Director, Darren Aronofsky, is vocal about his ambitions to elicit great emotion from his audiences. Whether to good or bad effect, his films debate ego’s contribution to creativity; continuously placing the audience in provoking positions, he questions through excess, how much is too much? And whether our reliance on convention dictates taste or erodes it.

Mother! is no exception. Starring Jennifer Lawrence as an overlooked, underappreciated housewife, Mother! portrays what it is like to be an extra within your own film, metaphoric no doubt to domestic slavery felt by women within their own homes. Dictated by the love for her famous and agitated poet husband, Javier Bardem, Lawrence justifies submission through love’s supposed selflessness. Exploring the traditional arc of a relationship breakdown, the magnitude of emotional erosion that surrounds us is transmitted to the audience. Merging cinematic and genre elements together in an attention grabbing portrayal of the combustion of humanity, it is impossible, due to Aronofsky’s sheer desire for reaction, not to be entertained. However, focusing on his desire to provoke overlooks the sincerity of narrative. Ironically, framing him as the director with Bardem’s self-absorption as a poet, meta-theatrically sacrificing his integrity as a director for the gluttony of his cinema.

Thematic and allegorical messages are explored through Aronofsky’s demand for connectivity, consequentially demonstrating how everything is lost. What we think is solid can be destroyed, our sense of security is an illusion. Released the same week Hurricane Irma hit the coast of America, and the worst recorded fire season in British Columbia, gave Mother! an eerie edge of synchronicity. Cemented by Lawrence’s fabulous, fraught performance, the film prophesizes hardship, making it an ode to mankind our self-destruction, and the destruction we impose on Mother! nature herself.

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Sources

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2225369/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000849/?ref_=nv_sr_1