Tal Abbady, in an interesting comment in the thread
discussing Richard Brody's review of "Mother!," guesses (she hadn't
seen the film) that Michelle Pfeiffer was probably squandered in this film, yet
in reality (SPOILERS AHEAD) the first half of the movie really could have had
the title seem mostly about Pfeiffer, and her terrible incremental invasion...
and thus a clear twin to "Black Swan," though its inverse, in that
it's the mother who makes herself queen of the show, relegating the young woman
from front and centre to background. Then she's gone, with really just
hooligans and a PR lady and an idiot priest after her thereafter--a mistake for
the Devil, as it recovers the movie a bit for Lawrence: these lot are ample in
numbers, but without perspicacity, without cunning, and an eventual escape from
them can be imagined once she's built up enough fury, with "Mother!"
being then clearly about her as pressed upon young nature goddess, doomed to
whither, but with one last gasp of vengeful destruction within her.
"Mephistopheles" appears to do the principle damage, leaving her
demon horde to do the mopping up... is how the movie as is might feel like, in
how the movie transitions from weight in personality and individual
formidableness to simple weight in numbers.
Could you imagine if the movie had ended with
suddenly Pfeiffer reappearing and taking the gift Lawerence offered her
husband, snatching it out of her hand, and saying, "no dear... I'm the one
who orchestrated this moment for your husband, and I'll present this gift, AS
I'M DUE," with Lawrence having nothing to do but let her last few bit of
healthy flesh relapse to become as dead as the ash the rest of her had become?
The movie would finish with Pfeiffer's last words as a horrible chastising chortle,
"No, in fact I am the queen, I am the queen, you miserable scene-stealing
c**t of a daughter," and we'd see her image fluctuate with that of
Hershey, and back, to Hershey, and back, to Hershey, and back... sort of the
finish Aronofsky clearly pulled back from (to save the audience, and himself)
in "Black Swan," to offer us instead the mother rather implausibly
agreeably accepting her displacement and earnestly cheering her daughter on as
she performs.
Youth might have its moment, but in the end,
"Mother!"/Mephistopheles will pay you back for every bit of tribute
you stole from her. You'll never be allowed to forget your slighting... Mother. Fin.
Anyone else finish their watching the movie
thinking something odd about the whole second half of the movie featuring a
surplus of armageddon, but the absence of a single, truly scary, predator? Is
the second half done in appeasement, a supply, to her, the scary mother, the
one worthy of an exclamation mark, so that in the end she doesn't revisit? Is
that the "victory" of the film? That so much carnage is thrown to
placate her that in the end she's so much in the distance it becomes difficult
to excavate exactly whom "Mother!" is referring to specifically?...
it's really the sheepish ingenue? Really!? Certainly points there, but after
being pushed about and half-raped, and her giving the last scrap of herself to
her resurgent husband, that can't be right: the exclamation mark is way too
insufficiently limp.
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