There’s a reason Darren Aronofsky doesn’t want you to know anything about his latest film, Mother!
“MOST PEOPLE, after they see the film, they don’t even wanna look at me,” says Darren Aronofsky with a basso profundo chuckle. Clad in New Balances, a Montreal Expos hat, and a black T-shirt bearing the logo of electro-punk label DFA Records, the 48-year-old auteur is introducing his latest outing, the secrecy shrouded Mother! (exclamation point required), to a micro audience of four—of which I am a part. We had to turn in nondisclosure agreements before being permitted to see the film, and a viewing of it suggests the reason why: Aronofsky doesn’t want you to know how, exactly, he’s going to push your buttons. But he’s going to push your buttons.
Aronofsky’s filmography is rich with moments of oft-surreal discomfort: It’s hard to shake off Winona Ryder stabbing herself in the face in Black Swan, or Russell Crowe nearly murdering a newborn in Noah, or Jennifer Connelly’s climactic scene in Requiem for a Dream, which I can’t even describe delicately here. But Mother! might be the most alarming entry in Aronofsky’s two-decade career. The film envisions a few months (or is it a few days?) in the countryside home of an idyllic couple, played by Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem. Unexpected visitors (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer) arrive; horrifying entropy sets in.
Beyond that, Aronofsky would prefer to stay secretive about details. “It’s a cruise missile shooting into a wall, this film,” he muses a few days after the screening, seated in a dimly lit equipment room at a Manhattan sound editing studio. “I want audiences to be prepared for that and prepped that it’s a very intense ride.”
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