#mother2017

[insanelybloody]

Mother (2017)

HIM : You won't hurt much longer.

Mother : What hurts me the most is that I wasn't enough.

HIM : It's not your fault. Nothing is ever enough. I couldn't create if it was. And I have to. That's what I do. That's... what I am. Now I must try it all again.

Mother : No... just let me go.

HIM : I need one last thing.

Mother : I have nothing left to give.

HIM : Your love. Still there, isn't it?

Mother : Go ahead... take it.

[nightowl444]

A Cure for Wellness. (2016) Dir Gore Verbinski.

Mother. (2017). Dir Darren Aronofsky

[whorrorgrl]

Is Mother! a “Good for Her” Movie?

So a week or two ago, I finally had the pleasure of watching Mother!, starring Jennifer Lawrence. I liked it so much that I ordered a physical copy to keep in my collection.

I love Jennifer Lawrence as an actress, and this movie added to my favorite works she’s been in. I had to watch this movie twice to really understand what the hell I just watched. After a second viewing and reading a few articles, I finally understood what the message of this movie represented. While I don’t want to get into the biblical meaning behind it all (considering I can relate the movie to many other things than that), I still wanted to talk about it.

For my last post, I looked up movies that were considered “Good for Her,” but was surprised to find that during my research the 2017 psychological film Mother! was considered one. The movies I’d chosen were supposed to question if the ending was really the satisfactory, feminist movie people claimed they were. While those movies were covert in the unjustified suffering those women went though with an ending that, upon closer inspection, revealed that they were no more freer than how they’d started out, I thought Mother!’s was more...obvious?

Like, literally from the get-go.

Mother! narrates a husband driving his wife to the brink of insanity for over an hour. Her boundaries are disrespected when he husband allows his fans to destroy their home, rip her newborn baby boy from her sleeping arms to then be consumed, and have her pushed to the brink of madness that she burns herself and the house down with him in it. Only, he comes out of it untouched. If that wasn’t enough, after he’s drained her in every possible way, he pulls her heart from her charred body and cherishes it more than he ever did her. Despite that this is an ironic derivative of the bible and that alone, where in that says good for her? 

Mother feels very surreal. I’m surprised it isn’t a surrealist film. I don’t want to sound pretentious and say “film,” but “surrealist film” sounds better than “surrealist movie” so here we are. 

It’s fucking bizarre. 

It’s the kind of movie that leaves you staring at your TV as the credits roll wondering what the fuck just happened or if it even did. That one baby scene alone was enough for me to realize how ridiculous it got. Not the full blown war and human trafficking happening in the living room. Communion.

I love this film because of how it made me feel. I was so uncomfortable. I’m pretty big on people touching my things. My biggest fear has always been throwing a party in my house and having people touching my possessions, like Mean Girls and that fertility vase from the Ndebele tribe. People’s sticky, grubby hands all over something you possess most. It feels so tainted and unclean. No one knows how to handle your things more than you do, and some see it as an extension of oneself. I sure do. So watching Mother! was like a curated movie for me and my Taurus moon’s biggest horrors.

Our main character, Mother, is ignored, gaslit, traumatized, and witnesses a crowd feast on her newborn baby. Seeing her plead and beg these rowdy guests to leave made me angry. Seeing how they broke apart her home drove me up the wall. But it’s even worse when you realize her husband, Him, allows it. In fact, he encourages it. When the tear apart the walls, rip open the floor boards, scavenge their furniture, he smiles. He’s happy that people love him enough to want to rip his home apart. Even when they kill his only begotten son, he believeth in them. 

At the end of the movie, she is driven to insanity. Shit, I’m on the road with her. She gives and gives so much of herself to this man that takes and takes. And even as she lay, charred from lighting the house ablaze, he asks for more. Her heart. Her literal, calcified heart to put on a mantle like he did the other many hearts of the other many Mothers he drove to the same fate. It makes me look at the movie so emptily on the second rewatch. It reminds me of literal motherhood. Of womanhood in its entirety.

Mother doesn’t win in the end. Not in my eyes anyway. God- I mean, Him has learned nothing from his past mistakes and from how the movie began and ended, he probably won’t ever. He uses these Mothers as his muse for his work and he doesn’t plan on stopping. Their pain is his victory.

Where is the feminism in that? These type of movies classified as Good For Her have some feminist appeal of the woman taking back her own agency in a situation where she’s wronged. It’s always a triumphant closing. Ready or Not is a good example. Instead of being killed by a maniacally rich family in some weird sacrificial ritual she’s tricked into, she survives and they blow up like ketchup filled balloons. Good for her. In Knives Out, Marta gets the house and the millions of dollars after her late boss’s greedy, racist family harasses her. Good for her. Even in The Witches of Eastwick (1987), the three witches regain their control from the literal devil. 

A man stressing you out to the point where you try to kill yourself by blowing up the house with you and him in it and he is untouched? I don’t know….I don’t know.

I guess I can see why people would say the latter Maybe when Mother gives her heart to Him and dies, she’s finally fre-

Yeah, no. There is no spin on making this a “Good for Her” movie. The only Mother movie that would make this criteria is Bong Joon Ho’s 2009 crime mystery of the same name. It’s a less talked about project of his but I had the pleasure of watching it and it’s pretty good. It isn’t horror so I won’t be talking about it but the only Mother movie I can even lump in any feminist-driven criteria. Mother!, while amazing, is not it.

[esthercoonfield]

✨ mother! ✨ This piece is just a couple inches too long for Instagram to handle, so the version you see here is slightly cropped. But I included some nice detail shots for you guys! I love Darren Aronofsky's films, and "mother!" is no exception. It's disturbing, intense, and absolutely beautiful. It makes me sad that it didn't receive better reviews. I don't think it was marketed properly; it gave audiences the expectation of haunted house/evil husband horror, but really it was nothing of the sort. I'd still consider it a horror film, but it was very psychological and full of symbolism. I love that someone finally had the guts to make a film like this. #illustration #horror #horrorart #beautifulbizarre #darkart #mother #mother2017 #motherfilm #geode #motherearth #surrealism #traditionalartist #traditionalart #womeninhorror #watercolor #watercolorpainting #ink

[sahilana]

‘...You just loved how much I loved you ‘

[fibrihanggoro]

"You give, and you give, and you give, it's just never enough" - Mother! - #Mother2017 #Mother! #SanSebastian #HeyLomography #instantcamera #InstantPhotography #Lomography #keepfilmalive #FilmIsNotDead #Nofilter #IshootFilm #IshootAnalogue #NoFilter #analoguepeople #analoguepeopleinadigitalworld #TheDiaryOfEvil_Q https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx9L_pMg8NC/?igshid=1fktqe4ilti0s

[thebeautyoftarot]

Mather, 2017

Сегодня прочла на одном из сайтов: 

____ «Помимо многих прочих смыслов, которые можно увидеть в этой напичканной метафорами картине, фильм по сути является символическим пересказом Библии. Герой Хавьера Бардема — Бог, героиня Дженнифер Лоуренс — Дева Мария, дом — Вселенная, в ней есть Рай (кабинет героя) и Ад с вечнопылающим огнем (подвал). Появляются и Адам с Евой, вкусившие запретный плод, их сыновья Каин и Авель, ну а потом происходят и остальные известные библейские события. В конце режиссер как бы обращается к зрителям: Человечество, сколько еще Мать-Природа будет это терпеть?»____ 

Ну как так? Неужели только Библия, которую большая половина людей на Земле не знает и не ��онимает виднеется в этом фильме “Мама“ и почему “Мама?“. Первоочередной перевод с англ. mother - это мать.

Библия, Коран, Тора и т.д. - это лишь древние книги, несущие в себе истории, аллегории, метафоры, но не сам смысл! Если мы будем говорить, что фильм “Mother!” - это метафорический сюжет из Библии, то получается, что мы говорим - это метафора о метафоре. И никто опять не понял в чем же суть. Что толку выискивать сходства с Библией? Важна суть смысла для нашей реальной жизни, которая от религий далека, поищи сходства в своем окружении.

Во-первых, люди - это часть Вселенной, а не только Бог и Дева Мария в ней, не надо думать, что истина где-то далеко, она в нашей повседневной жизни.

Во-вторых, пара, на примере которой показана обычная жизнь – это муж, который не может навести порядок, мир и гармонию в своей семье, но хочет помочь другим людям с их проблемами в семье, быть полезным для других, казаться хорошим хозяином, заслуживающим похвалу и одобрение, и это - женщина, которая вечно живет мечтами и иллюзиями о любви, о мужчине, испытывая чувство вины, старается угодить, забывая о себе.

В-третьих, - это «другие» люди, которые вмешиваются в нашу жизнь потому что мы не можем или не хотим выгонять их. 

Мужчине нужна любовь мира, женщине нужна любовь только его одного и в этом их ошибка, потому что ни того ни другого не существует, нельзя получить любовь, нельзя быть привязанным ни к чему, ничто тебе не принадлежит, и ты никому не принадлежишь.

Отдай им самое дорогое, что есть у тебя – жизнь, себя, ребенка, но ты не получишь «того самого» удовлетворения, точнее это может стать твоей иллюзией о счастье.

Любовь всего народа, как и любовь одного человека – это хрустальная иллюзия, способная разбиться в любой момент, потому что её нет, есть только твои страдания по ней. Человек способен жить в гармонии, обрести счастье если не привязан ни к чему, если самостоятельно не добавляет себе в жизнь страданий.

Сложно все это для понимания, простите… Я не читала другие рецензии об этом фильме, написала, как думаю.

Когда сидела в кинотеатре люди говорили: «Что за чушь мы смотрим?», а кто-то уходил, не дождавшись окончания и было грустно, что люди не понимают, не хотят понять…

С уважением, Tanya Min

[moosterrecords]

Mother! looks very interesting in a Hammer Films, 1970s British Horror way. I am excited to see this film next month. The trailer below reminds me bit of The House That Dripped Blood. I know what Darren Aronofsky is capable of and am very excited. Check it out for yourself!

[amersapik]

I said, like, maaf, masih belum mampu nak bahagiakan keluarga, selalu susahkan hati, and asik fail this few years, jatuh bangun, jatuh bangun. Gagal jadi satu satunya anak yang berjaya "Biar hilang harta semua, takpa, sabar, jangan hilang agama, jangan risau, tuhan masih sayang, yang penting agama, kau tak pernah menyusahkan aku, janji kau jangan buat jahat je" - #mother2017 She replied with this, and ... Idk i just dont know