Mother! (2017)

Directed by: Darren Aronofsky | 121 minutes | drama, horror, thriller | Actors: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brian Gleeson, Domhnall Gleeson

In one specific scene it seems to be going in the right direction with ‘mother!’, the horror soap that Darren Aronofsky has served us up to that point: the birth of a baby, the primal power of the woman that seems to tame the gluttony of the man. . It is an example of acting wrestling, performed by the name-loving film couple Lawrence/Bardem, who live in a remote and much too large house. He tries to write; them to build a nest.

In this theatrical movie nightmare, the praiseworthy Lawrence is a Munchausen who always manages to pull himself out of the swamp with concentration. The baby scene should have calmed down, but then there’s an apocalyptic ending that would drag even hardened EMS officers into the limbo of life and death, a climax so boundlessly baroque and ambitious that the film eats itself up, leaving the viewer hollow-eyed.

‘mother!’ is so bizarre even before the baby scene that it has to be delusions, wrapped in a visually superior satire on the psychological thriller. How else can it be explained that a poet with writer’s block brings in a dying fan (Harris) and has him fight a fatal quarrel over the inheritance with his wife (a sharp Pfeiffer) and children? We see all this through the eyes of Lawrence. She stands and watches as seeping blood eats her house.

When the said family has left, the writer and his wife create a child and he his masterpiece, a poem so influential that hordes of disciples enter the house and the aforementioned process of usurpation repeats itself by a factor of 10. Lawrence represents the maternal love and Bardem the degenerate. artist. The viewer, who has invested the entire film in Lawrence, suddenly has to understand Bardem. That is a step too far, and the unbalanced film construction collapses.