In this macabre horror/melodrama, writer-director Darren Aronofsky blends Rosemary's Baby with his own Requiem for a Dream, making the cynical assertion that creative inspiration is more important than love or life itself. Opening with the image of a huge Victorian country house burning (along with its female inhabitant), mother! tells the tortured tale of a nameless archetypal couple (Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem). He's a famous, self-absorbed poet who craves adoration and idolatry. Serving as his muse, she has renovated and restored his idyllic old house, which burned down before they met. Like a radiant albeit self-medicating Earth Mother, she is determined to make a paradise for him. One evening a mysterious stranger (Ed Harris) knocks at their door, needing a room for the night, and the poet invites him to stay, much to the dismay of his timid, subservient, much younger wife. It turns out that their coughing, chain-smoking visitor is a doctor who is soon joined by his arrogant, predatory wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) and their two bickering sons (Domhnall and Brian Gleeson), one of whom kills the other. And then an unwelcome horde of other parasitic intruders arrive, along with relentless violence and increasing destruction. “Who are these people?” the wife (and viewer) asks. Cryptic biblical allusions abound in this abstract, would-be metaphysical allegory. A grim, grotesque, and pretentiously self-indlgent film, this is not recommended. (S. Granger)
mother!
Paramount, 121 min., R, DVD: $30.99, Blu-ray/DVD Combo: $39.99, Dec. 19 Volume 33, Issue 1
mother!
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