Why you’ll hate the excellent Mother!

A MOVIE doesn’t have to be great and likeable, and Jennifer Lawrence’s latest release is the perfect hybrid of brilliance and repulsion.

WHEN you tell someone about a movie, the first question they usually ask is, ‘Is it any good?’

Sometimes, someone will ask, ‘Did you like it?’

On the surface, these two questions are interchangeable. Of course you’re going to like a good movie and you’re going to dislike a bad one.

But what happens when the answer’s not the same?

An excellent movie isn’t always likeable — Hard Candy is a great film that is extraordinarily difficult to like. Or vice versa — Cruel Intentions is a movie I love and have seen half a dozen times but know is objectively mediocre.

So now we have the conundrum of Mother!, the latest headf**k from a filmmaker renowned for his headf**ks, Darren Aronofksy.

Yes, it is a good movie. It’s even great.

But will you like it? Almost definitely not. You’ll probably hate it.

Mother! is a mentally exhausting slog that is likely to prompt walkouts. But those who stay and tough it out will be rewarded with a provocative dark fairytale that will challenge you weeks after the credits roll.

If you’re someone who just finished the 18-episode Twin Peaks: The Return, consider that apt prep work for Mother!

Challenging and hard to watch, Mother! may struggle to find an audience. (Paramount Pictures and Protozoa Pictures via AP)

From the opening shot of a woman surrounded by flames and a house turning from ash to pristine colonial charm, you might cotton on that Mother! may not be the Rosemary’s Baby homage the trailers had promised.

Jennifer Lawrence stars as a nameless young woman married to an older poet (Javier Bardem), living a seemingly peaceful life in their isolated country house. That is, until a strange man (Ed Harris) arrives on their doorstep one night, looking for lodgings.

The poet welcomes the intrusion even though his young wife is sceptical of this potential outside threat. The next morning, the stranger’s wife (an acid-laced Michelle Pfeiffer), the epitome of a presumptuous houseguest, arrives.

The camera follows the young woman around, from room to room, along the hallways as she tries to grapple with her husband’s insistence on listening to everyone but her, all while the house creaks and moans.

Without giving too much away, let’s just say the young woman’s idyllic existence is under attack by increasingly absurd incursions, culminating in a 30-minutes violent, Dante-esque apocalyptic set-piece that makes the last 10 minutes of Black Swan look like Centre Stage.

Jennifer Lawrence is primed for another Oscar nomination. (Niko Tavernise/Paramount Pictures and Protozoa Pictures via AP)

Aronofsky has total command of his craft, from the way Lawrence’s angelic face is framed in every single shot, especially the close-ups, to the use of high-pitched sound cues, piercing your aural senses. And even though the last 45 minutes is draining, it never feels off-pace.

There’s talk of another Oscar nod for Lawrence for this role and you can see why. She masterfully builds up to the raw, savage crescendo of its ending. Aronofsky is famed for extracting everything from his actors and he’s left nothing untapped from Lawrence.

Mother! is the kind of movie that has you constantly questioning what it all means. Is this scene of disaster a metaphor for birthing pains? Is this story choice an allegory of the never-ending cycle of emotional abuse and control? Or is this character a commentary on creation and worship — is it meant to be God?!

Maybe it’s all of those things and maybe it’s none of those things.

While Mother!’s sheer ambition seems to demand some deeper reading into it, you also can’t help but feel that maybe it was only designed to be a cinematic spectacle. Aronofsky himself has said that if you pick at it too much, it doesn’t quite make sense.

And maybe that’s what that cheeky exclamation mark at the end of Mother! is hinting at.

Rating: 4/5

Mother! is in cinemas from today.

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