#but they immediately stripped Nina of everything that made her a complex character so

[cabin12kid]

neg in tags (bitching about shadow and bone show as a six of crows enjoyer)

[acelucky]

Exploring themes in mother! and Darren Aronofsky as an auteur director.

I’m gonna add a little note at the start - I started to write this back In january, I find when I don’t work on an essay properly until it’s done, it never really gets finished. I planned on writing this in a proper film theory kinda way but instead you’ve got a rambling half-essay, half-thoughts kinda nonsense text going on. 

I first watched mother! in the cinema with my now husband, six people walked out as the film reached the climax of the second act, many did not. We went to the cinema that evening as I needed escapism from the real world, and although I found escapism within the walls of the multiplex, I was reminded 

The metaphors are abundant, from how we treat the earth, to how wrapped up we can become in ourselves or more in searching for meaning in life, putting all our hopes into one idea or person. Some are, a little on the nose, but I think that’s the point. There are subtle references that you really have to be looking for, but the film was made with passion to tell a story and therefore I cannot be angry for making some of the references stand out. It is in a way, a variation of the oldest story their is, ‘The creation,’ which is also the theme of Aronofsky’s 2014 film Noah. 

I have my biases, for sure, I have admired Aronofsky’s work for many years. But what he did with mother! was unique, bold, beautiful and in many ways, unforgivable.  The film stays with you for days afterwards, the way the high and immediate low after a holiday lingers, you get over the initial shock, the pain after just a few days, but somehow it’s always there. You can’t switch it off, the memory stays with you. 

The silence is what struck me, from the very opening of the film we experience the world through the mother’s eyes, there is the faint noise of birdsong and insects but aside from this the world is at peace. It’s perfect and calming in a way, but also a reminder of how deafening silence can be in a world so preoccupied by technology and noise, the sound of distant traffic, a train, fans in summer becomes like a comfort blanket to us. With the sound stripped away we become vulnerable, forced to listen to our own heart beat, to the voices in our heads. 

Sometimes we need to take a moment to listen to the silence, whether that’s the sound of the world outside, the birds in the trees, water, a breeze… or whether it’s the beating of our own hearts. Time to reflect on what we have built up from the ashes. 

Aronsfky is an auteur in the truest form of the word, I cannot help but compare mother! to Aronfsky’s other films that have many central and underlying themes;

Complex and intense relationships between the characters.

Fantasy, but not within the realms of the unbelievable. 

A creator/God

The use of colour - whether saturated colours or the use of mute colours. Extremes often feature. 

Music - With Clint Mansell as his go to composer, yet mother! omits all non-diegetic sound, even the credits leaving you feeling incased.

A quest - okay so this isn’t unique to one director’s films, or films in general. Most good stories focus on a quest, but the type of quest in Aronosky’s films can be catergorised in a similar way. Perfection, wanting to better oneself and the world around it. A quest for the unobtainable. 

Perhaps this last point is the real horror in mother! but also in his earlier films such as Black Swan and The Fountain. There is a need for love, acceptance and above all to prove oneself before time runs out. But time always runs out, the pacing of Aronfsky’s films reflects life, our lives. At first the tempo seems slow, there is time to take time, to make time, to watch the world go by. But the older we get, the quicker time seems to fly by, our understanding of the concept of time changes due to the number of years we have spent on this earth and bearing witness to our own mortality. 

When Jennifer Lawrence pleads, “Please don’t leave me” and is still left alone feels reminiscent perhaps of our own lives, when we have spoken to a god and hear nothing in return, no matter how desperate our words. 

Throughout mother! there are small moments, gestures, items, that could easily represent things often overseen here on earth. Of course some of these symbols are obvious (such as the use of the snake in Noah) others are left for interpretation. 

The breaking off of the door knob to stop others getting into the study - a metaphor perhaps for how we have destroyed parts of our earth, how some areas are now off limits due to destruction

When the blood stains won’t come out and grow when others are close, 

We constantly ignore mother earth’s suffering, though maybe that’s twee. 

No matter how strong the foundations, things can easily be destroyed, just like the house cracking at the end, this could easily represent earth quakes. Whilst earth quakes are a part of what keeps our world turning and are a natural occurrence - man made earthquakes caused by fracking are quite a different story. 

It is the first part of the film that feels more like a horror than the gore itself in the Second Act. Whilst the Second Ace features all the horrific imagery, from depictions of war, jealousy, obsession, lust, pain, fear and the grotesque nature of man kind, there is an unease that slowly creeps up on you in during the First Act. It is the kind of unease that truly gets under your skin and remains with you for days afterwards. We witness Jennifer Lawrence’s character slowly loosing the peace her and her husband are used to, loosing her home, her husband and finally her child. 

“Get out, get out all of you.” A line that harrows the truth that boundaries are important, even when it’s with those we love. Ultimately it represent’s Eve’s resentment of how we have treated earth, of the pain that man let in. I use man here on purpose, many comment on how it is Eve who takes the first bite of the forbidden fruit, much like Pandora opening a box, it must be women who are to blame for suffering. Yet it was Adam who was told not to eat the fruit, Eve was unaware of this warning and Adam looked on, watching her taste it before he dared. 

Circular imagery is important throughout the movie, the forest around the house, the stairs. Everything represents earth and a centre.The theme of continuation, a spiral, something that has no clear defined beginning or end is represented through even the camera angles and shots that are used throughout the film. There are only three shots used, over her shoulders, faced on and continuously tracking. The shots are long, sometimes almost exhausting to watch. 

In mother! we have the concept of God’s word speaking to all - “These words, I feel like they were written for me.” How many times do we feel the same? Whether it’s talking about religious text or lyrics in a song. 

Numerous lamps are used to create soft lighting rather than main lights. Warm, like a mother’s love. The use of lighting to convey emotion is something that isn’t new to Aronofsky’s work, shadows play a huge part in Black Swan and The Fountain is full of warmth and rich tones that symbolise the earth. Much like the colours inside the house, the pallets that are being used to paint the walls are full of soft soil and sand like colours that represent the salt of the earth. 

“This doesn’t belong to you,” When people are stealing everything from her house, people stealing all of earth’s natural resources. 

The crescendo of the movie brings together the mania that paparazzi and fandom can create, there is a circle, almost like the eye of a storm where everything is sucked in and once you are a part of that movement it can consume you and make it difficult to separate yourself from it. In mother! we see how God’s love their ‘subjects’ and cannot let go, but the onus is on both sides as we witness the subjects unable to let go of their god, unable to part with something that may give them the ultimate answer, “Why are we here?” But the answer never comes.

Black Swan deals with perfectionism, for the lead character, Nina, that is her purpose, to be perfect, to dance in a way like no-one has before, it becomes her sole ambition and she becomes blind to the other things that make up her world, forsaking them for dance. In The Wrestler we see a similar story,  Randy “The Ram’ Robinson, becomes fixated on his past self and being unable to let go of what has been. Instead of living out his life in peace and contemplation, he trains for another fight, seeking glory and fame. And in both The Fountain and Noah, religion is at the heart, there is a chase for something else. Whether that is the cure for cancer or the hunt for the holy grail in The Fountain or the re-birth if the world in Noah. Arronofsky’s films all have central characters who are on a quest that consumes them and solidifies their own ideal of their purpose on this planet. Aronofsky’s films constantly feature characters who have to find ways to ‘live with themselves’ and outside of these concepts we see them struggle to cope with identity. 

Whilst Mother! does not address mankind’s purpose on earth, it explores the emotions that are attached to those ideals and in the end perhaps the suggestion that Aronofsky gives us is that it is okay to not put all our trust in a ‘god’ that maybe instead we should be looking out for one another. Maybe greed and selfishness are not ideologies we should feed into, but rather it is the planet that needs our protection, perhaps that is our purpose, to protect what we already have before it is too late. 

And maybe that reading is, like some of the metaphors in the film, a little on the nose, but considering the themes of the film, it fits. 

Mother! is a cinematic marvel, with two defined acts, the horror is too real, too close to home to bare at times. The silence is, as the saying goes, deafening It stays with you for days afterwards leaving you asking what did you just witness? Because mother! isn’t a film you feel you just watched, you experience it and bare witness to the horrors and warnings that are within. It felt true to all of Aronofsky’s work, in that the film brought together all of his usual motifs and ideals.