Mother

Seen 14th September

Hello Muddah,

Hello Fuddah,

I saw a movie

What the fuckah?

Darren Aronofsky, what the fuck is wrong with you? What the actual unholiest of fucks is wrong with you? Who touched you? Who sucked out your ability to tell a weird yet cogent story? Who ruined your ability to write interesting female characters? What the hell made you think this was a movie that was worth being made? Why? Why? WHY!?

Mother! follows… well, she doesn’t have a name but it’s Jennifer Lawrence’s character who is trying to save her marriage to Javier Bardem (a man who is 21 years her senior… they literally point out that he looks like he could be her father) so she’s trying to repair his home that had once burnt down, a home they now live in. While they are there, a mysterious man and his wife come by, basically move in and then a bunch of stupid shit happens that doesn’t matter because this script was written in 5 days by a man who openly admits that the plot is so flimsy (Sorry, “Dreamlike”) that if you try and… here, let me get the quote, I can’t make this shit up.

The movie has a dream-logic and that dream-logic makes sense. But if you try to unscrew it, it kind of falls apart.

So, here’s a shocker, the dream logic doesn’t make sense. Nothing about this movie makes sense, it’s poorly written and has no actual idea what the actual hell it’s actually trying to say. It’s not scary, it’s annoying. I was actively annoyed up until the final scenes of the movie when I was a combination of annoyed and disgusted. If that’s the feeling Aronofsky was going for then congrats, you got it in spades. Now if you could’ve made this a decent film on top of that, it might be worth something.

I detest this film, and believe me, I do not detest films easily (Though this year my ‘Detest” list is up to 3). That feeling stems from several things. The first is that Jennifer Lawrence’s character is the most passive character I’ve ever had the displeasure of seeing on camera in my life. She’s not a part of the story, the story happens TO her and she just takes it. There are so many scenes where any normal person would scream “Get the fuck out of my house” and she says nothing, she does nothing. I’d call her a doormat but doormats serve a purpose, she’s there to basically be Rosemary from Rosemary’s Baby except, again, without being an active part of the story. I’ve seen people compare this movie to Antichrist. NO! Much as that movie upsets me, it’s a goddamn masterpiece of tension building and the two lead characters are active participants in the story. This film doesn’t deserve to lick Antichrist’s shoes!

Javier Bardem? No, his character is an awful waste of a human being with no redeeming qualities and no actual purpose. Yeah, he’s another one who is just there and the story happens to him. He has one moment of actively taking part in an event, that moment is right at the end and is without a doubt the dumbest thing he could’ve done considering what happens after (I’ll be nice and not spoil it but let’s just say… fuck him, fuck him so fucking much for what he did).

If I’m forced to give a positive, the set is pretty. The house looks big enough that later events seem barely plausible. Some of the effects are well done, again if I’m being nice, and I did appreciate a scene where Javier’s character wrote some kind of super special poem and they told it visually instead of actually writing a poem, I appreciate that because it’s clear Aronofsky couldn’t have written a poem worthy of that scene… he also didn’t write that good a scene.

The only scene in this movie that’s horrifying is the final scene, that’s it. Everything else is irritating and annoying and has no reason to exist. This is an awful movie, it’s poorly done in every aspect and the worst thing of it all is that I know for a fact that Darren Aronofsky can do so much better. I loved Black Swan, I thought it was incredible. Requiem is a masterpiece of film making… this is, objectively, crap.

I would rather watch The Emoji Movie again!

1/10 

And it only get’s a 1 because he at least had the decency to stick to a constant aspect ratio