Darren Aronofsky says that "mother!" has a set interpretation. I disagree.

Darren Aronofsky, Hollywood's current Mad Scientist-in-Residence, has recently said that his latest cinematic experiment, mother!, is the result of crossbreeding a Biblical allegory with a warning about the destruction of the environment. (That's as far as I'll extend the metaphor. I promise.) While this might have been his intent when he prepared the script, I don't think it fully explains the movie he actually made. Some issues therewith:

• There is clearly a cycle of rebirth happening in the movie; Jennifer Lawrence's character is at least the second in the cycle. The film explicitly shows the third at the end and implicitly shows the first (her eyes, at least) in the beginning. There is no biblical precedent for our reality to be a second act of creation, at least none that I'm aware of. Why would Javier Bardem's character (clearly the God analogue, in this interpretation) keep a crystal memento in memory of the destroyed first creation, which was destroyed by Mother Nature's predecessor? What is the biblical analogue to the crystal?
• Jennifer Lawrence's character (Mother Nature, in Aronofsky's intepretation) has to drink some sort of yellow tonic to stave off headaches and dizzy spells while in the house. I believe the headaches/dizzy spells represent While I understand how the interlopers, introduced by Ed Harris's and Michelle Pfeiffer's characters "destroy the environment" (the house) in this interpretation, why have reality/the environment reject Mother Nature so fundamentally? What purpose does the yellow tonic serve? Then, Mother Nature stops drinking the tonic, and becomes pregnant. Was she not allowed to participate in God's creation of humanity until she stopped drinking the tonic?

I don't think the biblical analogue is a perfect fit. A more appropriate fit, and the one that I (incidentally) subscribe to, sees the film as an illustration of the creative process, played out in graphically Freudian terms. In this interpretation:

• The house is the larger mind/inner intimate being of Javier Bardem, the artist. It's lived in by his wife, who has rebuilt it after a personal tragedy. Because the wife has participated in the rebuilding, it's their life together.
• Javier Bardem's character is the ego, the conscious mind of the artist.
• Jennifer Lawrence's character is the wife/partner of the artist. She is an interloper in his mind, in his intimate self. (I think this better explains the attitude of the various house guests towards her, and their fundamental lack of respect for her authority in the house.) She is not a true partner of the artist; as she says at the end, Javier Bardem's character doesn't love her, he only loves how much she loves him. He needs her love to keep his house (his larger being) in order, so that he can help create.
• The tonic is a representation of self-repression required by the artist's wife to allow her to live in intimacy with the artist. It's important that she mixes the tonic with the paint; it's a part of the house (part of the artist's mind), so by ingesting it, she takes some of his characteristics into herself. It illustrates her subservience to him. When she doesn't take it, she's in disharmony (physical discomfort) with the artist/house.
• The people are, collectively, the id, the subconsious mind of the artist. The id craves the creative output of the artist. It propels him (violently) toward the act of creation. More on them later.
• Ed Harris's and Michelle Pfeiffer's characters, and their children, are an event or personal story either told to or witnessed by the artist. The events in the second half of the film are the artist's attempts to process the tragedy/trauma he witnessed into a creative act.
• The crystal is a memory of a prior lover treasured by the artist. The vileness of the death of the son destroys the goodness of the memory of love the artist has; it's what animates him. By destroying the good memory, the trauma of the event cannot be erased by the artist or the artist's wife.
• The bloodstain is the trauma continuously borne by the artist after witnessing the death of the son. It's meaningful that the trauma never disappears, but keeps recurring, and also that the bloodstain is in the bedroom put aside for the baby. More on that later.
• The film's second half signifies the id's attempts to overtake the conscious mind with grief at the death of the son in the first half. The artist is having trouble processing death (specifically, the death of the son), and it boils over into the larger mind (the house) of the artist. The id is only placated by a creative act, which brings us to...
• The newborn son is the creative act inspired by the wife of the artist. The artist uses the wife for inspiration of his creative act, then turns it over to his id to placate it and help him process the trauma. Hence his speech about making the child's death mean something.
• Jennifer Lawrence's character's destruction of the house represents the wife leaving the artist out of disgust. She realizes what the artist has done with the creative act she inspired (used it to selfishly recreate a violent act), so she leaves him. The trauma of her leaving him burns out/destroys the life they have created together.
• The second crystal signifies the memory the artist creates of his and his wife's time together. He keeps that memory safe while he recreates the house with a new wife/lover, thus restarting the creative process over again.

That's what I say, Mr. Aronofsky! End result: artists are selfish and use people, even their most intimate partners, as a means to end, that end being creativity. The artist in mother! never really loves his wife; he just uses her.

I think this interpretation, whether or not it was intended by Darren Aronofsky, more satisfactorily reconciles the film's iconography and symbolism into a cohesive whole. Whether or not Aronofsky intended a different message to be imparted, that is the message that I believe he ultimately did impart. Is it a question of artistic intent versus artistic execution? Does art ever only have one static interpretation, or do we participate in the creative act by interpreting it?

Discuss. You know what I think.

TL;DR: The director of mother! says that his movie is a combo biblical allegory/environmental cautionary tale. I think the film is more appropriately interpreted as an artist's attempts to cope with a traumatic event by using his wife as inspiration for a grotesque creative act. Is it appropriate for a film viewer to disagree with its creator?

Submitted September 19, 2017 at 12:03PM by troznov http://ift.tt/2hgbTEx