Unit 11: Essay
~Ilonka Flora
Aronofsky's 2017 'Mother!', will not meet or miss your expectations, but instead, crush it with everything and anything you think you know about film and structure. This psychological horror was not made for everyone. It does not comfort the viewer. There are no monsters, no ghosts or demons, just an ominous truth, Aronofsky's truth. The last events from the film even had people walking out of the movie.
In the beginning, a husband, a wife, a big, rustic, isolated and authentic house, Jennifer Lawrence as 'Mother' and Javier Bardem as 'Him', are living peacefully married in the middle of nowhere.
It is made clear throughout the film that 'him' is a poet with writer's block and Mother is the person who has dedicated her time to work on the house and creating their space whilst also patiently waiting for her husband to create something he is happy with. A heartbeat shown within the walls and floorboards shows that the home they reside in is alive, Lawrence is deeply rooted and connected to the home and it shows form the way she creatively decorates, how she cleans, how she walks her halls barefoot and even how she intuitively acknowledges the presence.
As the story progresses, Mother becomes pregnant and Him who becomes inspired from that finishes his poem and shortly after, strangers begin to intrude in their home, the first being a mysterious man who claims he thought the home was a bed and breakfast. Lawrence is not trusting of the man, but Bardem convinces her to let him stay, explaining to her that it's all about giving. The next day the man's wife played by Michelle Pfeiffer, arrives, instantly degrading and questioning Mother's role as mistress of the house. The first death takes place later in the film when these stranger's children violently brawl in the house ending in one of the brother's death, instantly staining the floor and tainting the house's original safe tranquillity, she senses the heartbeat of the house becoming weaker. She no longer feels secure when she begins to observe that her husband wishes for her to give and share what they have. Her privacy was non-existent from that point on, the funeral was held in their home and from then on more and more strange visitors invaded the home, breaking, tearing, painting, taking everything they could get their hands on. The chaos escalated in a way no one could predict so much that it was ridiculous, with scenes of war, refugee camps and cult worshippers all taking place in one location as she goes through labour. When her baby was killed in the chaos and devoured by the people demanding that she 'shares', it is shown that the heart is on the brink of stopping, as Mother is driven to absolute madness, ending everything including herself in the flames.
The movie premiered at the Venice film festival and received an intriguing mix of boo's and cheers and critical reviews. The independent states you either love it or hate it with no in-between.
His other works such as Black swan, Pi and Requiem for a dream are films that aren't easy to swallow either. Aronofsky knew that the reactions would be strong due to how aggressive his story is.
Darren Aronofsky decided to show us how he sees our world, how mother nature sees and experiences the world. Every character except Mother believes that the Earth is a gift and that we must share everything due to what God wishes us to do, through the Bible.
It's clear by the end of the film, this house is a reflection of Earth and 'him' is portrayed as God, the creator AKA the poet. Ed Harris, who plays the first stranger to appear has been labelled as Adam by many reviewers, the first man, created by God, this can be backed up with the fact that this man falls sick that very night he arrives and is seen bleeding from his rib cage, and the very next day, the woman arrives. According to the Bible, God uses one of Adama's ribs to create his partner, Eve.
Earlier it was mentioned that the first death in the home was caused by a violent fight between two brothers, who appear to be the children of the man and woman. One brother kills the other in a fit of rage exactly like the biblical story of the sons of Adam and Eve, Abel and Cain. It can be suggested that Aronofsky used these subliminal biblical references to literally show the manifestation of mankind and our nature. Chaos and Greed.
Aronofsky intended to convey to us how humans take from the earth and pollute this home, and do barely anything to restore that damage. Some examples from the film are, strangers painting her walls in order to 'help' but it brought her more distraught, this could mean many things, such as toilet paper businesses, like Velvet who claim to plant trees in Brazil to make up for cutting down the other trees, they were reportedly unethically cutting down trees in the great northern forests in Sweden, Russia and Finland. The ending was not a merry one, because it's a warning- a message to society, to raise awareness about your surroundings.
Mother doesn't follow the typical Robert Mckee structure, it goes against those expectations, the climax event, that features in every film was completely exaggerated and had no one true villain, no one real issue just constant chaos form every corner of the octagonal temple-like house.
An amusing point made in the Robert Mckee Story is:
After she burns everything down, the poet, unscathed takes her heart from her chest crushes it, revealing the crystal that was placed in his office in the very beginning that 'reverses' the damage done to the home. The very last scene a woman awakes, a new face, replacing Jennifer, wearing the very same clothes and hairstyle and unaware of all the events that had previously happened.
Aronofsky could be suggesting that society is disposable. When things go horribly wrong with no ways of undoing, everything would be scrapped or ended and started anew with possibly stronger and better traits. Maybe that's what the poet was trying to create in his story, the perfect species. It could also be showing how life ends and begins, like the seasons, the leaves grow in the summer and then they shrivel up in autumn and then new ones take their place once again next spring.
Robert McKee states, 'A story is not only what you have to say, but how you say it', Aronofsky knows this, having many of his works celebrated, he knows what to do in order to receive praise for his work. He had a vision and he followed it through to the end. After being conditioned in school and following a set principle some individuals will want to stray from that. Many films although they may seem different, they are similar such as Diehard, Parenthood and The Lion King, all these films go from 'Farce to tragedy.' Other films go from Mishap to fortune. ''yeah this method creates a good movie for people to enjoy, but what if I do it like this?'' A pure vision and message that hasn't been modified to satisfy or entertain the audience is the direction that Aronofsky decided to take.
Allegory of the cave is a philosophical story found in Book 7 of The Republic by Plato, a Greek philosopher. Prisoners who have lived their whole lives chained to the wall of a cave facing a blank wall. They've been chained by their necks so they've been in the same place and they can't turn around, they can only face the wall.
In this story there is a fire behind them which projects shadows onto the wall that they are facing, these shadows include artefacts left in the cave and passersby. From their point of view, they've only ever looked at the wall in front of them the shadows are hazy with faint shapes and the murmurs echo off of the wall in front of them so the prisoners would imagine it would be coming from the shadow passing in front of them.
He describes that the philosopher becomes free of his shackles and realises there's much more than only the cave wall and that the reality they were subjected to was just a fragment. It is stated that the prisoner would have to adjust his eyes because of how bright it would be outside precisely like how someone becoming aware of things would have to adjust to the new information and enlightment. You can't jump straight into it so the prisoner would not be able to see all of these things at least not right away.
It is questioned whether the prisoner that was liberated may probably still have preferred to have not have escaped and envied the others, who are comfortable in their reality, or would he choose to embrace everything rather than be that kind of human being. Continuing, the person goes back down into the cave to warn the others to tell them that there is much more to their reality.
It's not that they don't believe the philosopher but they are unable to bend the minds in a way that disregards everything that they know. They don't desire to know more or to leave because they are simply comfortable and have never known anything better than that.
This story is depicting that people don't want to be exposed to a truth that sounds 'out-of-this-cave' to them because they're not ready for it because they haven't been conditioned that way, so to come with this philosophical approach, this raw truth... people just don't want to be uncomfortable so what they do is they block it out.
the audience in this instance are the prisoners, they are familiar with the typical film structure and are comfortable when they are able to predict the outcomes, their thoughts aren't their own, they are actually reflecting what they've been told and what they have experienced before. They dislike anything non-comprehensive like 'Mother!' which constantly doesn't follow the rules. They are also given a message from Aronofsky who states that films have become too literal and that the surrealism technique is lost. He says the movie is a snapshot of the world, of where we are and where we are heading. it's finally dawning on us for the first time in history that 'Mother Earth is not infinite' it's our finite home. There are people who are thinking outside of the box and are picking up on the allegory of this film and there are many who completely miss it.
Another way to look at this is how Jennifer's Mother was imprisoned, she never left the house, and she never seemed to know of anything beyond that, once all these strangers from the unknown showed up to wreck her home she was driven crazy because she couldn't understand the meaning and the motives of these people, the more of us there were the more crowded it became and she couldn't take it. Exactly like our planet, that suffers at the hand of our kind, with all the war due to religion, dirty politics, power and money, over-population and pollution, and the worst of all Greed, the more of us there are the more greed there is, everyone wants their share. 'What about me?' is a question asked by every person at one or more points in their lives. But what about the animals, the plants, the ocean and the air? Everywhere Man goes they leave a footprint of destruction behind.
I carried out a poll on a social media platform called Instagram where you can create polls for your followers to answer, My question was 'what do you reckon art delivers to the world? does it create ignorance or expose the truth?', 127 people answered, 27% answered ignorance and 73% answered truth. This could mean many things, the people who chose ignorance, it could be that they are aware of the fact that tv and media create a certain expectation for everything whereas the other half may actually agree with them and are looking at specific aspects of art that speak about the truth only and are ignoring the other part of it that conceal it.
I asked the cast of Hamilton the same question and they said that by telling a story to an audience they have now emerged in it, they are thinking 'i am here', and when the story is over they apply it to their life, they suddenly become more aware of the world around them. In addition to this, they stated it all depends on the artist. This is when I realised my question was way too broad.
The artist has the power to deliver you a message depending on their views, beliefs and outlook on the world, whether you like it not if you fail to take anything from the art the writer has failed. Aronofsky used the opportunity to tell his tale of society, delivering this bleak certainty.
bibliography
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1i8Fos8DZQ
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/sep/17/mother-review-a-full-house-of-horrors-darren-aronofsky-jennifer-lawrence
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2017/09/05/mother-reactions-jennifer-lawrences-top-secret-horror-elicits/
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/mother-film-reviews-reaction-amazing-terrible-cinemascore-f-grade-darren-aronofsky-jennifer-lawrence-a7953206.html
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1704009/how-darren-aronofsky-feels-about-the-reaction-to-mother
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2386532/why-darren-aronofsky-decided-to-make-mother
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/
https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/velvets-claim-protecting-forests-flushed-away/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RWOpQXTltA
https://yale.learningu.org/download/ca778ca3-7e93-4fa6-a03f-471e6f15028f/H2664_Allegory%20of%20the%20Cave%20.pdf
DOES ARONOFSKY'S 2017 FILM 'MOTHER!' DEPICT THE TRUE NATURE OF MAN AND SOCIETY?
Aronofsky's 2017 'Mother!', will not meet or miss your expectations, but instead, crush it with everything and anything you think you know about film and structure. This psychological horror was not made for everyone. It does not comfort the viewer. There are no monsters, no ghosts or demons, just an ominous truth, Aronofsky's truth. The last events from the film even had people walking out of the movie.
'he has stretched the envelope of outrageous mainstream cinema to breaking point – and beyond.' - The Guardian
In the beginning, a husband, a wife, a big, rustic, isolated and authentic house, Jennifer Lawrence as 'Mother' and Javier Bardem as 'Him', are living peacefully married in the middle of nowhere.
It is made clear throughout the film that 'him' is a poet with writer's block and Mother is the person who has dedicated her time to work on the house and creating their space whilst also patiently waiting for her husband to create something he is happy with. A heartbeat shown within the walls and floorboards shows that the home they reside in is alive, Lawrence is deeply rooted and connected to the home and it shows form the way she creatively decorates, how she cleans, how she walks her halls barefoot and even how she intuitively acknowledges the presence.
As the story progresses, Mother becomes pregnant and Him who becomes inspired from that finishes his poem and shortly after, strangers begin to intrude in their home, the first being a mysterious man who claims he thought the home was a bed and breakfast. Lawrence is not trusting of the man, but Bardem convinces her to let him stay, explaining to her that it's all about giving. The next day the man's wife played by Michelle Pfeiffer, arrives, instantly degrading and questioning Mother's role as mistress of the house. The first death takes place later in the film when these stranger's children violently brawl in the house ending in one of the brother's death, instantly staining the floor and tainting the house's original safe tranquillity, she senses the heartbeat of the house becoming weaker. She no longer feels secure when she begins to observe that her husband wishes for her to give and share what they have. Her privacy was non-existent from that point on, the funeral was held in their home and from then on more and more strange visitors invaded the home, breaking, tearing, painting, taking everything they could get their hands on. The chaos escalated in a way no one could predict so much that it was ridiculous, with scenes of war, refugee camps and cult worshippers all taking place in one location as she goes through labour. When her baby was killed in the chaos and devoured by the people demanding that she 'shares', it is shown that the heart is on the brink of stopping, as Mother is driven to absolute madness, ending everything including herself in the flames.
The movie premiered at the Venice film festival and received an intriguing mix of boo's and cheers and critical reviews. The independent states you either love it or hate it with no in-between.
'The worst movie of the year' - Observer
'Spectacular' - Vanity FairIt received a 68% average rating on Rotten Tomatoes, however, non-professional moviegoers have rated it a 42%. It was branded with an F cinema score grade in the US which is 'the most negative reaction any film can have.' - it's suggested that this may say less about the film but more about the moviegoers.
His other works such as Black swan, Pi and Requiem for a dream are films that aren't easy to swallow either. Aronofsky knew that the reactions would be strong due to how aggressive his story is.
'People are conditioned for a certain type of movie. And... we didn't do that type of movie... I don't mind people are upset by the film because it's supposed to be a reflection and a cautionary tale of what's happening to the planet.'
People don't like harsh truths, they prefer comforting lies. They don't want someone to storm into their 'secure' bubble with out-of-the-box type questions and suggestions that may have the power to change their meaning of life. In the year 2000, the world's population was at 6.1 billion, a decade later it was 6.9 billion. Today it is at 7.7 billion. This all contributes to global warming and more pollution. Where is it heading? People choose to ignore this fact.
It's clear by the end of the film, this house is a reflection of Earth and 'him' is portrayed as God, the creator AKA the poet. Ed Harris, who plays the first stranger to appear has been labelled as Adam by many reviewers, the first man, created by God, this can be backed up with the fact that this man falls sick that very night he arrives and is seen bleeding from his rib cage, and the very next day, the woman arrives. According to the Bible, God uses one of Adama's ribs to create his partner, Eve.
Earlier it was mentioned that the first death in the home was caused by a violent fight between two brothers, who appear to be the children of the man and woman. One brother kills the other in a fit of rage exactly like the biblical story of the sons of Adam and Eve, Abel and Cain. It can be suggested that Aronofsky used these subliminal biblical references to literally show the manifestation of mankind and our nature. Chaos and Greed.
Aronofsky intended to convey to us how humans take from the earth and pollute this home, and do barely anything to restore that damage. Some examples from the film are, strangers painting her walls in order to 'help' but it brought her more distraught, this could mean many things, such as toilet paper businesses, like Velvet who claim to plant trees in Brazil to make up for cutting down the other trees, they were reportedly unethically cutting down trees in the great northern forests in Sweden, Russia and Finland. The ending was not a merry one, because it's a warning- a message to society, to raise awareness about your surroundings.
Mother doesn't follow the typical Robert Mckee structure, it goes against those expectations, the climax event, that features in every film was completely exaggerated and had no one true villain, no one real issue just constant chaos form every corner of the octagonal temple-like house.
An amusing point made in the Robert Mckee Story is:
'Audiences are intelligent when watching characters, knowing what they will do, before they do it'Aronofsky's film Mother! throws the audience off-guard, they didn't expect this, they are unable to predict what the character will do next or what events will take place, such as the refugee camps, cults and war scenes happening all at once. there are no rules, no principles and the audience no longer feels intelligent, so they are unable to relate and enjoy the film because their expectations are way off. At the beginning you are shown a glossy-eyed burning woman in a burning house, in the end, you realise that Jennifer Lawrence is that person, or is she?
After she burns everything down, the poet, unscathed takes her heart from her chest crushes it, revealing the crystal that was placed in his office in the very beginning that 'reverses' the damage done to the home. The very last scene a woman awakes, a new face, replacing Jennifer, wearing the very same clothes and hairstyle and unaware of all the events that had previously happened.
Aronofsky could be suggesting that society is disposable. When things go horribly wrong with no ways of undoing, everything would be scrapped or ended and started anew with possibly stronger and better traits. Maybe that's what the poet was trying to create in his story, the perfect species. It could also be showing how life ends and begins, like the seasons, the leaves grow in the summer and then they shrivel up in autumn and then new ones take their place once again next spring.
Robert McKee states, 'A story is not only what you have to say, but how you say it', Aronofsky knows this, having many of his works celebrated, he knows what to do in order to receive praise for his work. He had a vision and he followed it through to the end. After being conditioned in school and following a set principle some individuals will want to stray from that. Many films although they may seem different, they are similar such as Diehard, Parenthood and The Lion King, all these films go from 'Farce to tragedy.' Other films go from Mishap to fortune. ''yeah this method creates a good movie for people to enjoy, but what if I do it like this?'' A pure vision and message that hasn't been modified to satisfy or entertain the audience is the direction that Aronofsky decided to take.
Allegory of the cave is a philosophical story found in Book 7 of The Republic by Plato, a Greek philosopher. Prisoners who have lived their whole lives chained to the wall of a cave facing a blank wall. They've been chained by their necks so they've been in the same place and they can't turn around, they can only face the wall.
In this story there is a fire behind them which projects shadows onto the wall that they are facing, these shadows include artefacts left in the cave and passersby. From their point of view, they've only ever looked at the wall in front of them the shadows are hazy with faint shapes and the murmurs echo off of the wall in front of them so the prisoners would imagine it would be coming from the shadow passing in front of them.
He describes that the philosopher becomes free of his shackles and realises there's much more than only the cave wall and that the reality they were subjected to was just a fragment. It is stated that the prisoner would have to adjust his eyes because of how bright it would be outside precisely like how someone becoming aware of things would have to adjust to the new information and enlightment. You can't jump straight into it so the prisoner would not be able to see all of these things at least not right away.
It is questioned whether the prisoner that was liberated may probably still have preferred to have not have escaped and envied the others, who are comfortable in their reality, or would he choose to embrace everything rather than be that kind of human being. Continuing, the person goes back down into the cave to warn the others to tell them that there is much more to their reality.
It's not that they don't believe the philosopher but they are unable to bend the minds in a way that disregards everything that they know. They don't desire to know more or to leave because they are simply comfortable and have never known anything better than that.
This story is depicting that people don't want to be exposed to a truth that sounds 'out-of-this-cave' to them because they're not ready for it because they haven't been conditioned that way, so to come with this philosophical approach, this raw truth... people just don't want to be uncomfortable so what they do is they block it out.
If we were to be unchained from all the subjections and if you were to remove yourself from the equation, we would discover a world that we would not be able to understand. The Moon is unfathomable for someone who has never seen it. it would be like coming across another world, a place we wouldn't be able to comprehend. This applies to real life. Your opinions, values and state of mind changes when you've removed yourself from an oppressive surrounding. It can also work the other way round, your surrounding changes when your state of mind does.
'it is the source of a higher reality than the one we have always known; it is the realm of pure form.'
'it is the source of a higher reality than the one we have always known; it is the realm of pure form.'
the audience in this instance are the prisoners, they are familiar with the typical film structure and are comfortable when they are able to predict the outcomes, their thoughts aren't their own, they are actually reflecting what they've been told and what they have experienced before. They dislike anything non-comprehensive like 'Mother!' which constantly doesn't follow the rules. They are also given a message from Aronofsky who states that films have become too literal and that the surrealism technique is lost. He says the movie is a snapshot of the world, of where we are and where we are heading. it's finally dawning on us for the first time in history that 'Mother Earth is not infinite' it's our finite home. There are people who are thinking outside of the box and are picking up on the allegory of this film and there are many who completely miss it.
Another way to look at this is how Jennifer's Mother was imprisoned, she never left the house, and she never seemed to know of anything beyond that, once all these strangers from the unknown showed up to wreck her home she was driven crazy because she couldn't understand the meaning and the motives of these people, the more of us there were the more crowded it became and she couldn't take it. Exactly like our planet, that suffers at the hand of our kind, with all the war due to religion, dirty politics, power and money, over-population and pollution, and the worst of all Greed, the more of us there are the more greed there is, everyone wants their share. 'What about me?' is a question asked by every person at one or more points in their lives. But what about the animals, the plants, the ocean and the air? Everywhere Man goes they leave a footprint of destruction behind.
I carried out a poll on a social media platform called Instagram where you can create polls for your followers to answer, My question was 'what do you reckon art delivers to the world? does it create ignorance or expose the truth?', 127 people answered, 27% answered ignorance and 73% answered truth. This could mean many things, the people who chose ignorance, it could be that they are aware of the fact that tv and media create a certain expectation for everything whereas the other half may actually agree with them and are looking at specific aspects of art that speak about the truth only and are ignoring the other part of it that conceal it.
I asked the cast of Hamilton the same question and they said that by telling a story to an audience they have now emerged in it, they are thinking 'i am here', and when the story is over they apply it to their life, they suddenly become more aware of the world around them. In addition to this, they stated it all depends on the artist. This is when I realised my question was way too broad.
The artist has the power to deliver you a message depending on their views, beliefs and outlook on the world, whether you like it not if you fail to take anything from the art the writer has failed. Aronofsky used the opportunity to tell his tale of society, delivering this bleak certainty.
bibliography
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1i8Fos8DZQ
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/sep/17/mother-review-a-full-house-of-horrors-darren-aronofsky-jennifer-lawrence
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2017/09/05/mother-reactions-jennifer-lawrences-top-secret-horror-elicits/
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/mother-film-reviews-reaction-amazing-terrible-cinemascore-f-grade-darren-aronofsky-jennifer-lawrence-a7953206.html
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1704009/how-darren-aronofsky-feels-about-the-reaction-to-mother
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2386532/why-darren-aronofsky-decided-to-make-mother
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/
https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/velvets-claim-protecting-forests-flushed-away/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RWOpQXTltA
https://yale.learningu.org/download/ca778ca3-7e93-4fa6-a03f-471e6f15028f/H2664_Allegory%20of%20the%20Cave%20.pdf
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