Aronofsky Film Review: What Are We Watching?
This Aronofsky film review of Mother! (2017) is part of our regular look at films from a production point of view: what Darren Aronofsky’s divisive drama does with sound, camera and structure, and what a video production team can learn from it. This week at Crash Symphony Productions, in order to inform our approach to corporate video production, we’re watching Mother! , the Aronofsky film starring Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem.
Lawrence and Bardem play a couple separated by a significant age gap. He is a poet. Meanwhile, she is an artist in her own right, and she becomes a literal creator by having a child. The film sets that against artistic creation, giving us three things: art, the house, and life. In short, each stands for a different realm. It is an interesting exploration of the ideas of the muse and female disposability, and what it’s like to be in a relationship with a very particular sort of man.
A Literalised Metaphor
The film is a literalised metaphor in form and style. However, many critics call it too on the nose. I think it justifies itself very well. It’s shot beautifully, and the sound editing is really interesting. As a result, it is a very visceral filmic experience.
The film casts female creativity as self-sacrificial and giving. Male creativity, by contrast, takes life: selfish, and turned inward.
It’s a really interesting story to bring to the screen, especially in such a visceral way. It makes sense as a horror movie, because the experience is horrific and it happens every day. Yet nobody really talks about it. It is sad that a male director has to make the film before anyone takes it seriously. Had a woman made exactly the same picture, I suspect critics would have laughed it off as self-pitying, hyperbolic, hysterical. Overall, that strikes me as quite significant.
Aronofsky clearly learnt a lot from Black Swan, his previous film about a ballerina’s descent into psychosis. Consequently, the camera-work here is fluid and dance-like as it tracks Lawrence.
On balance, we thoroughly recommend Mother!
The main lesson from this Aronofsky film review is how much the sound design carries the film’s dread, something we think about constantly in our own work. See our sound design and video production services or contact us, and read more about the film on Wikipedia.
