Mother

Does any have an opinion, on what that movie was about ? I could not understand It at all ! The only thing I was sure of, that Javier Bardem
was the devil himself .

I can't tell you what it was about, but I'll share with you what I took from it. I love to write, and I am hopelessly idealistic and tend to romanticize everything beyond any rational recognition so take this all with a grain of salt.

The creative type (Javier Bardem's character, Him) needs inspiration (Jennifer Lawrence's Character, Mother) to create something wonderful. Anything. The end.

No, I'm just kidding. Sort of.
The rest is all just visual symbolism showing the dynamic between such a poet and his muse. He loves her, but mostly only for the inspiration and stability she provides him while he tortures himself writing, pining for the adoration of his fans. Everything appears to me to be the struggle of that dynamic. She loves him. He loves her, but really what he sees of her is just some imagined morbid idealism that he's conjured up to project onto her for the sake of being inspired to create (the crystal. it's not her but what he finds inspiring within her that he cares for, and that's interchangeable as we see later in the movie). I think that's why the character is a different actress in the end. I mean to help reinforce that "she" is not as important to him as what she brings to the table as inspiration. So, he resets and moves on to another woman to place his projections onto for his next creation. All of the conflict, the heart, the war zone, the fire, the cult worship of celebrity, etc., I imagine is representative of the struggle one might face when truly loving someone caught up in that head space or career life (directors, actors, writers, musicians).

"I am your muse. Stay with me and love me, and I will keep you grounded and stable and I will inspire you to create wonderful things... for as long as you love me too. And I will believe, naively, that you do love me because I love you so very much that I will convince myself so. What? You don't need me now? My heart is breaking. I know that is OK for you though. You will just move on to another and live off of her new adoration like an emotionally unstable and insecure poetic parasite for it is not love that you desire. It is, instead, inspiration and fan adoration."

I personally feel this movie was just an attempt to translate all of this confusion, frustration, love, inspiration, and devastating heart break into a model to try to make some sense of it all through and abstract visual narrative.

This is also a two-way street though. I mean, it sounds so cruel and heartless, but the fact that a writer can step outside of his or herself to empathize with those partners that may have been manipulated and taken advantage of for a selfish creative nudge, in and of itself shows a level of self awareness and possible guilt that may not have been so obvious at the time through experience. Later though, this could have been discovered and investigated through self-reflection.

The story is about the poet's world, told through the perspective of his muse. The writer would have to be aware and considerate of this dynamic to even begin to translate this to story. I imagine there was a lot of personal and emotional closure in creating this movie.

Eh. That's what I got from it all. But who knows
@gunsnfish



EDIT
TLDR: He burns a relationship by taking everything he can of her for inspiration until she literally burns out and leaves. He then supplants that inspiration onto another to do the same because he just needs stability and inspiration for his work. Rinse and repeat forever or until the guy realizes what he's doing and cares enough to bother stopping.

I viewed this ODD film myself, I gave it a 2.5/10.

Same thing, I took as Bardem being Satan. The last couple weeks, there were a few new releases I was VERY much looking forward to. This was one of them, I was quite disappointed!

Jon

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The saddest thing in life is wasted talent.

Bardem is god. Satan in absent from this iteration.

Well-articulated, ynwtf. Myself, I got more wrapped up in the way that it mixed a retelling of the Bible with a statement on how organised religion was starting to have a negative effect on the world and its ever-increasing population (which also started to blend into a metaphor for climate change as it went on). The house is planet Earth, Bardem is God, his poetry is the Bible, Lawrence is Mother Earth, Harris and Pfeiffer are Adam and Eve, etc.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

In the words of Tom Waits, "Don't ya know there ain't no Devil, that's just God when he's drunk?"

Seriously, though, how are people coming to the conclusion that Bardem is Satan?

Does Bardem give Jennifer Lawrence a life ultimatum by flipping a coin?

....and speaking of the bible. Lets not forget, brother killing brother.

Jon

I like the way you guys are trying to put it into pieces, and figure it out. But the Movie dose not lend it self, to be figured out possibly that's the premise of it . What they did to that baby , that is the work of evil !

My problem was that I saw it about a couple of weeks after it came out so I'd already heard a lot of people talking about what it meant (with a common one being the whole Bible allegory for obvious reasons) so I couldn't really go in without thinking about what I'd heard so I'm not sure if I'd have figured it out on my own or not. Maybe I would have, but I guess I'll never know.

If you have at the very least a basic knowledge of the bible, particularly Genesis, you should be able to work out the movie quite easily.

Genesis Ok will take a look ant particular ?

any particular verse ?

I guess I was lucky in that sense. I avoided reading anything on it. I could react purely only on my own personal baggage that I carried in with me

Funny that I am a Christian and didn't get the biblical allegory while watching. Christian podcaster I listen to said the same but in fairness his partner said he did. I see it now and am far from offended by it. I do think Aronofsky has a narrow view of God though so I don't find it surprising that Christians aren't picking up on it before being told.

I was reading it much more as an allegory of fame and art consumption.

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Letterboxd

“Except for markf, you’re all a disgrace to cinema.”

It's more of a broad overview of the whole book - the two brothers are Cain and Abel, the broken sink is the great flood, the baby is Jesus, etc.

I don't know if it's narrow so much as complicated - he's done a few films now that have tried to make some sense of God (thinking mainly of Pi and Noah, though The Fountain may qualify) and mother! in particular is his most direct approach to the subject yet. It probably helps that it's at least as critical (if not more so) of the toxic levels of devotion and self-justification that God inspires in people rather than God himself (especially when key facets of God - like welcoming and forgiving everyone no matter what - are treated like character flaws rather than positive traits). The part where people are tearing up the house seems like it's representing a criticism of both prosperity gospel beliefs and climate change denial/inaction - that whole "we can do whatever we want to Earth since we're all going to Heaven anyway" kind of reasoning (and it certainly goes some way towards explaining what Mother does in the end). I guess it is telling that there are people in this thread whose initial interpretation is that Bardem represents Satan instead, but none of them have managed to explain how they reached that conclusion.

Didn't forget about this. I even typed up a response a couple of times and then didn't post it. Been thinking about it quite a bit this week and I came to the conclusion that I have been a believer and a bible reader almost all my life and I still have a pretty narrow view of God way more often than I care to admit. I often make him fit in my little myopic box of a world view. Why should I expect more from someone who is obviously searching. I hope Aronofsky finds what he is looking for one day.

Listened to another cast on Mother this week and one of the critics said that she missed the biblical allegory first time through, unlike the other this wasn't a Christian cast. She read it as a metaphor of art, artist, and public consumption. I definitely think Aronofsky meant for it to work on a couple of levels so it is pretty cool that is coming through in the reviews.

Looking forward to checking it out again on Blu-ray.

The character played by Bardem is definitely God. He might seem like Satan because in one of the posters he's standing in fire (but that's just because he is engulfed in fire at the end of the movie), and he's allowing evil to occur (but so does God). I'm not sure why else the character is being equated with Satan.

The movie is a biblical allegory, with some non-biblical theology mixed-in. The Poet's upstairs library, which the fanatics want to gain access to - despite being forbidden - represents the Garden of Eden, laden with the Poet's knowledge (ie. Tree of Knowledge). People consume the baby because he represents the Christ (Jesus said of the bread, "this is my body", and Christians have been consuming it at communion on the Sabbath ever since). It's also a tragedy, trying to make a point about humanity's sinful nature. It goes a little too far in stating its point, I think, and the ridiculousness near the end almost became laughable. Thankfully, they didn't go with "the rape of mother nature".