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"Mother" is about being manipulated, crowded, feeling powerless and unattended to, but not about lying to yourself... you see the villainy





You don't have to go the allegory route at all. My guess is that doing so takes away from how one experienced the film. Most people of course experience the film as what it's like to be someone who's walked over for two and half hours, with every chance to call "stop!" whisked away by the sudden provisioning of an excuse for the behaviour that seems sound enough you wonder if you're just hypersensitive... or perhaps more accurately, if the possibilities of their sadism might be limited to what can be excused as about something else, and therefore seemingly intrinsically contained as to possible damage (and they as guests have to leave sometime, don't they? they can't breach the limits that category besets then with, can they? her status as wife and hostess must ultimately hold, or surely they're marauders, and her husband, a maunder-enabler, mustn't it?). Some of the manipulators turn clever, and actually earn your stepping back, your being open to actually lend them room, by offering a mother's sagacity as to why, for example, you're having marital problems, but eventually the molesters stop needing excuses and indeed stop using them -- they've gained ground, walked on her wifely authority often enough it's been proven sad and inert... as surely never having earned being something they should take heed of in the first place, and just blatantly use her.

Which is freeing in a way, for even if she's still mostly powerless, at least it's a finish to her opponents using their greater skill at manipulating social conventions from preventing her from standing her ground. If they go at her in future, they just call her a c*nt to her face, which exposes her to thundering verbal assault, but themselves also as blatant villains. These type, if ever you have the chance, you can kill... you can collect together and burn the f*ck down. That'll offer some relief (and when it does happen, it indeed does... though expecting maybe a Carrie-finish, with her, the revenger, on top, rather than dramatically immediately superseded, surprisingly, very momentarily). Just don't of course call the cops, for when that finally succeeds, it's only be because the situation has changed so that it'll work against you, badly.

She gets to hold her new born child to herself for a very short while, with everyone else -- including her husband -- blocked off. She gets to know the pleasure of borders, maintained by herself, that her house and her husband never provided her with. And then this short period ends, the crowd devours her baby, she gets kicked around, brutally molested, and half-raped, and basically agrees to let her husband own her soul. It's voluntarily given -- the soul-giving, that is -- and it seems weirdly earnest; not just about capitulation to the inevitable -- and her husband actually motions an initial genuine refusal of her gift, so maybe this feels like an act of strength on her part, being a benefactor.
 

If there is a Christian parable about refusing someone the very moment you sense people are using social convention to manipulate you, that touching, even lots of touches that convention says is appropriate -- a grab to the shoulder to ostensibly garner attention -- is often about handling and manipulating you, is meant to be demeaning, IS assault, and therefore that much more insidious than a crotch grab for having cover, then that's what this film is about. If there's a Biblical parable about, failing that, the only way out into a safe place in the cosmos is to offer yourself as sacrifice for your partner's renewed efforts at "five love language," if-it's-good-enough, cult-forthcoming poetry, then it's about that. If all religion belief is about finding a way out that could provide a pause for feeling genuinely appreciated after having known a history of being constantly, sadisticly, used, then it's about that...
 

And if this means they're being doomed to be beholden to idols, to be for eternity, weird children, more attached to fetish objects than they are interested in people, when they should be aiming at being adult men and women, or urged to become that... well, that's not your concern. You've earned your escape route, your reprieve. There's no route anymore for well-loved babies, a spark for the future -- you've tried that, and that couldn't have ended more badly -- so let what's come to dominate, the human house, full now only of mentally disassociated idiots that have gone whole-hog crazy, fervently interested only in repeating cycles and staying in place, burn the f*ck down. Or not... maybe they'll prosper, feel deliciously pleasant in their craziness. The point is, you're finally not involved.

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