Mother! (2017)
Mother! (2017), written and directed by Darren Aronofsky.
With time and usage myths become nursery fables. Weird but not terribly provoking. It is good to be reminded of the holy terror that lies at their root. Whether the mind makes what it will while interpreting the cosmos, or whether we project our thoughts out onto a world stage -- and the truth is certainly a combination of both -- the energies of the human soul are awful and painful to behold.
I see some people interpret this as a story of an Artist and his Muse. To me it is about the marriage of the Creator God with the Earth Mother, a tale that repeats in cyclic time.
If there is a better explanation then it is too subtle for me.
After a slow beginning it rushes into hard-to-watch psychological horror.
Notes:
We can't understand the beginning until we get to the end. Cyclic time is a loop, like a human day, or a year, or any cycle of life. Cyclic time is sacred time; you keep coming back to the same point. Each Christmas you are back at "Christmas". Same and different.
We see Him recreating the world from the crystallized heart of love, a remnant of a prior Creation.
He is the poet with writer's block, she the ultimate homemaker. He is verbal and deals in abstractions, she shows patience and deep craft, trying to perfect their Eden. Bits of fiery chaos show through, and are visible just beyond the trees, but she doesn't leave the house.
Things go south with the arrival of Adam; she immediately senses that his thin layer of politeness covers a lot of trouble. Then his awful, offensive wife and their murderous sons. The surviving son departs with the mark of Cain on his brow.
From this point forward all guests are bad guests. No one listens to her or explains what is happening. The thoughtless arrogance of everyone using and damaging her house, as the human race has used Mother Earth.
The men make crude sexual propositions and the women are contemptuous of her.
Things get better for a while when she becomes pregnant. This is achieved with angry sex. Does the Creator God need to thunder when he begets? Not in the Christian story.
Inspired by the prospect of a child, he writes his greatest work and captivates the whole world. He gets the adulation he wants, but the sacred scriptures have set the human race moving in unpleasant ways.
The film becomes a rapid decent into hell. As the masses of humanity pour into the house, we see, flashing by, the rise of ritual and religious cults, the scramble for plunder, new armies and ideological killers who are eager to murder the inspiration for the whole story.
People say the damnedest things while destroying her house: "The poet says it is everyone's house" and "He said to share". Well, yes, but they are just taking. People don't know the difference between sharing and despoiling.
He tells her "These are just things; they can be replaced". Easy for God to say, but hard on the builder who actually has to make them. Some of Nature's works are irreplaceable.
He and Mother make it to his study for the birth of the child. His sanctum had been sealed off when Adam and Eve were expelled from it. Now it is the site of this mystery.
Much as she instinctively wants to keep the baby safe, he cannot withhold it from the mob. With typical unthinking human dumbassery they kill it. By the time she gets to it the child is already dismembered and the faithful are feasting on it in ritual cannibalism.
The infuriating formulaic words of comfort do nothing to assuage her rage and grief: "He is not dead. We must give his life and death meaning."
He asks her to forgive. This is an important point so consider it twice: God forgives, Nature doesn't.
She burns it all down with Adam's lighter that she hid when he was smoking in the house. Prophetic foreshadowing here: the world will end in a fire of humanity's own making.
She says "What hurts me the most is that I wasn't enough". His reply: "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".
She has one last thing to give: her love, her heart he compresses into crystal. We return to the beginning, the cycle begins again. Same story, different actress. Is Nature different in each cycle of creation? Same and different.
Some things I don't understand:
The walls of the house seem to contain embryonic life. This might be Nature's need to burst into reproduction, but you'd think it would subside once Mother is pregnant. The life seems linked to decay, but that is true in this world.
What is that yellow medicine Mother drinks? What tonic does Nature require? She dumps it once she becomes pregnant.
I'm sure I saw the Creator God getting maced by the police.
You could literalize this into Nature-worship, and it does make me think of gratitude and our responsibilities when living on the Earth. But in the end all myths are the projection of internal drama, different aspects of the psyche having their say.
Available on Blu-ray.
