MOTHER (2017) is easily one of the best films of the year.
By saying that I have taken a stand on the side of a movie that is garnering
the lowest ratings from general audiences in the history of motion pictures. I
find this amusing as hell, of course. The audience I saw this with was made up
of mostly clueless people there to see the new 'scary' J-Law film and they left
that theater confused and pissed off!
Sadly, a general audience was never going to enjoy this film
because it does two things that they despise - It asks them to pay attention
and it asks them to think. Any movie that requires that you actively mentally
engage to understand it is doomed to fail with the broad general audience. This
is different from surprising or shocking an audience, which this film does as
well. And if you can make an audience think that they are all clever little
people because they see what you were doing with your oh so clever storytelling,
then they will absolutely love you. If you can give that audience the illusion that
it is really smart you will be beloved. (By the way - I think this is the
reason why the SAW films were so popular with such a wide audience. Those
clever little endings of each film made the audience feel as if they were in on
some really smart joke. Even though they weren't.)
But what MOTHER does is make very sharp a delineation that
most films won't go near, which is that every viewer of any film always brings
their own thoughts and experiences to that movie when they watch it. Whether
you understand this or not doesn't matter - you are doing it. No two people see
the same film in the same way. MOTHER understands this and wants to coax you
into viewing this movie in your own personal way so you will read into it what
you see there.
For instance, the film that Jennifer Lawrence made and sees
when she views this movie is very different from the film that I saw. She has
said that she sees this as a metaphor for Mother Earth and human destruction of
it. That's an excellent way of looking at things. I like that. But it's not
what I saw.
The film that I saw was an allegory about the destructive
nature of the creative impulse. How the desire for an artist to create
something of transcendent beauty that can be absorbed and enjoyed by a wide
audience has the danger built into it intrinsically that it can be misused for
Destruction instead of Construction. And the author/poet/creator of these
thoughts is both horrified and thrilled by the effect of his creation upon the
world around him. The approbation that he gains, the notoriety that he gains, the
love that he gains from this broad audience of people who appreciate his work
is more important to him than the things that make his creative life possible. That
he uses the irreplaceable love in his own life to be able to create the
wonderful, touching, beautiful piece of art that inspired all of this attention
for himself is unimportant. Or it is just less important than the thrill of
being deified by the people who love what he created.
In the end, the Creator is both horrified and satisfied that
he inevitably destroys the thing that allows him to be a creative person. He
cannot stop the force that is unleashed by his creative impulse even as his
life is destroyed by his creation. It seems that in this destruction he finds a
new way to create and he cannot stop himself from going through this cycle
repeatedly. Indeed, it is the only way in which he knows how to create.
Possibly it is the only way in which he can create something so affecting and
effective. His act of construction is tied inextricably to destruction. This is
the horror of the story. For me, at least.
So, as you can tell, this is not a film for everyone. But I
think it's brilliant.
No comments:
Post a Comment