Virtually all of Darren Aronofskys work is filled with symbolism and implies multiple interpretations. His 2017 film Mother! is no exception, as the apparently linear story of a poet and his wife and muse soon turns into a much more complex and, at times, disturbing psychological horror when the arrival of a family interrupts their routine.
Critics’ Description of Mother!
Cheap essay writing service experts, who have written many reviews of the film, describe it as follows: “Religious overtones, toxic relationships, and the destruction of nature in one of the most controversial films of recent years.
What Happens in Mother!
The picture begins with the cleansing of a burnt-out house. Someones’ hand puts a crystal on the shelf, after which the main character wakes up. The entire action of the film takes place in a house standing somewhere in the middle of nowhere. In it live two characters who are known to the audience as Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) and Him (Javier Bardem).
The man is a famous poet suffering from a creative crisis and trying to write a new book. His main asset and source of inspiration, as well as his wife, is a crystal standing in his study. His wife, Mother, watches over the house, makes repairs, and creates her world in it, in the likeness of paradise or an ideal natural system.
One day, a stranger comes to their house, who appears to be an admirer of the poets work who wished to meet him. The stranger, whom we know as Man (Ed Harris), is allowed to stay, despite Mothers objections, but the guest is soon followed first by his wife, Woman (Michelle Pfeiffer), and then by their children.
Mother keeps asking the guests to leave, but the children put up a fight over Mans will, and one brother ends up killing the other, making the situation more complicated. Next, more and more uninvited guests accumulate in the house at the wake, leading to flooding as more anger builds up within Mother since her husband seems to care more about them than he does about her.
A few months later, Mother is preparing for the birth of her child, and the poet has finished his new work. Soon, a mob of his fans bursts into the house, smashing everything in their path at the exact same time in which Mother goes into labor. But the baby is soon dragged away by a crowd of delirious fans, who pass it from hand to hand as a religious symbol, but then begin to eat him, in the most controversial scene of the film, which eventually leads to his death.
The enraged Mother blows up the house, and the poet takes her charred body to his study and extracts a crystal from the womans’ heart, bringing the action back to the very beginning.
The Hidden Meanings of Mother!
1. Man’s Destruction of the Planet
One of the most obvious explanations for the films plot is mankinds’ gross attitude toward nature. In this interpretation, the hidden meaning of the movie is that home is the Earth, and Mother is the same Mother Nature who herself restores the flora on the planet (makes repairs to the house) and gives new life (gives birth to a child).
People come politely at first, but they immediately break the rules the first guest smokes indoors, and then come others who disregard her instructions by sitting on her furniture and making a mess. But then they begin to behave more and more insolently, first using the house as a toilet, and then breaking everything that nature created.
She also answers them, just like nature, with various cataclysms, such as floods and fires. And after the destruction brought upon by these uninvited guests, who also get destroyed in the process, nature itself restores the house and returns to the beginning of the story, which is also symbolic of the cycle of life.
2. A Cruel God and Biblical Themes
In an same interview, the director said that Javier Bardem played God in this film, and in his cruelest form as he appeared in the Old Testament: he’s selfish and he demands to be worshipped. God creates a home, after which Mother (nature) takes care of it.
In fact, there are many obvious biblical references in the story. The first people who come to visit the main characters, whose names aren’t mentioned either, are Adam and Eve, and this is why the man appears before the woman. He also has a scar on his back, as if from an extracted rib.
Following this interpretation, their children are Cain and Abel; one brother kills the other because they disagree with the decisions their father made in his will, just like Cain and Abel disagreed upon Gods instructions to them. What’s interesting is that the characters in the film are played by their real brothers,