Mother!

Bullshit. Yeah, I could express my thoughts in a more subtle and laconic way, i.e., that it’s simply uselessness. So why did I give it one star? For the little film within the film with Michelle. We hadn't seen her playing the role of the sassy little MILF (supposedly the biblical Eve) for a long time, which in and of itself was a small gig in spite of everything and all her teammates. (14/11/2017)

An excellently driven absurd thriller that works both as a portrait of an unhealthy relationship, as well as a parable of the relationship of humankind and the figure of the mother or Planet Earth. The second half, unfortunately, drowns into biblical allegories that are literally hair-pulling so even a moron would understand them, which radically affects the thought-provoking aspect. Yeah, God is a smug douchebag, the Scriptures are misinterpreted nonsense, poor life-giving Mother Earth, and humans are idiots… but what else? In the details and in the conclusion, that’s effective, but the impression of a smart film that has something to say vanishes. That said, the intention is commendable, sure. 7/10 (18/10/2017)

There are said to be directors whose unsuccessful films are also worth watching. Aronofsky is lucky in this regard, because his last successful film was The Wrestler. Mother! (how to say it and not offend someone) is a crackling banal story, which you can fit into a few textbook clichés. Darren was able to fill it with chubby and swollen vaginal-biblical symbols, giving all those B-movie replicas the appearance of almost cosmic validity. And, because the first half is harmless and leads nowhere – and it keeps repeating one and the same figure - he has prepared for the finale a delirious journey through the history of violence and a religiosity course for beginners. This director obviously feels like a virtuoso poet, but in reality he's just a stubborn plasterer and handyman. And his paradise gazebo falls apart under his hands. Jennifer Lawrence is not irritating this time. She is completely given herself over to a puppeteer who has no idea why all the threads are wrong and where they actually lead. An ode to the fate of a woman, a mother? Weh. (21/10/2017)

Darren Aronofsky is a director who rarely suits me with his work, he makes a lot of controversial films for his audience, but with this one he absolutely blew me away and proved that he has balls. Mother! is an acting tour-de-force of great actors: an excellent Jennifer Lawrence, who reaches the bottom of her acting abilities and gives an Oscar-winning performance, the same can be said about Javier Bardem, and the participation of Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer is very good, a dream casting for a horror-thriller. The premise is very interesting and I can say this is a great nightmare that I guess nobody would like to experience. The romantic idyll of a happy couple in a beautiful big house starts to be disturbed by uninvited guests, which start to increase and towards the end the house literally becomes a battleground! The film has a very stiffing and uncomfortable atmosphere, for the first time in a long time I was really anxious to the point of being uncomfortable while watching it. The last half hour escalates to the point where my mind was boggled by all the things the director dared to show, and at times he was almost explicitly rude to the audience, girls will definitely turn closed their eyes and the hardened viewers will "snort". During the final twist a lot of people in the cinema said “What the Fuck!" A lot of people may get upset, I personally was very surprised by something so original and strangely interesting. A gritty paranoid, hallucinogenic, intelligent and atmospheric thriller, the likes of which hasn't been seen in the last few years. The finale is the kind of WTF freakout that I want to repeat immediately. The movie will definitely divide audiences into two groups: very satisfied and very angry viewers; I belong to the former. 85%. (18/09/2017)

Mother! is a film that in a way made me think again about how I should actually approach the evaluation of works of cinema and how to approach this one in particular. I could be a principled objective reviewer who doesn't care who works on a film, what they've done before, or how their outlook on life and artistic sensibilities affect me, then I'd follow the plot without emotion, trying to uncover the general processes I've consciously or subconsciously automated while watching films, and Mother! would have struck me as a big-budget creation that, in pursuit of a thoughtful philosophical point, cheaply resorts to parroting various biblical themes on which it merely hangs its model story. But I can also be a highly subjective reviewer who has both a good understanding of general narrative practices and an opinion of the actors and the director, which, if negative, can affect the experience of the film to such an extent that it’s impossible to get past being pissed off at the artistic expression of the filmmaker and enjoy the film subjectively. Or I can be a subjective viewer who doesn’t give a crap about the artistic views of the creators, and even though the film just parrots big themes, its portrayal simply draws me in and, if nothing else, shows me once again how powerfully the medium of film can communicate and create at least the illusion of big authorial ideas. Mother! is a controversial and far from perfect movie that has understandably divided the audience and raises the question of how much one is able to empathise with the narrative and accept its expression. I respect all options (a hundred people are a tribute to a hundred audience tastes), I chose mine, and it is evident from this really difficult review. 85% (14/12/2017)