowery Discusses His Love of Star Wars and the New Series [Exclusive]

Collider's Steve Weintraub talks with director David Lowery for his new Disney+ short film An Almost Christmas Story .
An Almost Christmas Story is the final part of a holiday series produced by Alfonso Cuarón about a lost young owl and little girl who find each other in New York City during Christmastime.
In this interview, Lowery talks about pivoting from live-action to animation, working with Cuarón, his approach to difficult scenes, and working on Star Wars: Skeleton Crew .

An Almost Christmas Story is the final short film in a three-part holiday series from producer and five-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón and Disney+. The short was preceded by Le Pupille (2022) and The Shepherd (2023), both of which garnered attention at the Oscars, and is directed by David Lowery ( The Green Knight , A Ghost Story ), who spoke with Collider's Steve Weintraub ahead of its streaming premiere.

From a story by Cuarón and a screenplay by Jack Thorne ( His Dark Materials ) and Lowery, An Almost Christmas Story follows the epic journey of Moon (voiced by Cary Christopher ), a young owl who finds himself stuck in the tree that will soon be decked out for Rockefeller Plaza. As luck would have it, little Moon's path crosses with Luna ( Estella Madrigal ), a young girl who's also lost in New York City, and together they embark on an adventure to find their parents.

In this conversation, Lowery shares his own epic journey, from the very first Zoom meeting with Cuarón to planning a live-action short to pivoting to a uniquely beautiful animation style. The lauded filmmaker also shares his unexpected influences on the film, past experiences on his other movies like The Green Knight , as well as the upcoming Mother Mary , and his unforgettable time directing two episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew . In addition, Lowery discusses his love of Andor and why he prefers the series to a movie.

‘The Green Knight’ Was a Near-Impossible Mountain to Climb

Lowery also shares other tricky scenes from ‘a ghost story’ to ‘mother mary.’.

COLLIDER: I really enjoyed the short, which I knew I would because it was you, but I really enjoyed it.

DAVID LOWERY: Thank you. It was such a pleasure to make, and now that people are seeing it, I'm like, if this gives people 22 minutes of happiness in the midst of whatever they're going through in their lives , I can't imagine a better responsibility as a filmmaker to make something like that.

Yes, some of us think we're living in the darkest timeline, so I'll take whatever joy I can get.

LOWERY: Precisely.

You know I like throwing some curveballs at the beginning before I get into why I'm talking to you. You've done a lot of stuff; which shot or sequence in all the things you've worked on ended up being the toughest to pull off and why?

LOWERY: That is a great question. The entirety of A Ghost Story , perhaps, just because we were never confident that the sheet would work. [Laughs] That was 19 days of edge-of-your-seat, gut-churning dread. But for one sequence — we should put a pin in this until we talk next year about Mother Mary because that would be the one — but the movie that I'm making now, it certainly has that. That was the one where, I won't talk about it because no one's seen the movie yet, but it has had some of those sequences in them, certainly.

Every movie has them, and they always feel like, “Nothing has ever been harder.” And then you make the next one. You're like, “What was I thinking about? That was a piece of cake. This one’s the hardest.”

‘The Green Knight’ Is a Sumptuous, Surreal Exploration of Honor’s Value in the Face of Death | Review

David Lowery’s take on the Arthurian legend is hypnotic yet deeply earnest and profound in its assessment of the human condition.

That's because you climbed the hill already on the previous one and solved whatever you had to solve.

LOWERY: Yeah, and often there are things like the Great Hall sequence in The Green Knight . That one is an easy one to talk about being a very challenging sequence because not only was it at the end of the shoot, and we were all exhausted, I was medically incapacitated for most of it in one way or another, so a lot of medication, not enough time. Also, I was realizing that my ambition as a filmmaker had changed over the course of making that movie, and what we had five days to shoot really should have had 30. That was a sequence where we were just like, “Do we have the beat that is described in the script on camera?” And if the answer was yes, we moved on. Then I had to figure out how to make everything feel intentional in the edit. I'm glad you asked this question because I need to not forget about that sequence. That was like a real mountain that I don't know if I ever fully reached the top of, but definitely eventually got pretty close.

'An Almost Christmas Story' Was Originally a Live-Action Short

I could drill down on this, but let's jump into why I get to talk to you. How did this short film happen for you? Was it Alfonso [Cuarón] reaching out? Had you seen the previous ones, and you were like, “I wanna do this?”

LOWERY: If my memory is correct, and my memory of the past few years is a little hazy at this point because there have been all sorts of time warps that have happened, but it was Christmas of 2021. Le pupille had just come out and was probably about to be nominated for an Oscar, and so I saw that one, also as a fan of Alice [Rohrwacher]; she's incredible. So, I knew about that. I didn't know that it was part of a series of short films that Alfonso had managed to get Disney to greenlight, which is an incredible feat. I received an email from him, and Gabriela Rodriguez, who was his producer, and she, he, and I got on Zoom to talk about this.

Part of the reason I said yes was I just wanted to go talk about movies with Alfonso. I'd never met him before. But the icing on the cake was that they had sent me the script that he and Jack Thorne had written and it was lovely, just absolutely like a treat to read. It was right as I was getting ready to go do pickups for Peter Pan & Wendy , and that movie was such a big, huge, gigantic, all-consuming thing that the idea of making something short and sweet felt very appealing, and it also felt far away because it was a Christmas movie. So, I thought, “We're not gonna make this till next Christmas. I'll get to spend the next year just sort of building my way towards making this wonderful short film. We'll shoot it in New York.” It was live-action at that point , and I was like, “I'm gonna spend two months in New York at the holidays, my favorite time of year to be in the city. This sounds like just another joy. And I get to elaborate with Alfonso. Of course I'm gonna say yes to this.” So, that's how it came about. Then I spent the next year realizing how hard it was going to be to make this movie in live-action in New York City at Christmastime, and it started to change course at that point.

That leads me to my next question. Things always change in the production process. I did not realize you originally were thinking about this with live-action. With the script, is it the same thing that you guys originally were gonna do, and it's just now in animation?

LOWERY: More or less because over the course of the months leading up to Christmas of 2022, which is when we were thinking of shooting it, I had rewritten the script, or at least begun to rewrite the script. One of the things that Alfonso encouraged me to do was to make it my own. He's like, “I wrote this, but make this a David Lowery movie.” And so, I had a couple of things I wanted to address initially, just for my taste, like, “Here I would move A to B and get rid of C and add D.” But, as you do with any script, you start to work on it, and it becomes more and more personal. You start to bring more of yourself into it. So, already, it was different from what he had sent me and yet still very similar when we decided to start thinking about animation.

One of the things that I realized in the process of doing that was I have made movies with photoreal talking animals before. I love our Green Knight fox and I love Elliott in Pete's Dragon , although he doesn't talk. I didn't feel that was necessary for this one. I wanted to treat the animals differently, and so I proposed that we shoot everything in live-action, but do all of the animals with something that may not be stop-motion but that has a sort of handmade feel to it. I wanted all the animals to feel like they were handmade Christmas decorations or something like that. I was unknowingly setting out on the path that led us to the eventual aesthetic choices that manifested in the movie that you've seen. That was the very first inkling of stepping into a different territory with this movie.

This Sequence Was Inspired by ‘The French Connection’

“i realized that every frame has a dollar sign on it when you're making animation.”.

Going back to what I said at the beginning, which shot or sequence in this was the one that ended up being really difficult? A lot of people don't realize that certain things in animation and certain shots are just more expensive than others, and you need to limit where and when you deploy those resources.

LOWERY: In the screenplay that I read in December of 2021, there was a sequence that says, “Moon takes off, and thus we began a chase sequence that will feel like The French Connection with pigeons.” It covered so much ground in New York City, and I love shooting chase sequences, so I was like, “I cannot wait to dig into this.” So, we put together this incredibly extensive, spectacular chase sequence. My brother, who does concept work for all my movies, did the storyboards, and we were just coming up with so many gags and so much ground covered — they covered so much of New York City in this chase sequence. That one was definitely where I realized that every frame has a dollar sign on it when you're making animation and that removing some of those frames was necessary.

Finding which ones are the most necessary to the story was my big learning curve. Every beat of an animated film needs to contribute to the story. Every beat in a live-action film should do that, too, but there you have more room to look for these random grace notes on set. You could be like, “Oh, look at what the sun is doing through the trees. Let's go shoot that, and maybe we'll use it, maybe we won't.” With animation, if you're gonna make the choice to film sunlight coming through the trees, it better be for a really good reason.

So, really distilling down those big sequences that cover a lot of ground was the one that, I think, on a technical level, those were the most challenging. It was an incredibly difficult sequence. Even just the one shot, it was something I'd storyboarded where I wanted to be on 60th Street, leaving Rockefeller Plaza on the top of a taxi cab that turns the corner onto Fifth Avenue, and the sun needs to be setting down 60th the way it does at a certain time — in reality, it rises on 60th [laughs] — behind St. Patrick's Cathedral. I was like, “All of that needs to be in one shot,” and that was a renderer’s nightmare. The lighting needed to be a very specific type of lighting, and there weren't cuts in that. One of the things I've learned from Alfonso is how good a really beautiful oner can be when it succeeds and I definitely planned on doing a lot of those in this, and the ones that still exist certainly were not easy to pull off technically.

There should be, down the road, a course just on his oners in movies and what he's done because it all goes back, for me, to Children of Men . His oner work is insane.

LOWERY: Especially as it's gotten more invisible. Because there are the ones, like Children of Men , where you're in the car, you're like, “Oh my god, this is one take. It's still going on.” But now — I don't know if you've seen Disclaimer yet, I just finished it last night — it's invisible oners where you're like, “Wait, when was the last edit?” You don't even think about it. It's really a new level of it for him.

How John McTiernan Influenced This Disney+ Short Film

I love when Little Moon is talking to the girl and they're each talking but not understanding each other, and then you have the John C. Reilly song underneath it all. Talk about the construction of that because I think it just plays so well.

LOWERY: That was something that was in the original script that really appealed to me, this idea of these two characters who are different species, so they're not gonna be able to communicate, and yet they both want the same thing. It was originally very underlined in the script. We had a lot of business about them not being able to understand one another, and it was one of the beautiful discoveries in the animatic stage where my editor, Mike [Melendi], who's worked on everything since A Ghost Story , recorded all the voices himself and laid them in and we realized, “Maybe we're hitting this nail a little too hard.” Not because it's unimportant but because it was something that could emerge much more gracefully and beautifully. I really wanted there to be a simplicity to this, not just because every frame costs a certain amount, but because I wanted this to be a very simple and streamlined and elegant film.

So, we just started boiling that down, and I realized what I could do is, if they were just talking at the same time, it really could kind of come down to a number of syllables. One character would say a certain number of syllables, and the other character would talk, and you would just have their sentences build on top of one another. You would get the sense of both the misunderstanding and the fact that they can't understand one another, but also their mutual similarities in a really beautiful way.

As a film nerd, I also have to say that one of my favorite scenes in any John McTiernan film is in The 13th Warrior when they're sitting around the campfire, and Antonio Banderas gradually learns the language that the Vikings are speaking. I always just thought that was such an incredible sequence, and I thought about that a lot while making this film, oddly enough. I was really thinking about Eaters of the Dead a lot . It's something that you probably would not expect as a reference point, but it certainly was one.

I swear to you, this might be the headline of our interview is, how John McTiernan influenced this Disney+ short film.

LOWERY: I don't know if you've ever listened to Blank Check, but I did an episode with them about The 13th Warrior , and this wasn't done yet, so I couldn't talk about it, but my whole reason for wanting to talk about that movie was because I love that scene so much.

My thing is The Hunt for Red October when they're zooming in on Sean Connery's mouth and it goes from Russian to English. I've always thought that is one of the most brilliant uses of changing language so you understand they're speaking Russian, but you hear it in English, and I'm like, “Why don't more movies copy this? This is brilliant.”

LOWERY: It really is, especially when the movie needs both languages. Sure, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo , everyone can speak English with an English accent — that's fine because everyone in that movie is Scandinavian. But when a plot point pivots on English and Russian and the fact that they don't speak the same language, but you need the actors to speak in English, it's incredible.

It's rated G. Did you have to battle to get a G rating, or were the MPAA always like, “No, this is G?”

LOWERY: This one just was an automatic G. I am very proud of this G rating. I really wanted a G rating for Pete's Dragon but I learned that G is uncool, and for a movie like Pete's Dragon , you need a PG so that kids don't think it's a lame movie . There's one “damn it” in Pete's Dragon that was improv on set that one of the actors did, and they're like, “Put that in there. That gets us our PG, and we're cool.” But I really wanted a G. I don't know, maybe it's just a nostalgic thing, but I love the idea of making a G-rated film. I love that David Lynch has made a G-rated movie, so I wanna continue in that tradition.

“I Have to Make the Story Paramount”

“in so many of my movies, i'm really more after a mood or a tone or a vibe.”.

One of things with animation, and we talked about this, is the cost. The short is 22 minutes. Did you always know going in, “We can't go over this amount of time?” How did that work in figuring out the runtime?

LOWERY: No, that was a real, I won't say a struggle, but something I definitely learned. As recently as May of this year, the movie was probably four minutes longer . Then, as we were animating, there's a little bit of horse trading where it's like, “Okay, we can keep this, but we'd have to lose this. This shot is gonna cost this much more to fully animate and render.” Even the fact that all of the characters in the movie who aren't our protagonists are just made out of cardboard, which is one of my favorite creative decisions in the movie…

By the way, I love the use of cardboard.

LOWERY: I'm a cardboard fan. I love cardboard. This movie fulfills all of my cardboard dreams. But you make these creative choices that are all about finding a way around a limitation, and one of the limitations we certainly had was there were things that I did not want to get rid of that cost more to render. So, to keep those, like the chase sequence, I had to lose other things. You really wind up saying, “Okay, if I have to lose this sequence that is technically important, can I take the dialogue from it, bring it earlier into the movie, making sure those beats land, or is it, in fact, a sequence that's not actually necessary?” Again, I focused more on story on this one than I ever have on any movie I ever made. In so many of my movies, I'm really more after a mood or a tone or a vibe. With this one, out of necessity, I really was like, “ I have to make the story paramount. ” And you really are, again, looking to make sure every frame is serving that story.

I'm really grateful that Disney+ is making short films like this because it's fantastic.

'Skeleton Crew' Is Giving Fans the Vintage Star Wars Treatment

"i got the jabba’s palace muppet experience.".

Before I run out of time with you, they sent me screeners of Skeleton Crew this morning. Jon [Watts] told me you directed Episodes 2 and 3, so I definitely have to touch on what it was like playing in the Star Wars Universe and being a part of that series.

LOWERY: As someone who decided to make movies at the age of seven due to a severe love of Star Wars, this was an incredible full-circle moment. It was, I can say without a doubt, the happiest I've ever been on set simply because I was surrounded by the ephemera of everything, not just my childhood, but the reason I'm where I am now as a human being. To be able to sit in an X-Wing — it's dorky to say that, but it’s real, it's profound. It was really special. To get to make something in that universe, no matter what people think of the current slate of Star Wars — and I know there are a lot of opinions about it — there's no diminishing the amount that it's mattered to the people it's mattered to, and I'm one of those people. I know you are, as well. This could have been a shot-for-shot remake of the Star Wars Holiday Special, which there actually is a Holiday Special reference in the show , but it could have been that, and I would still have been very moved to have been there and very happy to be there because I'm participating in something that has been a formative part of my life.

The icing on the cake was that it was so much fun to make, and I think it turned out really well. I've seen the first four episodes, and I know what happens in the rest of the series, but as a fan, I was like, “I'm not gonna watch anything else.” I wanna sit back over December and watch this story unfold.

One of the reasons why I know this show is gonna be good is Jon and Jon [Favreau] have embraced matte paintings and stop-motion. They went back to the original Star Wars movies. Did you get to play with any of the matte paintings? Did you get to do anything vintage Star Wars in your episodes?

LOWERY: I got the Jabba’s Palace Muppet experience where the two episodes I did have so many puppets in them , and I was just in heaven. As someone who loves puppetry and I’m a big Dark Crystal , Labyrinth fan, who loves all that stuff, I was just surrounded by puppeteers with their hands in little creatures, and that was just the best. Some of these creatures — by now, people know that the Teeks from the Ewok films are in this show, so that's not a spoiler to say that — I was like, “Are they going to augment these digitally to make them look more real?” Literally, these characters were hand puppets, and that's still what they are.

We shot partially on the Volume in Manhattan Beach, and to be on the state-of-the-art sound stage with all these LED screens putting up this crazy environment, what is technically state-of-the-art technology, but then the camera is focused on a hand puppet — that is the best. I also just love that Star Wars can include that. I love Andor , where probably you don't want hand puppets popping up every five seconds, but that Star Wars can also be inclusive of something like Skeleton Crew , and they both exist in the same universe, it just reminds me of why I love that series and why I love those movies originally.

It's 'Goonies' in Space in Star Wars' New 'Skeleton Crew' Trailer

The series stars Jude Law.

I have not seen the show yet, but I do think that Andor is the best Star Wars since 1980. It's a masterpiece. It doesn't make sense how good it is.

LOWERY: Not only does it not make sense how good it is, but I am someone where it is hard to get me to watch a series. One way to get me to watch it is to put Star Wars on it, but I really am someone who, as much as I love the form, I just am a movie person. Every now and then I'll see a series where I'm like, “That is something that is better than a movie.” Andor was better than a movie. That's something where I would rather watch 10 episodes of that than have it condensed into a great film.

Hopefully, I'm going to do a Collider event for Andor Season 2. For Season 1, we did the first three episodes as an event on the Disney lot. I had Tony and everybody, and then we did Episodes 7, 8, and 9 with Andy Serkis, his three-episode arc.

LOWERY: Amazing.

Seeing those episodes on a movie screen was amazing.

LOWERY: When we were doing the grade for Peter Pan & Wendy and trying to look at the amount of film grain to add to it, I was like, “Hey guys, look at Andor . It's streaming on Disney+ right now and it looks like it was shot on 35-millimeter in 1977. Streaming can hold up with some film grain on it.”

Andy Serkis Unpacks 'Andor' Episode 10's Ending [Exclusive]

Andy Serkis starred as Kino Loy in a 3-episode arc in 'Andor.'

Personally, when I'm watching things on streaming, adding what makes a film a film, adding that sort of stuff makes it so I don't feel like I'm watching a TV show. I want to see grading. I want to see that kind of stuff. I just watched something the other day, and I'm like, “You're on location and it just looks still like a TV show. You gotta do better.”

LOWERY: I wish I could show you the 16-millimeter grade for Peter Pan & Wendy because it looked freaking great. It looked like we shot on 16 and it was beautiful.

An Almost Christmas Story is available to watch on Disney+ now.

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An Almost Christmas Story

Moon, a curious young owl, finds herself trapped in a Christmas tree destined for Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. Trying to escape the city, Moon befriends a lost little girl named Luna. Together, they embark on an adventure.

Watch on Disney+

David Lowery

IMAGES

(Review) Mother! (2017) : หนังที่ดูจบพูดได้คำเดียวว่า "มารดามันเถอะ !"
Mother movie FIRST reviews: 'SICKENING' Jennifer Lawrence horror thrills critics
mother! Review
Mother!
mother!
mother! Reviews

COMMENTS

mother! movie review & film summary (2017) - Roger Ebert">mother! movie review & film summary (2017) - Roger Ebert
Sep 15, 2017 · “mother!” is a deceptively simple film in terms of set-up, taking place entirely at a remote home that was not-long-ago burned in a fire. Two people, named only Him (Javier Bardem) and Mother (Jennifer Lawrence), have been working to remodel the home, which belongs to him.
mother! (2017) - Rotten Tomatoes">mother! (2017) - Rotten Tomatoes
There's no denying that mother! is the thought-provoking product of a singularly ambitious artistic vision, though it may be too unwieldy for mainstream tastes. Mother! is what happens when a...
Mother!” Review: Darren Aronofsky’s Thrilling, Horrifying, Nearly ...">“Mother!” Review: Darren Aronofsky’s Thrilling, Horrifying,...
Sep 18, 2017 · “Mother!” is Darren Aronofsky’s “Stardust Memories,” his vehemently exaggerated satire on the burdens of fame. And for anyone who thought that Woody Allen’s 1980 film looked a gift horse in the...
Mother! (2017) - User reviews - IMDb">Mother! (2017) - User reviews - IMDb
Jennifer Lawrence wakes up to discover her husband is already missing from bed. We see that she lives in a lovely country home that is undergoing significant renovation. We discover that Lawrence is re-doing the house herself, and her hubby (Javier Bardem) is a famous poet who is undergoing a bit of writer's block, and has been for awhile.
Review: ‘Mother!’ Is a Divine Comedy, Dressed as a Psychological ...">Review: ‘Mother!’ Is a Divine Comedy, Dressed as a Psychological...
Sep 13, 2017 · “Mother!” casts a wider net, gathering influences from cinema — Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, Gaspar Noé — from literature and, most strikingly, from painting.
mother!’: Film Review | Venice 2017 - The Hollywood Reporter">‘mother!’: Film Review | Venice 2017 - The Hollywood Reporter
Sep 5, 2017 · Darren Aronofsky's 'mother!' stars Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem as a married couple whose lives start unraveling when unexpected guests arrive at their home.
mother! - Movie Reviews - Rotten Tomatoes">mother! - Movie Reviews - Rotten Tomatoes
Once movies leave their creators’ hands they often become their own thing. “mother!” benefits from that truth. While Aronofsky has a pointed personal meaning behind it, what you bring to the...
mother! Reviews - Metacritic">mother! Reviews - Metacritic
Sep 15, 2017 · Summary A couple's relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence. mother! Not available in your country? Art itself should seek a restraining order against anyone who insists, “Here is the one thing that Mother! means!”
Mother! Movie Review - Common Sense Media">Mother! Movie Review - Common Sense Media
Horrifying situations in surreal, escalating nightmare. Read Common Sense Media's Mother! review, age rating, and parents guide.
Mother! (2017) Your opinion and impression? : r/movies - Reddit">Mother! (2017) Your opinion and impression? : r/movies - Reddit
I have just watched a movie of Darren Aronofsky Mother! and I had mixed feelings after watching it. I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I decided to read some reviews about this movie. Who and how understood this movie? What are your impressions? It would be very interesting for me to get to know other people's thoughts.
Movie Review: mother! (2017) - The Critical Movie Critics">Movie Review: mother! (2017) - The Critical Movie Critics
Sep 17, 2017 · Movie review of mother! (2017) by The Critical Movie Critics | Uninvited guests test a couple's relationship when they arrive at their tranquil home.
Mother! reviews | What the critics are saying about Jennifer Lawrence's ...">Mother! reviews | What the critics are saying about Jennifer...
The first reviews for Jennifer Lawrence’s new film Mother! are out and critics are seriously impressed. And incredibly disturbed.
Mother! Review - CINEMABLEND">Mother! Review - CINEMABLEND
Sep 15, 2017 · Mother! stars Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem as a couple (they're never given names, nobody in the film is) living in a secluded house which Lawrence's character has been single-handedly...
movies on Reddit: Mother! (2017) is a difficult film to watch but it ...">r/movies on Reddit: Mother! (2017) is a difficult film to watch...
Jun 15, 2020 · 70 votes, 59 comments. When I finished watching Mother! yesterday, the only emotion which came to me was confusion. I did not really understand what…
mother! Review - IGN">mother! Review - IGN
Sep 14, 2017 · mother! Review Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem team with director Darren Aronofsky for a dark, supernatural and mystifying tale.
mother!' review: Jennifer Lawrence births an insane piece of art">'mother!' review: Jennifer Lawrence births an insane piece of art
Sep 13, 2017 · Impending motherhood is seen through a horror-movie lens, there are enough religious metaphors for a particularly strange Sunday school class, and mother! thrives most as a thoughtful and...
mother! Review - Screen Rant">mother! Review - Screen Rant
Sep 15, 2017 · mother! is an ambitious work that bucks traditional storytelling techniques with its aspirations, but its approach will not be for all moviegoers. Here's what we thought of mother!
Mother! (2017) Movie Review - HubPages">Mother! (2017) Movie Review - HubPages
Jul 1, 2024 · - A Movie Review of Mother! (2017) Only Your Mother Would Love! Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and so many W-t-fs. Written and Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Analyzed by Your One Friend Without a Job.
mother!' Review: This Is Not the Movie You Think It Is | GQ">'mother!' Review: This Is Not the Movie You Think It Is | GQ
Sep 15, 2017 · Jennifer Lawrence (credited as "Mother") plays a young woman who spends her time painstakingly rebuilding a massive, remote country house that burned down in a fire. She shares the house with her...
Mother!’ – Film Review - NME">‘Mother!’ – Film Review - NME
Sep 7, 2017 · Lawrence plays a nameless young woman who lives in a remote, huge, beautiful house with her husband (Javier Bardem), a blocked writer. A few minutes into the movie he invites in a stranger (Ed...
Review: Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway ... - MSN">Mothers' Instinct Review: Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway ......
Mothers' Instinct is based on the 2018 French movie of the same name (Duelles in French), which itself is an adaptation of the 2012 novel Mothers' Instinct (Derrière la haine) by Barbara Abel.The ...
Movie”: 'Skeleton Crew ... - Collider">“Andor Was Better Than a Movie”: 'Skeleton Crew ... - Collider
Nov 21, 2024 · An Almost Christmas Story is the final short film in a three-part holiday series from producer and five-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón and Disney+. The short was preceded by ...

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User reviews

One of the toughest films I've ever tried to review. I liked it a lot, but can't recommend it.

Messiness 3:16

Anxiety: The Movie.

Aronofsky takes us on a wild journey with the house as the world allegory.

Insane, beautiful, terrorizing, epic, puzzling, intoxicating, gross, masterful. (Spoilers)

My god, mother is one hell of a film.

Thick on analogies and symbolism, to the point of overkill

Religious allegories abound but really it's just pretentious nonsense

Aronofsky's mother! will be hated by many, but loved by a precious few

Story of Life from a Religious Perspective

Pretentious and annoying

Art's Not Safe

From Eden to Armageddon in 2 Hours

I Loved It But Who Could I Recommend It To?

Easily the most intense move I've ever seen

a film that fails on multiple levels

Trigger Warning

Another dark Aronofsky movie but this one wasn't that good for me

Mother Nature, and how we are killing ourselves.

If there is a movie theater in hell, this is playing there

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