Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.0

mother! Blu-ray Movie Review

Bad Dreams

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 21, 2017

Darren Aronofsky's mother! has already inspired more controversy than most films, starting with its title: big "M"? small "m"? include the exclamation point or not? But the orthographic debate is trivial compared to the polarized reactions to the film itself. Some have pronounced it a masterpiece, while others have decried it as pretentious trash. Viewers have been known to stand up in theaters and yell at the screen as the credits roll. You have to give the writer/director his props on at least one account: He's created something for which indifference doesn't appear to be an option.

Regardless of where you stand on mother!—and I'm not ashamed to confess that I still don't know—you have to marvel at the fact that any major studio backed it, because Aronofsky's latest creation plays more like something from the back waters of the European art house. (Think Gaspar Noé, but with less sex.) Maybe Paramount was desperate enough to try something outlandish, given their lack of any foothold in the comic book superhero realm where Warner, Disney, Fox and Sony are all comfortably ensconced. The studio was reportedly persuaded to put up the film's $30 million production cost by the presence of Jennifer Lawrence, whose movie star visage dominates the advertising and who appears in virtually every scene. But Lawrence is doing something in this movie so unlike any of her roles to date that you quickly forget that it's her. There's little in her performance to appeal to a movie star's fan base. The same goes for the rest of the cast, all of whom are operating just as far out of their comfort zone as the movie pushes the viewer.

Paramount is releasing Aronofsky's creation on both Blu-ray and UHD. I have no idea how well it will sell, and it's not a movie that I can whole-heartedly recommend for purchase. While the damn thing does get under your skin, I can't imagine why anyone would want to repeat the experience.

It's impossible to discuss mother! without revealing plot turns that are most effective if they take the viewer by surprise. Then again, if you're not sure whether the film is something to which you want to subject yourself, some amount of background is essential. I'll try to minimize the description, but mother! is such a singularly baffling creation that, arguably, nothing is a spoiler. (Or maybe everything is; I can't decide.)

Characters in mother! don't have names. The central married couple is identified simply as "He" or "Him" (Javier Bardem) and "She", "Her" or "Mother" (Lawrence). The film's opening is an extended digital morph in which an incinerated country house is restored to its former state after He places a peculiar crystal in a display stand. (There's more to it, but you get the idea.) Is this a time lapse, as the house is being slowly rebuilt? Certainly the early exchanges between Him and Her suggest that possibility. Or is something else happening, an exertion of mystical forces, or perhaps a vision experienced by Him, or Her, or even somebody else? You might as well know in advance that the film never provides a definitive answer, though it suggests some intriguing possibilities.

He and She live in what initially appears to be domestic bliss in a massive rustic home that She is in the process of lovingly restoring. It's an odd location surrounded by green forest in what appears to be the middle of nowhere. No roads or paths lead to the house, and the couple inside never seems to venture outside beyond the front door. A poet suffering from writer's block, He has experienced a non-specific tragedy that destroyed His life. She was his salvation, or so He says. They seem to need no one but each other.

But then one day a man (Ed Harris) appears at the door, with a persistent cough and an ever-changing story about why he's there. The next day he is joined by his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) and eventually by their two feuding sons (played by real-life brothers Brian and Domhnall Gleeson). She cannot fathom why He extends such a ready welcome to these strangers and is so tolerant of the mess they leave in their wake, as they make themselves at home like they own the place. Shortly, though, She has even greater problems, as the visitors are followed by still more arrivals, giving Her the sensation that her home is being invaded by inconsiderate interlopers from all sides. Eventually everyone does leave, and He and She reconcile in a sexual embrace, resulting in a pregnancy that thrills them both as they anticipate the new arrival.

On the eve of the baby's birth, however, a new assault begins, and here words cannot adequately convey the horrific chaos to which Aronosky subjects his heroine, with frights and abominations that would make Hieronymus Bosch blanch. The director has prepared us for this assault with haunted house motifs like a mysteriously bleeding floorboard, a bricked-up wall in the dim basement that opens into a mysterious tunnel and a fleeting but memorable appearance by a peculiar creature in one of the toilets (shades of Stephen King!). These and other classical horror elements establish a foundation of unease to which the third-act eruption of monstrous intrusions would provide the satisfying release of a jump-out-of-your-seat fright—if this were a standard genre piece. But Aronosky doesn't provide any release. His demented Walpurgisnacht builds to a conclusion of sorts, but the effect is to leave the viewer wound-up, breathless and baffled.

Aronofsky has said that much of mother!'s plot (if one can use that word here) was inspired by episodes from the Bible, and even if one doesn't sense the connections initially, they become inescapable with the birth of Her's child, who is seized upon as an object of worship by the maniacal hordes of His fans descending on the house like locusts. One could certainly construct an interpretive "key" for the film, superimposing a biblical template over mother!'s crazed events in a comforting effort to rationalize and explain them away. But to succumb to that temptation would be to deny the nightmarish power of Aronosky's creation, which resists all rational explanation while it's happening, rushing at you with the inexorable but incomprehensible logic of a dream.

The director has shot the film almost entirely from Her's point of view, and Lawrence's emotional transparency (which has always been her greatest strength as an actress) allows you to feel her desperation, as a life she thought she understood rapidly slips from her grasp, giving way to a relentless assault on everything she has ever cared about. Whatever that experience may mean—and it will no doubt mean different things to different viewers—it shouldn't be tamed and domesticated. In mother!, Aronofsky has made something raw and primal, a lucid hallucination that exists just beyond the edge of intellectual comprehension. Love it or hate it, but leave it where it belongs.

(Please note that the feature score I've selected of 2.5 is a compromise intended to reflect that I'm still making up my mind about mother! A month from now, I might rank it much higher—or much lower.)

mother! Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

mother! was shot by Aronofsky's frequent collaborator Matthew Libatique on 16mm film, which has become the director's preferred medium not only for its texture but also for the freedom allowed by the smaller camera rigs and less frequent reloads. Effects work was done in 35mm, and post-production was completed on a 2K digital intermediate. The 1080p master derived from that DI and presented on this AVC-encoded Blu-ray reflects the director's stylized vision, in which most of the color has been leached from the image and a haze has been cast over much of the proceedings, usually greenish but sometimes yellow or brown. Even blood, when it appears, is just red enough to identify it as blood and not some other liquid. One of the strongest colors is the bright yellow of the powder that Jennifer Lawrence's character consumes with water at times of great stress. (Its nature and medicinal properties are among mother!'s many mysteries.) Blacks are solid, and the image is free of noise, aliasing or other interference.

Despite being acquired on 16mm film, the image is impressively sharp and detailed, which is no doubt a reflection of the superiority of contemporary optics and film stocks. Nevertheless, there is a noticeable softness, even as the film's grain remains finely resolved. In the extras, Libatique speaks of his and the director's desire to maintain "that little patina that stands between reality and cinema", and the Blu-ray aptly reproduces the effect. Paramount has mastered mother! at an average bitrate of 28.97 Mbps, with a capable encode.

mother! Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

mother!'s Dolby Atmos soundtrack reflects the film's point-of-view photography, with voices and other sounds directed off-camera throughout the listening space in relation to Her's position. The subjective sound mix complements the perspective of events being seen through Her eyes, and it effectively contributes to the sense of disorienting uncertainty as the proceedings spiral out of control. The sound team has borrowed from horror cinema in its use of odd sounds unnaturally amplified for scare effects (and also to reflect how they stand out to Her—a technique Aronofsky used to frightful effect in Requiem for a Dream). Dynamic range is excellent, and bass extension is deep where it's needed. The film has no musical score, but Patti Smith does provide a cover of "End of the World" over the closing credits.

mother! Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• mother! the downward spiral (1080p; 1.78:1; 29:51): This is an excellent behind-the-scenes account that explores the production in detail, including intriguing footage from the lengthy rehearsal process. Appropriately enough, the documentary opens with Aronofsky and others explaining why the film can't be described.



• The Makeup FX of mother! (1080p; 1.78:1; 6:45): Makeup effects artist Adrien Morot discusses his contributions to the film.



• Introductory Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for Downsizing, Suburbicon and Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series .

mother! Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I can't recommend mother!, but I'm not going to dismiss it either. Though stylistically very different, it reminded me of what David Lynch achieved with his recent Twin Peaks sequel: maddening, disturbing, oddly compelling, stubbornly resistant to being rationally explained away. Not many filmmakers can achieve that effect, and if nothing else, Aronofsky deserves credit for trying and (mostly) succeeding at something so wildly "out there". Just don't boot up the disc expecting to have fun. As Clive Barker once said, "When I go to the movies, I want to feel something. And I don't mind if it's disgust."