fuck mother!

There are no words to describe the anger that I'm feeling. Of course, I could come up with something eventually but I’m too pissed off to think straight. Even after taking a near burning shower for 45 minutes, I still feel like the filth hasn’t been washed away. I walked home in a daze, my eyes stinging in an attempt to hold back tears. When I was on the subway, an old lady asked me if I wanted her seat. I must’ve looked really flustered. Why do I feel this way? Darren Aronofsky’s mother!

I’ll preface this by saying I am (or was) a fan of Aronofsky’s work. I considered him one of my favorite filmmakers when I was younger and unaware of how egotistical artists could be. mother! is his inner thoughts he wrote in a journal translated to film and I wish he kept it to himself. There is a lot to be said about this movie, but to boil it all down to a simple sentence: mother! is about a housewife who puts her husband before herself.

He’s an artist, a beloved poet, everyone loves him and he not-so-secretly loves the attention that they give him. In a way, even his wife is a fan because she’s in constant competition for his affection when complete strangers arrive at their home. Why can’t he just pay attention to her? Oh right, he has a God complex and he’s a dick. 

Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem play these nameless characters with great conviction. I’m no fan of Lawrence’s acting, but I cannot deny the effect that she left on me. Then again, I would be heartless to not feel anything for her character after the shit that she goes through all for the sake of getting her husband to say more than three words to her.

He’s so narcissistic that he practically forgets he has a wife despite the fact that majority of the film consists of her bending her back for him. Although Lawrence’s performance is good, her character is one-dimensional at best. She has no interests outside of pleasing her husband. She stays inside all day, rebuilding his childhood home that burned down years ago. But does he ever notice? Does he care? Even when these strangers start to disrespect her and deface their home, he chooses them over her. What kind of husband would do that? She spends God-knows-how-long rebuilding this home from ash so that they can have a paradise to live in and he gives her nothing in return.

It’s frustrating to watch how these people disregard her and invade her personal space. They treat her husband like a king but she’s essentially a maid to them, cleaning up their mess. Her paradise is ruined and and the one person who should understand that doesn’t give a damn because the strangers are fans of his work.

The message might as well have been “artists are self-absorbed assholes” but mother! throws around multiple messages, none of which actually matter because they lead to nowhere. Bardem’s character is a selfish artist and…nothing comes of it. He remains selfish. The environmental symbolism about the destruction of Mother Nature doesn’t expand because the film gets caught up on the most random of subjects from overarching Biblical themes to a brief commentary on celebrity culture. It's the equivalent of throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks. But nothing sticks because it doesn’t make sense.

And before you say anything—yes, I understood the movie. I get it. That was the point. That doesn’t mean I’m going to like it. Understanding it made me hate it even more. Cinema is subjective but I cannot wrap my head around what it is that prompts people to say that this film is brilliant: “Darren Aronofsky is clinically insane. And he's a genius.” Why are we praising insanity? How is he a genius? Because he’s an artist making a film about how artists are assholes while throwing in scenes of unnecessary violence against women? But who cares, right?! That Mother Nature allegory is a direct parallel to Jennifer Lawrence getting punched in the face with her boobs popping out of her shirt!

“What makes mother! brilliant is that it is open enough to read and project your own experiences onto it, which makes it deeply personal and universal.” That’s the problem, though. Why would any woman want to watch a straight white man’s version of what it’s like to be a woman? I already know what it’s like, I experience it every single day.

I don’t need to sit through a two-hour film where a woman is treated like garbage for the sake of a theme when the theme itself toxic, especially when it comes to womanhood. Lawrence’s character goes to the lengths of having a child with this man who doesn’t care for her but she endures it for the slim chance of affection. She’s referred to as a cunt just because she wants to preserve the home that she made for her and her shitty husband.

Jennifer Lawrence even called the movie feminist and I can’t begin to comprehend that. Are you completely unaware of the movie that you starred in, Jennifer? What about mother! is feminist? The part where her character finally snaps after being pushed beyond limit when her baby is killed and cannibalized? The one glimmer of hope in her life is brutally taken away from her and somehow that’s supposed to relate to feminism because that’s when she fights back after being treated as subhuman for the entirety of the film?

And in the end, it doesn’t matter because after she kills everyone by burning the house down, she gets her heart ripped out by Javier Bardem and the cycle repeats itself with a brand new nameless woman who has to once again needlessly sacrifice herself for the attention of her husband. That isn’t feminism, it’s a demented attempt at explaining Mother Nature’s relationship with God. It just tells me what I already know—women are human beings. We aren’t limited to the trauma that we go through.

We don’t deserve to be called bitch or slut or cunt just to keep a level head in the face of insult.  We shouldn’t be punished when we lash out after getting hurt repeatedly (or even once)—which is exactly what happens to Lawrence’s character. She’s punished verbally during the first half of the film and punished physically during the last—and for what? A half-assed message about God and the environment? Fuck you, Darren Aronofsky. This film shouldn’t have been made; it’s toxic, it lacks compassion, it hides behind avant-garde so it can get away with shock value. There’s nothing brilliant about it. Aronofsky is not a genius for this film. He’s a guy who decided to insert his own view of womanhood into a twisted narrative that serves no purpose but to cause pain. 

There are many movies that don’t exploit women’s abuse in an attempt to be relatable but unfortunately, films like mother! get more attention because of the artist behind the project. I don’t use this word often, but this film is pretentious. You can like it, enjoy it, appreciate it for what it is but at the end of the day, women deserve better than this. If this is how you view womanhood, then you should never write a woman’s story.