Warning: Major SPOILERS for Mother! ahead

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Darren Aronofsky's mother! is virtually guaranteed to be one of the most controversial films of 2017 - unless, of course, nobody actually ends up going to see it. It's got a lot on its side, however, including plenty of festival buzz, a well-timed (for a horror movie) fall release date, and the presence of popular lead actress Jennifer Lawrence in the title role. While the advertising and early plot descriptions have kept the actual storyline largely secret, the film's trailers have been designed to give the impression that mother! is something like a home invasion thriller or a haunted house movie (or maybe both?). Many audiences are going to be surprised to discover it's more like a surrealist "art film" complete with an abstract, symbolism-laden narrative and a horrifically-violent, taboo-shattering climax that seems calculated to drive audiences into a fit of moral outrage.

But even audiences who don't walk out of theaters inclined to demand an air-sickness bag, their money back or both may be wondering exactly what Aronofsky's bizarre, inscrutable, intensely-personal yet deliberately evasive film is actually supposed to "mean." And while the point of abstract and/or surrealist art is often meant to be left to individual interpretation (and, obviously, only Aronofsky himself can tell us what every creative choice was ultimately meant to convey), there is definitely an identifiable narrative through-line and several clearly recognizable themes.

THE STORY (FULL SPOILERS)

Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem in mother!

Following an unexplained introduction where a house-fire surrounding a young woman burning alive "rewinds" itself to an unburnt state and seems to "generate" Jennifer Lawrence asleep in a bed, we enter our main story. Lawrence and Javier Bardem are a newly(?) married couple (the stark age difference between the two is intentionally noticeable and part of the storyline) living alone in a large rustic country manor in the middle of a forest-surrounded empty field.

Though impressive-looking, the house was damaged at some point prior to their marriage in a fire, so she is working to rebuild it while he (no one in the film has a proper name, because it's that kind of movie) toils at work in his upstairs office. A once world-famous poet, he has been struck numb by writer's block (and it's implied, impotence - the symbolic parallels at play here are the opposite of "subtle"), and hopes to draw inspiration from his prized possession: a beautiful crystal of unknown origin that he claims to have found, undamaged, in the ashes of the previous fire. She is happy, but plagued by visions of the foundation by the basement furnace "moving" and of a heart-like organ beating inside the walls themselves.

Their tranquility is interrupted by the suspiciously-unplanned arrival of an older married couple (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfieffer), who turn out to be "huge fans" of the poet's work, and whom he invites to stay as guests despite the bewilderment and obvious unease of Lawrence's character. Though the poet likes their company as their fawning fan-praise makes him feel creative again, the pair are rude and obnoxious, showing disregard for their surroundings and their hosts' belongings. Eventually they sneak into the poet's off-limits office and accidentally break his prized crystal - infuriating him and leading him to board up the office and order them to leave. Instead, they are joined by their feuding sons (Brian and Domnhall Gleeson), who get into a brawl that leaves the older dead from a head wound. Later, Lawrence's character observes the leftover blood stain seeming to eat through the floor boards and into the basement, forming a door-shaped mark on a wall that she smashes to discover a hidden oil tank.

The poet - once again to the obvious discomfort of his wife - allows the couple and their friends to use the house for an impromptu wake. During the wake Lawrence grows angrier and angrier as the guests intrude on her space and break things in the house until she throws a screaming fit and manages to order them all to go. She attempts to leave herself, but instead a shouting match with her husband leads to a violent, passionate sex. The morning after, she announces that she "knows" she has become pregnant and he leaps from bed and begins writing again - his writer's block seemingly cured along with his impotence.

His resulting poem is a huge worldwide hit, which brings his publisher (Kristen Wiig) to the house but also soon a throng of autograph (and "wisdom") seeking fans that the poet can't seem to turn away - even as they begin physically tearing the house apart for souvenirs and assaulting Lawrence's character, using sayings "of The Poet" to justify their actions. Hundreds of people arrive, and (over what seems to be just a few hours) the gathering becomes a party, then a rave, then an orgy and then an indoor post-apocalyptic hellscape complete with caged sex-slaves, icons of The Poet being venerated in religious ceremonies (evoking Ash Wednesday, the Golden Calf and others) and Wiig's character executing people (heretics?) with pistols. A SWAT team attacks, killing many but failing to rescue Lawrence, who goes into labor and hides with The Poet in the upstairs room. She gives birth to a boy, but refuses to let The Poet hold it for fear of him letting his crazed fans near it.

Eventually, she falls asleep and awakens to find the baby taken. Downstairs, the poet has allowed the rapturous crowd to pass his child around, but they are too rough with him and Lawrence is unable to reach him before we hear sound-effects indicating that he's been hurt. When she reaches the front of the crowd, she discovers that the fans have torn the baby into pieces and are ritualistically eating the remains in order to feel closer to The Poet, seemingly based on his eulogy from the earlier wake scene. Enraged, Lawrence kills several of the murderers with a shard of glass but is violently beaten and attacked with misogynist insults - releasing a (seemingly) telekinetic earthquake that cracks open the floor and allows her to escape the basement, where she uses the oil tank to ignite a massive explosion that destroys the house and (seemingly) kills everyone, including The Poet and herself.

But in the aftermath of the fire, we find The Poet - completely unharmed - carrying his wife's burned but still-living body upstairs into his office. She asks who (or what) he is, receiving only cryptic answers and vague statements that he feels remorse but is a Creator and "needs to create." He says that he needs one more thing from her - her love - and she bids him to take it. He removes her heart from her chest, killing her, and squeezes the heart until it becomes a crystal just like the one from before. As he places it in the original's place of honor, the "rewinding fire" effect from the beginning starts up again, this time causing a new woman to "regenerate" in the bed. The end.

Darren Aronofsky - Mother (2017)

ART AND CREATION

Obviously, the main "big idea" at play here in the most direct and human terms is to present an extreme horror-movie version of the pain, frustration and resultant negative behaviors of an artist struggling to remain inspired, and failing to maintain a proper distance between one's fans and personal life. To drive the point home (and, perhaps, to mitigate the inevitable self-regarding narcissism that tends to come from artists - especially filmmakers - getting metaphorical about art-creation) it all plays out not through the artist's perspective, but through the even more painful experiences of an artist's partner. Lawrence's character gradually discovers that their need to create will mean whatever love you share will eventually be processed into "creations," which they will give up to be consumed by their fans in exchange for praise worship - even creations that seemed to arise from the personal connection between them.

In terms of authorial self-reference, you could easily view the film as an act of self-punishment as confession - an artist/filmmaker's confession at being callous and self-involved in their work and forsaking of their loved ones in the pursuit of praise and acceptance. Bardem's poet takes his wife's hard work of keeping his world in order to be flattered by fans, lets them (literally) tear off and keep pieces of his life, and ultimately even what should be a precious creation between he and his wife that matters more to her than it ever can to anyone else is still just another thing he can let his fans consume. Ultimately, he takes everything from her in order to feed his need to create, and even if she finds an escape he'll still take the best of her as a (literally) crystallized memory to inspire him.

Or, if you want to put it more bluntly: It's difficult (especially given how hard the "intensely personal" aspect of the film's meaning has been hyped leading up to it's release) not to see mother! as Aronofsky "owning up" to perhaps having been not the most wonderful person to be in a relationship with during his especially creative periods. Granted, it's just as plausible that the director is making reference more broadly to the difficulties all creative people sometimes encounter in managing the work/life balance. But the last time Aronofsky mused on the subject of women who become muses to driven men was The Fountain - where the muse (or muses - its a complex film) in question was embodied by his now-ex (as of 2010) wife Rachel Weisz. That film was followed by The Wrestler and Black Swan, both also about creative-performers whose drive and need for praise consume their lives and relationships, and Noah - a reimagining of the ultimate inspired-from-above construction project yarn.

Oh, and he (Aronofsky) also happens to be currently in a relationship with Jennifer Lawrence, whom he is exactly as many years older than as Javier Bardem.

THE HOME AND THE WORLD

While it's hard not to read a heavily-metaphorical film from a famously high-minded filmmaker on the subject of the artist's process as being "only" about their own torment, it's notable that mother! frames the artist in question as a kind of self-pitying, childish monster... and also not as the main character, giving the narrative point-of-view entirely over to Jennifer Lawrence as the mother (her official screen credit - no capitalization) of the title.

In a sense, this makes the film akin to a perspective-reversal on the Stanley Kubrick version of The Shining, which also happens to be about a writer alternately neglecting and destroying his family in the pursuit of creative inspiration. As with mother!, The Shining's isolated single-location setting (The Overlook Hotel) is often read in symbolic-interpretations as standing in for "the world" in terms of the place characters come to occupy within it: Jack Torrance as patriarchy/fatherhood reigning in tyranny over women (his wife Wendy) and children (Danny) despite holding only tangential "authority" over the place, egged-on by justifications offered by the (literal) ghosts of the past. The Overlook happens to be built on a desecrated Native American burial ground, in case you thought that specific metaphor wasn't built into the text.

Mother pressing her hands against a wall in mother!

Likewise, mother! seems to be playing out a version of the same "contained world" conceit within The Poet's home... but with the extra wrinkle that "mother" herself and the house/world appear to comprise a single character. She's the only character who is never seen leaving the house (not even stepping off the porch) and reacts with physical pain when people make a mess or parts of it are destroyed. This is, of course, literalized once the ending reveals that generating a fresh "mother" to inspire Him,and conceive new works for his followers is part of the house/world's regeneration cycle: the world is the house is the woman is the world.

As is also the case with The Shining, there's a societal-abuse-of-women aspect to this, with The Poet's cultists going from dismissing his wife as part of the scenery to beating and sexually-degrading her; to say nothing of the idea of venerating motherhood while treating mothers themselves as vessels to be discarded, and children as literal grist for the societal mill. On that same track, Aronofsky also happens to be a passionate environmental activist (Noah reimagined the Biblical Flood as divine punishment for antediluvian ecological destruction, with Noah and his family of designated-survivors as nature-loving prehistoric vegans), and that same view of mankind as a plague on the planet seems wedded to the portrayal of fandom as life-devouring horde: When "mother" demands to know why her husband's fans are pulling apart the house for keepsakes, one explains: "To prove I was here!"

And then there's that capital "H" on Him...

WHAT IF GOD WAS ONE OF US?

Something even many professional writers continue to mix-up well into their careers: Metaphor versus allegory.]. One helpful way to remember is that metaphors generally represent singular ideas/concepts (i.e. "Aslan is a metaphor for Christ") whereas allegories represent stories (i.e. "Superman's origin is an allegory for the Biblical story of Moses and/or the journey of the immigrant experience in the United States.") Where that tends to trip people up is that allegories themselves tend to be made largely out of metaphors: "Godzilla," the radioactive dinosaur, is a metaphor for nuclear weapons. Godzilla, the movie, is an allegory for atomic bombing of Japan and the country's postwar resilience thereafter.

mother! is similarly packed with metaphors - top to bottom, in fact. Every character, event, story point and even an abundance of props all seem to be metaphors for one thing or another; sometimes even to the point of nesting metaphors within other metaphors: Him/mother's troubled marriage is, in story, a metaphor for an artist's troubled relationship with the world outside himself; but it's also a metaphor for relationships with creative/driven people in general and (very strongly seems to be) a metaphor for director Aronofsky's relationship issues specifically. The big isolated house seems to be a metaphor for the world (and the thankless role of women within it), the often remarked-upon age difference between Lawrence and Bardiem is a metaphor for her sense of inadequacy as a "normal" person in love with a genius creator, and the gruesome child-murder that tops off the film seems to be a particularly damning metaphor for how Aronofsky views movie audiences' reception of (his?) films.

All of those metaphors aren't necessarily tied together by a single narrative thread to form a singular allegory. But there's a secondary metaphorical dimension to almost all of them that, taken as a whole, form a cohesive thematic sequence that reveals the specific allegory that seems to be at the heart of the filmmaker's ultimate message tipped-off by that conspicuous capital-H on "Him": It's a Biblical allegory; "The Gospel According to Aronofsky" with the whole of the tale from Genesis to Armageddon retold as abusive marriage between a self-involved, praise-addicted god and the world (Lawrence's "mother" and the house seem to be one and the same character, remember) through/upon which he (capital-C) Creates.

And if you're remembering that the Christian God doesn't have a feminine counterpart, then you've unlocked what Aronofsky appears to be saying is the damning flaw in Christianity. The Poet's fans worship his words and emulate his gregarious, consumption-oriented lust for life while ignoring and diminishing the role of "mother," so they have no compulsion to be good caretakers of either The Words themselves (twisted to justify whatever they already wanted to do) or their surroundings... even to the point where they'll kill His only son and turn acknowledgment of their act into a creepy self-regarding ritual that's still all about how much He loves them.

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

Once the Biblical allegory clicks into place, the seemingly random sequence of events, oddly-arranged geography of the house and the strange behaviors of certain characters make much more sense. Harris and Pfieffer's irritating couple are Adam and Eve ("Eve" even shows up a day later), while the battling brothers are Cain and Abel (complete with Abel's blood leading "mother" to a metaphor for Hell in the cellar). The crystal they break is The Apple, and Bardem walling off the room is the Expulsion From Paradise. Likewise, the disruptive post-wake revelers are Cain's Descendants wrecking the world before The Flood (in this version: "mother" getting fed up and kicking them out) and Him finally making love to "mother," imbuing her with new life. The new hit poem is God's Promise to remake the world anew: We never see the poem's words, after all, but we see that for "mother" it conjures a vision of her and the poet's union reviving their blighted surroundings.

Whatever the poem's content, in the metaphorical sense it can be taken to conflate everything from The Ten Commandments to the end of Exodus itself. But given that the house subsequently fills up with fervent fans (literally wandering in out of the wilderness) who soon begin acting out rituals and forming mini-cults based on various passages and sayings, we've pretty clearly arrived at mother!'s version of the (biblical) establishment of the Kingdom of Israel and the Time of The Prophets. The SWAT assault and Him/"mother's" escape to the upstairs room represent the destruction of the Temple of Solomon. The baby and its butchering are, of course, Christ and the Crucifixion - though in this version it's not His anger that shakes the Earth and cracks the "temple" walls - and Lawrence cracking open "hell" itself to end it all means that we end at the end - The Apocalypse.

...Except we don't, because even though Aronofsky is framing his allegory around a vision of Christianity that identifies God as a compelling but ultimately neglectful and abusive husband and father, he's doing so in service of the previously-discussed exploration of The Artist as... well, also a neglectful and abusive partner: "Yes, we artists are like creator-gods - but creator-gods are probably jerks, huh?" Which means that Armageddon reconceived as nature's vengeance is still all part of the cyclical plan: "mother" dies, now more in awe of Him and his creative powers than ever, "the world" will renew and another version of the same warped journey will play out in service of whatever His next project is. There's always a next poem to write (or, maybe, another movie to make?) and the next world (and the next muse?) will always suffer for it. That's a grim coda for a film director to close on - but Darren Aronofsky isn't exactly known for his happy endings.

Next: What Does The Poem in mother! Say?