The film Darren Aronofsky called a “punk movie”
In 2017, the Venice Film Festival played host to a number of weird and wonderful features. It opened with a miniature Matt Damon forefronting Downsizing and provided the premiere for Guillermo del Toro’s amphibian love story and future ‘Best Picture’ winner, The Shape of Water, but the most controversial screening of the entire festival came from the mind of Darren Aronofsky.
Though Mother! received a nod from the festival for the coveted Golden Lion award, crowds proved to be slightly less complimentary. Boos reverberated around the room in Venice, while later screenings of the film would even push audiences to walk out.
As award season followed on the same trajectory, with Mother! being skipped over by most reputable ceremonies and earning three Golden Raspberry nominations, it seemed that Aronofsky’s latest offering had bombed. While other directors might have wallowed in the critique, Aronofsky was undeterred by the response, even suggesting that he anticipated it from the beginning of shooting.
Speaking with A Frame, via The Hollywood Reporter, the director recalled initially telling his cast and crew, “This isn’t going to be a popularity contest”. He had never intended to make a movie that would play up to audience expectations; rather, he had wanted to “make a punk movie and come at you”.
“I was very sad and I had a lot of anguish and I wanted to express it,” he explained, citing the difficulties of rejection in the industry as one of the causes. Though Mother! would earn him even more rejection from audiences and critics alike, this was a reaction Aronofsky had intended and anticipated, so much so that he wasn’t even disappointed in the F CinemaScore ranking.
He suggested that it would be impossible to give the film any other score, commenting, “What’s interesting about that, like, how if you walk out of this movie are you not going to give it an ‘F’? It’s a punch. It’s a total punch.”
Like many of Aronofsky’s offerings, Mother! certainly was a “total punch” of a film. Even star Jennifer Lawrence suggested it may have gone too far. Between glaring biblical metaphors and shocking scenes of violence, most notably a particularly distressing scene in which the Mother’s unwelcome visitors eat her baby son, it’s understandable that the film elicited more boos and poor rankings than commendation.
Still, the film remains one of Aronofsky’s most controversial outings – whether it’s acceptably and intentionally “punk” or merely crude and crass is for viewers to determine. Revisit the film below.
