Now is the time when this professional moviegoer begins to catch up -- the studios are starting to send out their end-of-year "for your consideration" awards screeners. Sony Pictures Classics is touting Maudie and Norman, small films I mildly like and that would seem to have little hope of attracting much attention.
It's conceivable that Sally Hawkins in the former and/or Richard Gere in the latter could win acting nominations. Maybe the modest awards campaign Sony is mounting for these films could increase their DVD sales, if those things matter anymore. I wouldn't kick Hawkins or Gere off my list of contenders, I just imagine their chances will be swamped by end-of-the-year hype.
Let's not forget that even though this feels like an off year for the movies (when people ask me what's good I keep going back to Get Out and Asghar Farad's The Salesman), there are a lot of films to sort through. I still haven't seen Personal Shopper or Good Time or Wind River, to name three on my must-see list. I'm waiting on the screeners.
Mother! is the sort of movie I'd normally wait to watch. I lost a lot of my enthusiasm for Darren Aronofsky movies after 2006's The Fountain. I loved Pi and especially Requiem for a Dream, and was encouraged by 2008's The Wrestler, which seemed uncharacteristically tender and warm for such a cool and brittle (I don't mean that in a bad way) filmmaker. But I only vaguely admired Black Swan, and Noah bored me. Aronofsky is a filmmaker to reckon with -- anyone who writes about the movies had better keep up with what he's doing -- but I don't have to look forward to watching his films. It's on him to connect with me.
But all this outrage about Mother! piqued my curiosity. People whose opinions I respect disagreed violently on the movie. Some of the most interesting comments came from people who said or wrote that they could see it both ways, that Mother! was a kind of Schrodinger's cat of a movie, simultaneously good and bad. So I had to see it.
And I agree with Matt Smith, the Riverdale 10 proprietor, who told me the problem with the movie isn't its execution but its marketing. Paramount presented the film as more or less a straight-up horror film, alluding to Rosemary's Baby. But what Aronofsky made is a Christian allegory with environmental overtones and some weird stuff I haven't been able to figure out yet. So a lot of people went to see the movie expecting jump scares and the usual ratcheting of tension -- all the thrill-ride aspects of horror.
But when they got to the theater, an arthouse movie broke out.
Mother! isn't terrible, although it's vulnerable to the sort of attacks people generally make on movies that demand more than passive attention. People have called the movie pretentious, which is one of those all-purpose terms of obliteration, but I don't think Aronofsky is pretending to present knowledge he doesn't have. The movie makes a certain sense, and it's not that difficult to suss out the symbolism. There is an audience that will appreciate Mother!, and there are individuals who will wholeheartedly embrace it. And in time, the film will be rehabilitated and appreciated for the odd and crazy effort it represents.
That doesn't mean the symbolism won't strike some people as tiresome. I liked Mother! better before I worked out my theory of the film, which turned out to be pretty close to what an apparently exasperated Aronofsky copped to in a weird, wrong-headed interview with Indiewire.
While it's probably all right for a filmmaker to talk about a movie's inspirations and influences, a blow-by-blow explanation is tantamount to surrender. It's like explaining a joke to people who didn't get it. No one is going to appreciate your candor or admit that it was pretty funny after all.
There are parts of Mother! I really like -- Michelle Pfeiffer's murderous side-eye, for instance. And Ed Harris in a different kind of part. Given how the film played out, I think the age difference between Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem was appropriate. And Aronofsky was at least trying for something. There isn't anything lazy or cynical about Mother! It's simply a case of an artist overreaching.
We want our artists to overreach, and to fail occasionally. Because that's the only way the art form gets advanced. There are millions of people who use the movies as an entertainment product, as a way to painlessly pass their time. But movies have the potential to work on us in the same way great books and paintings do. They can elevate our sensibilities and spirits, inspire us to live differently from how we otherwise might.
They can make us better people, more alert and open to the possibilities the universe presents.
I'm not saying Mother! does that. But it made me smile as well as wince, and in the end I think I got it. Maybe I didn't receive it as wise or profound, but I appreciate the effort.
And when you watch a lot of movies, you notice how rare naked displays of genuine ambition actually are. So many films are commercial ventures, designed to fit in familiar genres, to replicate the responses other similar products have evoked. It's good to see someone risk a lot, even if the result is as problematic as Mother!
I'm glad I didn't wait for the screener.
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MovieStyle on 09/29/2017