Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky has most definitely become the most hunted man in movie culture this last week. His controversial “mother!” has caused a volcanic stir in the mainstream by bewildering, provoking and flat-out infuriating movie audiences nationwide (and some media to boot) with its non-conventional narrative, shocking images and frustrating loop of a story.
That’s fine, adventurous moviegoers have mostly appreciated what Aronofsky went for in the film; it’s hard for any of us to really complain about a studio movie taking the kind of risks “mother!” does even if you think it subjectively fails. Critics haven’t wholly embraced “mother!” either as evidenced by its not great, but still fresh 67% Tomatometer score, and audiences have all but shunned the film (a tepid box-office debut of $7.6 million) giving it a rare, precedented by only 19 other films in history F grade on Cinemascore.
All of this has had the film’s studio Paramount scrambling to find a way to take the negative reaction and turn it into a positive ad campaign, as can be attested by the controversial poster they released which is fueling further “mother!” ire.
Even good ol’ Rex Reed — who dubbed it the “worst movie of the 21st century” in his review — is quoted in the poster. This is clear attempt by Paramount to capitalize on the media noise around the film and campaign it with a “we dare you to see it” kind of vibe, which isn’t a bad idea considering the conversational traction the film has gotten over the past week since its release. But given that it shows a physically abused Jennifer Lawrence in its attempts to provoke, the poster is being slammed as exploitive, “gross and tawdry” among many other scornful epithets.
https://twitter.com/nigelmfs/status/911318529928024064
If you can stomach that poster and the conversation around it, and one can understand if you can’t, you can read on about how Aronofsky has courted more potential backlash in a recent Reddit AMA chat where the already-embattled director suggested the movie could play on in another medium. “[The film’s composer] Johan Johansson and I are thinking about turning it into an opera,” he said.
Now, before you laugh the idea off, consider the possibilities. There are myriad elements in the film that are indeed very “operatic.” It seems perfectly built for a stage production, imagine those last thirty minutes reenacted, and its biblical qualities wouldn’t be a far cry from other melodramatic productions. “mother!” is essentially a chamber piece, the house is slowly but surely burning to the ground, and it’d be quite the neat trick to see it all pulled off on-stage. Composer Johansson would have to create a hell of a score though which would surely have to be a little more overt than the sound-design-heavy compositions he wrote for the movie. But consider us intrigued by the prospect of having this already divisive movie expanded for the high-brow crowd.
Lastly, and perhaps it’s insult to injury at this point, but is “mother!” grotesquely funny? Aronofsky says yes. “The humor was intended,” he wrote in the AMA. “Its fun that some people find it hilarious and that others find it horrifying. My general goal is to entertain audiences so any response is better than no response.” Consider that cinematic trolling? It’s a bit glib for a movie site to say, “what do you think?” considering every site essentially ends their story with the question, but no, really, what are your thoughts on “mother!”?
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