The latest Jennifer Lawrence-starring film is proving to be one of the most polarizing and divisive of 2017.
The Darren Aronofsky film, styled as ‘mother!’, stars Lawrence in the titular role along with Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ed Harris and Kristen Wiig.
The film was shrouded in secrecy until its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on September 5. At the festival, the film was simultaneously booed and cheered. It was also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival before its release this weekend.
Before critics and audiences saw the film, plot details were scant.
The film’s official synopsis simply read: ‘A couple’s relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence.’
Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem are pictured among a crowd of people in a scene from Darren Aronofsky’s ‘mother!’, which debuted this weekend
Lawrence is pictured in another scene from the film, which has proved to be quite polarizing among both critics and audiences
Pictured, from left to right: The film’s writer-director Darren Aronofsky, actress Michelle Pfeiffer, Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem. They are pictured at the film’s premiere at the Venice International Film Festival. Also in the film are Ed Harris and Kristen Wiig
The couple is played by Lawrence and Bardem, while a first set of uninvited guests is another couple played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Harris. Kristen Wiig is part of a later group of guests.
The film’s poster, meanwhile, showed Lawrence holding her heart, which appeared to have been ripped from her chest.
A later poster showing the faded face of Lawrence looking upward appeared to have been directly inspired by the 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby.
In the Roman Polanski film, Mia Farrow played a pregnant woman who was paranoid about a cult that appeared interested in her baby. The reality of her situation proved more horrific than she ever could have imagined.
Meanwhile, the A-list cast of ‘mother!’ and its writer-director, Darren Aronofsky, prompted critics and film industry analysts to hype the film as a major awards contender.
And the film had been marketed by Paramount Pictures as a home invasion thriller with Aronofsky’s more psychological and creepy touch.
Pictured are two posters for the film, which was released by Paramount Pictures. At left is a poster showing Lawrence, who stars in the film as the titular character, holding her heart. At right is a poster that appeared to be explicitly inspired by the poster for the 1968 film ‘Rosemary’s Baby’
Lawrence, 27, and Aronofsky, 48, are dating. Previously, Lawrence had dated ‘Skins’ star Nicholas Hoult. And Aronofsky was in a 10-year relationship and had a child with ‘The Constant Gardener’ actress Rachel Weisz
But the actual film – which deals heavily in religious allegory and is open to many different interpretations – has proven to be something altogether different than what critics and audiences were imagining.
The Daily Mail’s Brian Viner wrote on a one-out-of-five-stars review: ‘Cinematic Marmite! That was the verdict on Mother! following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month. As in the case of the sticky brown yeast extract, we were told, film-goers would either love it or hate it.’
The Marmite hater added: ‘I would rather eat a vat of the stuff than sit through Darren Aronofsky’s wildly pretentious slab of self-indulgence again.’
Kristen Wiig, who appears in a supporting role in ‘mother!’, is pictured supporting her film ‘Downsizing’ at the Venice International Film Festival
Meanwhile, Rex Reed of the New York Observer deemed the film ‘the worst movie of the year, maybe century’ in a zero-star review.
The critic, who has previously been unimpressed with Aronofsky’s work, wrote: ‘Nothing he’s done before to poison the ozone layer prepared me for mother!, an exercise in torture and hysteria so over the top that I didn’t know whether to scream or laugh out loud.
‘Stealing ideas from [Roman] Polanski, [Federico] Fellini and [Stanley] Kubrick, he’s jerrybuilt an absurd Freudian nightmare that is more wet dream than bad dream, with the subtlety of a chainsaw.’
Kyle Smith of the conservative National Review branded ‘mother!’ as ‘Biblically-infused version of torture porn’ and added: ‘To experience the final half-hour is to understand what it must feel like to be a clump of broccoli in a Cuisinart.’
But the film also has a fair share of ardent supporters, illustrating its love-it-or-hate-it nature.
The film has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 69% and a Metacritic score of 75. For the former, this indicates that 69% of critics aggregated by the site liked the film, while 31% did not. The Metacritic score is the average score that critics aggregated by the site gave the film.
Pictured is a scene featuring Javier Bardem in the film. ‘mother!’ currently has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 69% and a Metacritic score of 75. Meanwhile, opening night audiences polled by Cinemascore rated the film an ‘F’
Pictured is a scene featuring Michelle Pfeiffer, shot from Lawrence’s point of view. The Daily Mail’s Brian Viner said of the film: ‘Cinematic Marmite! That was the verdict on Mother! following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month. As in the case of the sticky brown yeast extract, we were told, film-goers would either love it or hate it’
Supporters include Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times, who in a glowing review wrote: ‘The movie is a savage attack on the egomania that enables a director to fancy himself a deity, as well as the rotten patriarchies that govern the worlds of art, industry and religion alike, with Lawrence embodying the wise but perpetually ignored voice of the divine feminine.’
Referring to the film as ‘the kind of visceral trash-arthouse experience that comes along very rarely,’ The Playlist’s Jessica Kiang wrote: ‘By the time the film has morphed into a bizarre, noisy, extraordinarily rendered literalization of the most barbaric of Christian rituals, and a balls-to-the-wall acknowledgement of the utter monstrousness of the male creative ego, you will have seen one of our most talented filmmakers act like he’s got nothing to lose.’
Meanwhile, Alissa Wilkinson of the liberal Vox wrote in a 4.5-out-of-five-stars review: ‘Mother! is a mad fantasia of fire and water and insanity, a spinning, flaming plume that is not here to make you like it, though it wouldn’t mind if you decided to just bow down in worship.’
She added: ‘Mother! is a movie designed to provoke fury, ecstasy, madness, and catharsis, and more than a little awe.’
In a more lukewarm, lightly positive review, A.O. Scott of the New York Times wrote: ‘Mr. Aronofsky is a virtuoso of mood and timing, a devoted student of form and technique straining to be a credible visionary.
‘But as wild and provocative as his images can be, there is something missing — an element of strangeness, of difficulty, of the kind of inspiration that overrides mere cleverness.’
Pictured is another scene featuring Lawrence, who said of the film: ‘It depicts the rape and torment of Mother Earth’
The film’s critical consensus, according to Rotten Tomatoes, reads: ‘There’s no denying that mother! is the thought-provoking product of a singularly ambitious artistic vision, though it may be too unwieldy for mainstream tastes’
The ‘critical consensus’ written by Rotten Tomatoes staff reads: ‘There’s no denying that mother! is the thought-provoking product of a singularly ambitious artistic vision, though it may be too unwieldy for mainstream tastes.’
Audiences, who have been going to see the film since it debuted in cinemas on Thursday night, appear to be hating it.
Cinemascore, a market research firm that polls film-goers on opening night, found that audiences overwhelmingly gave the film an ‘F,’ the lowest possible rating for the service. Grades run from A+ to F.
This makes ‘mother!’ one of only a handful of films to have received the score, which has previously been awarded to films such the Brad Pitt-starring ‘Killing Them Softly’ and the horror film ‘The Devil Inside.’
Polling data further indicated that film-goers whose primary reason for seeing the film was Jennifer Lawrence gave the film an F, while those who came out primarily to see a Darren Aronofsky film gave it a C+.
An analysis by Deadline noted: ‘It’s very simple what happened here: Paramount backed an audacious auteur’s twisted genre film and aimed to sell it to a mass audience.’
Jennifer Lawrence herself has commented on the film’s polarizing nature.
‘It depicts the rape and torment of Mother Earth,’ she told The Telegraph. ‘I want it to traumatize you.’
And writer-director Darren Aronofsky, 48, who is currently dating Lawrence, 27, is no stranger to controversy. His past work includes the Biblical epic, ‘Noah’ which generated some controversy over its interpretation of the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark. His Natalie Portman-starring ‘Black Swan,’ for which she won the Best Actress Oscar, was criticized by members of the ballet community for its portrayal of ballet and its crediting of dancing doubles. And his ‘Requiem for a Dream’ was released in theaters unrated to avoid the dreaded NC-17 rating, which is the next step after an R rating.
‘mother!’ received an R rating for ‘strong disturbing violent content, some sexuality, nudity and language’.
Aronofsky’s previous work includes the 2014 Russell Crowe-starring film ‘Noah’ (pictured left) and the 2010 Natalie Portman-starring film ‘Black Swan’ (pictured right)
Aronofsky, in an interview with the Huffington Post, said of his film: ‘I think cinema, especially out of Hollywood, has gotten very narrow in trying to get as many people to have one experience as possible.’
He added: ‘It’s really a ride for those who want to basically think and to talk and have a different experience at the cinema.’
The film debuted with an estimated $3.1million on Friday and is expected to make between $7million and $9million by the end of the weekend across the United States and Canada.
The $33million film had been expected to debut in the low- or mid-teens, and potentially toxic word-of-mouth indicates that it may drop off quite quickly.
The film, whose first trailer only debuted on July 31, was originally scheduled to be released on October 13 but was moved up to September 15 in late July.
The release date shift might have jeopardized the film’s box office prospects due to the unforeseen success of ‘It’, another R-rated horror film that debuted last weekend with a record-setting $123million. The film made an estimated $19.2million on its second Friday, the same day that ‘mother!’ debuted, according to estimates from Box Office Mojo.
‘mother!’ was originally expected to be a major awards contender on the 2017 circuit based on the talent involved. It remains to be seen how it will fare.