mother!

[kajnrig]

I couldn't find any preexisting thread, so here's creating one just so I can talk about it a bit. I'm sure you've seen the trailer (not linking to the Paramount video because it has that dumb "trailer trailer" at the beginning):

I doubt many of you are interested in it - and so, it seems, is the case for most of America - but my thoughts on it nonetheless.

tl;dr - If you like "art about art," you might like this one. If not, probably best to stay away.

I think the biggest problem with mother! is that it gives everything away within the first two minutes. From there, it does a phenomenal job of slowly ratcheting up the tension, and you start to wonder a bit about how the film could possibly end, but then it does end and it's pretty much exactly how you predicted at the very beginning; it's unfulfilling. You wonder what more it could be beyond what its surface details, and are left wanting when it turns out to really just be another movie about the plight of the artist. It's not even subtle about it.

That said, it's a very good movie about the plight of the artist, insofar as it accurately depicts "the plight of the artist." But it doesn't do anything more with the extremely interesting framework surrounding it; the actual story being told doesn't satisfy. I was hoping for some sort of eldritch abomination, an elder god, to appear; or for the story to indulge in some sort of justice for its besieged heroine. She ends up being just another tool for him to use.

Which is, again, an accurate (from a cynic's point of view) depiction of the artist. But like many works of art about art, it gets lost in its theme and forgets to do its job.

I'm reminded of Inception, which was billed as a movie about movies in its own right. Inception, however, goes out of its way to be a good movie while also being a metaphor for the art of filmmaking. You have some stake in the characters, and that stake is rewarded (in some fashion or another) by the end of the movie. Here, you want the heroine to get some measure of justice; you're emotionally invested in her. But the end of the movie is all about her husband, the writer, and that just... it grinds my gears.