MOTHER!

A couple’s relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence.

The movie description above is a complete understatement! MOTHER! will divide viewers with — you will either love it or hate it. I’m down toward the love end of the continuum. But how to describe it? I’ve never seen anything like it before. At the end of the movie I breathed WTF?! and sat with so many thoughts going through my head. The story is essentially about the way women often live in the shadow of “great” men and the way women have the life sucked out of them by the male’s egocentrism. The way this idea is portrayed is creepy, mind blowing, shocking, dazzling, dramatic, thrilling, comedic, complex, serious, mysterious and has to be experienced to be believed. Jennifer Lawrence is brilliant, as is the rest of the cast. Michelle Pfeiffer is excellent as her and Lawrence’s character (no one in the film is ever named) experience spiralling tension. This is one hell of a movie and definitely lived up to whatever ambiguous expectations I had from the trailers. It is not perfect, however. The director, Darren Aranofsky, is unrestrained and the last third of the movie goes completely over the top without the subtlety of the first two-thirds — to the detriment of the overall package. If it hadn’t been for this, it would have been a five star movie, for me. It is, by no means perfect, but it is provocative and controversial. If you see it, you will have to decide for yourself whether it is a good movie or not!