Recently watched: Mother! (2017), the audience-alienating and divisive mega-flop by director Darren Aronofsky. It certainly begins on an idyllic note, with a (seemingly) happily married couple (Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence) renovating their dream home in the country. But when they are unexpectedly visited by a mysterious older couple (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer), the blissful façade begins to unravel … I’ll leave it there! There’s some undeniably virtuoso filmmaking on display. The first half is nerve-jangling psychological horror, with Aronofsky creating a sense of dread, disorientation and nightmare logic. Mother! then goes full tilt Biblical apocalypse and turns wildly self-indulgent (the film is only 121-minutes but ultimately feels twice that long). For context, Andrew Fraser of The Guardian shrewdly terms it “part home invasion thriller, part religious parable” and “a surrealist take on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (which) devolves into a full-blown Boschian nightmare.” Critics were divided: The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw raved that Mother! was “an event-movie detonation, a phantasmagorical horror and black-comic nightmare that jams the narcosis needle right into your abdomen”, while the reliably cantankerous Rex Reed called it “worst movie of the century” in The New York Observer. Martin Scorcese, meanwhile, was evangelical, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “Only a true, passionate filmmaker could have made this picture, which I'm still experiencing weeks after I saw it.” What’s undeniable is the box office failure of Mother! ended the A-list era of Jennifer Lawrence’s career (well, that and possibly overexposure). Which is unfair, as Lawrence is mesmerising: stricken with horror, face a mask of suffering and eyes glistening with tears, she evokes Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion and Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby. Mother! makes a good companion piece to Aronofsky’s earlier fear-and-suffering movie Black Swan (2010). (Just as I’d argue Natalie Portman gives her career-best performance in Black Swan, Lawrence does here). I wouldn’t “recommend” Mother! – approach it with caution! – but watching it is a genuine experience and it’s a true oddity.
