Serious Movie Discussion XLII

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"Trashy" ??

Oh wait, I forgot about polite discussion, I was gonna post my 'eat shit' gif, but this IS the SMD thread.

Black Swan is perfect, don't be a hater.

In this case don't take "trashy" to mean poor, rather its a comment on the style of cinema I think it is, that is containing rather more horror/exploitation style elements than I remember, I mean something like say Alien I would call somewhat trashy as well despite loving it. There are a few aspects I wouldn't be quite as positive about (her home life being a little to obviously repressive IMHO)but and I would not consider it quite as singular a film as I did at the time but its still certainly excellent cinema.

Again I'd definitely recommend Jackie if you love Portman in Black Swan. Its something I admit I dismissed on release as it seemed like it would be another piece of Oscar bait but it actually goes into much darker territory than I expected. It obviously doesn't have the physco sexual horror aspects of black swan but its a similar kind of intense performance from her filmed in a similar fashion.
 
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Such a nerd.

Hunter: Mother was awful.
Bull: Read this essay on it.

Hey, it could've been worse. I could've been a pedantic nerd.

HUNTER: Mother was awful.
Me: Read this essay on why it's not.

I could've even been a pedantic and arrogant nerd.

HUNTER: Mother was awful.
Me: Read this essay that I wrote on why it's not.

There are a lot of colors in my nerd rainbow. HUNTER only got one this time :D

Going to see it today. It better knock my balls out. I'm a big Noah fan. The Wrestler is probably my favorite of his though.

The Wrestler is my favorite, too, but it's kind of by default as I'm not crazy about any of his films, The Wrestler included. Never saw Noah, though. Russell Crowe had me intrigued, but the story and Aronofsky telling it have kept me away.
 
In this case don't take "trashy" to mean poor, rather its a comment on the style of cinema I think it is, that is containing rather more horror/exploitation style elements than I remember....

This is how I see Black Swan tonally too. It's got the same hip-hop aesthetic as Requiemlookhowbaddrugsarecropswilldieyouruteruswillshrivel.

Hey, it could've been worse. I could've been a pedantic nerd.

HUNTER: Mother was awful.
Me: Read this essay on why it's not.

I could've even been a pedantic and arrogant nerd.

HUNTER: Mother was awful.
Me: Read this essay that I wrote on why it's not.

There are a lot of colors in my nerd rainbow. HUNTER only got one this time :D

I'll consider myself lucky then homie.

The Wrestler is my favorite, too, but it's kind of by default as I'm not crazy about any of his films, The Wrestler included. Never saw Noah, though. Russell Crowe had me intrigued, but the story and Aronofsky telling it have kept me away.

I'm the same about Darren. He don't do for me like QT or teh Coens.

I even like Nolan and Fincher more, though Fincher is testing my patience.

But Noah's really good mang. See it. Also Emma Watson and stuff. And like, Emma Watson's in it.
 
Aronofsky for me feels rather like Scorsese, yeah he's an auteur but actually his best work has come though channelling very strong individual performances, Black Swan and the Wrestler clearly being his best films for me with that focus.
 
Aronofsky for me feels rather like Scorsese, yeah he's an auteur but actually his best work has come though channelling very strong individual performances, Black Swan and the Wrestler clearly being his best films for me with that focus.
I take it you're thinking of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, The Last Temptation of Christ, Cape Fear, maybe Wolf of Wall Street, anything else?
 
I take it you're thinking of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, The Last Temptation of Christ, Cape Fear, maybe Wolf of Wall Street, anything else?

The Aviator is his best with Leo for me, again I think really focusing on a handful of actors performances is his greatest ability rather than building incredibly intricate plots or locations. That's I think an underrated skill as a director, I mean you look at De Niro and a lot of the performance tends to come via more subtle facial expression and body movements rather than verbally which I think needs more help from a director to bring across effectively. Black Swan is obviously the same with the camera work focusing very closely on Portman to help get the performance across.
 
"Trashy" ??

Oh wait, I forgot about polite discussion, I was gonna post my 'eat shit' gif, but this IS the SMD thread.

Black Swan is perfect, don't be a hater.


I do need to watch Jackie though.


Mother! was awful on every level.


I actually liked Alien: Covenant - it makes me want to rewatch Prometheus which I'm about to do now.

Yes, having rewatched Prometheus, I quite like these two as a package deal. It's much more interesting watching Prometheus with David in mind as the main character.


Mother was shit. It was well made shit that looked cool and had some good performances (I particularly liked Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer in it though I thought Lawrence was undeniably effective), but it was still bad and repugnant. Once you realize what Aronofsky is trying to do, it left me feeling, what was the point.

I'll save other thoughts till after Ricky sees it.
 
I haven't seen it, but I saw this essay that was recently written on it (the author thought it was a masterpiece), and since I knew you'd probably already seen the movie, my first thought was, "I wonder what HUNTER would think of this essay."

http://brightlightsfilm.com/cosmic-melodrama-darren-aronofskys-mother/#.Wc4eBMYo-Uk

From the essay:

"To say that it is Aronofsky’s best and most original film to date is merely accurate. The same was true of Noah when it was released in 2014, and The Fountain in 2006. Mother! is something else: a near perfect synthesis of psychosexual horror and cosmic irony, a feminist Third Testament, a masterpiece that seems to broach the limits of his art."

I'll read it later. I'm just telling you though, I have fundamental problems with Aronofsky's potrayal of God, in that it was grossly inaccurate... he goes way too far away from reality... he's referencing a source material, but not referencing it correctly AT ALL and it's totally incoherent. Not to mention, it just gave me a headache.

I'm just gonna copy my posts from the Mother! thread, but I'll read that essay first.


When you were criticizing Black Swan you pointed out a technique you thought Aronofsky had stolen from another director and you said it felt like he simply did it bc the other director did it, so it must be good (and maybe that is what he did, he said he took the style from this anime, Perfect Blue, but after this film I question that). Well, I thought of you while I was watching this because in the first 30 minutes or so there are like 15 scenes stolen from Black Swan, which I identified immediately because of my familiarity with those scenes, and I liked seeing them, but it seemed very much that he was doing something like you were saying, except copying himself: "Hey guys, remember that awesome movie I made, Black Swan, well THIS is really great too!!" Except it wasn't. I definitely thought of you and your criticism of BS when I saw that.
 
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In this case don't take "trashy" to mean poor, rather its a comment on the style of cinema I think it is, that is containing rather more horror/exploitation style elements than I remember, I mean something like say Alien I would call somewhat trashy as well despite loving it. There are a few aspects I wouldn't be quite as positive about (her home life being a little to obviously repressive IMHO)but and I would not consider it quite as singular a film as I did at the time but its still certainly excellent cinema.

Again I'd definitely recommend Jackie if you love Portman in Black Swan. Its something I admit I dismissed on release as it seemed like it would be another piece of Oscar bait but it actually goes into much darker territory than I expected. It obviously doesn't have the physco sexual horror aspects of black swan but its a similar kind of intense performance from her filmed in a similar fashion.

I'm just playing around with you :)

I'll look into Jackie
 
Mother was shit. It was well made shit that looked cool and had some good performances (I particularly liked Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer in it though I thought Lawrence was undeniably effective), but it was still bad and repugnant. Once you realize what Aronofsky is trying to do, it left me feeling, what was the point.

I'll save other thoughts till after Ricky sees it.
I can certainly see why you disliked it.

I really liked it man. I can't post in detail as I am literally in bed and have an early day. But will leave an overall impression.

The first half reminded me a ton of Cassavetes' Woman Under the Influence (technique aiding intent). But what elevates it is the ridiculous abandon of the second half. He goes simply batshit yet sticks somehow to what seems like a mundane, circuitous conceit.

There's a scene in particular that offends me a little and I'm struggling to piece together whether it was justified for a larger, virtuous point the movie was making (without spoiling I'll just say it was the only sex scene, and not the distinctly upsetting one towards the end).

So yeah..liked it a lot. And happy to hear your or anyone else's thoughts before I forget the thing. It was quite a show. Last time I left a film with as much of a buzz was Raw.
 
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Aronofsky for me feels rather like Scorsese, yeah he's an auteur but actually his best work has come though channelling very strong individual performances, Black Swan and the Wrestler clearly being his best films for me with that focus.

Hugh Jackman was great in The Fountain too, I thought.
 
I'm about to throw down in this thread on Mother! later after I read this essay. Because I have MAJOR, MAJOR problems with the film.

giphy.webp


Like, if you don't have any problem with him using the bible as his source material and then totally misquoting it, misportraying it in every way imaginable, seemingly on purpose, then you'll love it, but, as Bullitt often likes to say, a film needs to be coherent... at least not purposefully false and misleading... he undermines his purpose, completely, in my eyes.


This is like... the total opposite of Black Swan for me where every messy piece came together in a way that I loved and in this film, Mother! every messy part came together in a way that I absolutely hated.


Alright , I'll be back later.
 
I'm about to throw down in this thread on Mother! later after I read this essay. Because I have MAJOR, MAJOR problems with the film.

giphy.webp


Like, if you don't have any problem with him using the bible as his source material and then totally misquoting it, misportraying it in every way imaginable, seemingly on purpose, then you'll love it, but, as Bullitt often likes to say, a film needs to be coherent... at least not purposefully false and misleading... he undermines his purpose, completely, in my eyes.


This is like... the total opposite of Black Swan for me where every messy piece came together in a way that I loved and in this film, Mother! every messy part came together in a way that I absolutely hated.


Alright , I'll be back later.

lol Hunter, you and I might have to do some copy and pasting from the Mother thread...we already expressed a lot of frustration at this one. But now a fresh audience to which to voice disapproval...
 
I can certainly see why you disliked it.

I really liked it man. I can't post in detail as I am literally in bed and have an early day. But will leave an overall impression.

The first half reminded me a ton of Cassavetes' Woman Under the Influence (technique aiding intent). But what elevates it is the ridiculous abandon of the second half. He goes simply batshit yet sticks somehow to what seems like a mundane, circuitous conceit.

There's a scene in particular that offends me a little and I'm struggling to piece together whether it was justified for a larger, virtuous point the movie was making (without spoiling I'll just say it was the only sex scene, and not the distinctly upsetting one towards the end).

So yeah..liked it a lot. And happy to hear your or anyone else's thoughts before I forget the thing. It was quite a show. Last time I left a film with as much of a buzz was Raw.


Hey it was wildly divisive for a reason, right?

I actually really dug much of the first hour. Aronofsky builds up a lot of suspense and Pfeiffer and Harris are, as I've said, probably my favorite aspect of the movie.

But the problem is that I preferred it when it seemed like a psychological horror film about the invasion of privacy. Once Domnhall and bro showed up and I got the metaphor it started to go way south for me pretty quickly.

On the positive side, I think Bardem is a boss and could watch him in any role. Lawrence is sort of in that position where I think she's actually popular to the extent that people are starting to deny or criticize her talents. Not me. For me, the only thing that kept me interested in the absolute clusterfuck of the last twenty minutes was the fact that she effectively conveyed horror and outrage.

But yeah Harris and Pfeiffer creepily encroaching on the idyllic environment Lawrence was trying to create in the home coupled with Bardem's increasingly unsettling fondness for them being there was the better movie in my opinion. As the film really started to go into allegory mode, I started to lose a lot of interest.

The last twenty minutes is visually interesting, of course, but it's some ugly shit. Ugly, unsettling, making a jaded viewer of horror films like myself uneasy type shit.
 
Ok, article time.

Whatever else it is, mother! is ultimately a woman’s anxious nightmare about what it feels like to put your heart and soul into creating something only for people to take part of it for themselves, to be a woman who loves a man she admires and gives him everything she has even though he cannot love her back and gives her nothing in return.

No. See, no, no, no no, nononononononono NO!!!!!!!!

This makes me want to scream like 'Mother' did the film.

That is precisely NOT what the film is about. Absolutely not. No. If it were about that, it would have been a good movie.

First, I'm going to quote several of my posts, exactly as they were written, so you can follow my train of thought about the movie, because I did not understand the movie fully at first and you can see this in my posts.

Can't wait for this. Not even watching the trailer.

First 30-45 minutes of Black Swan bored me in theater -- I won't ever judge an Aronofsky movie until I see it. Will definitely be watching this.

As the biggest Aronofsky fan ever, I have to say I did not enjoy this movie.

I felt at home immediately because of the camera-work, following Jennifer Lawrence around in the same way he followed Natalie Portman around. In the first 45 minutes there were maybe 15 Black Swan references, which I enjoyed bc they made me feel at home, but Jennifer Lawrence is not Natalie Portman and the movie didn't have the same atmosphere for those scenes to even work in.

One thing I like about Aronofsky is that he says many things at one times and he can be quite convoluted, but I appreciate this because I can interpret things in multiple ways. If the movie had stayed as depicting something like the society of mind (the idea of many minds at work in our brains, tied into the spiritual connection of all people) combined with depicting the life of an artist, sharing themselves with the public, I would have appreciated the ideas behind the movie while not appreciating the aesthetic or enjoying it at all.

HOWEVER, he made it about God and his conception of God is simply wrong. Totally wrong. God loves each individual person in spite of themselves, it's literally the dumbest interpretation of God ever for someone to say, "You only loved me because of the love I gave you," -- um... that's backwards.

So.

0/10.

#TeamGod

#Still#TeamBlackSwan

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The idea that Lawrence is Mother Earth makes a lot more sense, but is still extremely problematic. The earth doesn't love, the earth isn't a person and to personify it in relation to how you depict God as if he were neglecting a person or something even close to an equal (like, the Bride of Christ, for example, the church), is ridiculous.

HUNTERMANIA said:
Damn.

Coming from you, that's a statement.

I just hated his conception of God is all. The movie could have been interesting, intellectually, if it wasn't totally wrong about God.

However, I also didn't enjoy it much at all, and aesthetically it was only beautiful in a few moments, like the whole build-up to the end with the glass that was made from her love was beautiful, but it was a disgusting picture of God so I hated it and it was gross. It was beautiful in a completely grotesque way.


The camera following Jennifer Lawrence was great bc it reminded me of Black Swan, but, besides that, I didn't find it appealing.

HUNTERMANIA said:
I'm tempted to watch to see how bad it is.

If you wants of loud noises, lots of things that don't make sense, and nothing to pull it all together at the end, go for it.

HUNTERMANIA said:
One of his movies The Fountain also got terrible reviews 51% of RT and I really enjoyed that one

Not saying that this movie is any good but I suspect it is better than what the critics are saying

Ok, The Fountain was FUCKING AMAZING.

I am a HUGE Aronofsky fan, this movie just wasn't good. The Fountain, aeshtetically and emotionally, was so powerful the whole time, I fucking love that movie and I could turn it on and sob tears of pain and joy at the same time again, even now watching it... but this was just a cacophony of loud noises and things that didn't make sense that didn't pull together into anything that resembled a story.

The only right part about is was that people abuse the earth, but in trying to make sense of the movie I realized how much dumber it was than I realized:

"The only worthwhile part is that it was an accurate depiction of how humans treat the earth and creation... but they don't love God and the movie showed them loving God over Earth, and that's way backwards. In fact, I didn't even make that connection until now, trying to make up reasons to like this movie, but that is actually the dumbest, least correct part of the movie.

If it were accurate, people would have been obsessed with the earth and never paid one second of attention to God. I get Aronofsky was trying to say they were fascinated with his creation, but they don't care about the Creator, so that was totally wrong in its depiction."

HUNTERMANIA said:
Watch The Fountain WAY BEFORE you even think of watching this.

The Fountain is like the good version of this (a depiction of a view of God/life/etc). Or this is the horror story viewing experience of The Fountain gone way wrong on every level.

Not good.

--- So, The Fountain is Aronofsky's take on the meaning of life and death, and what he says is how he views God or what his religion is. Totally cool. I don't have to agree with him about any of that to appreciate the movie, and I don't but I still love that movie.

Noah, while not a film I enjoyed, also is simply Aronofsky's take on things unwritten in the bible, namely, the state of mind someone in Noah's position would be in. Clearly, I cannot object to Aronofsky interpreting this, because it is not written.

However, in Mother! Aronofsky literally takes THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, AS DEPICTED BY THE BIBLE, AND GROSSLY MISSTATES IT. So, there is no room for interpretation in the things that he tries to interpret, that's why this film is so different than the others.

You cannot be more wrong than he was in this film in his portrayal of God, in his portrayal of earth and the relationship it has to God, the relationship humans have to God, like, there were some moments of truth here and there, but it leaves out the whole: God telling humanity to be stewards of the earth and to care for it. Not to mention Original Sin, all of that, is totally missing (he has a scene that is supposed to reference Original Sin, but nothing changes in the film, things simply happen -- it as if God needed Original Sin to happen to create love again, and it's absurd). He totally fucks up the Jesus story on purpose and if you're making a movie about the biblical narrative for earth, Jesus is kind of like the main fucking character. So, that's egregious and dumb in how it was portrayed, it was done simply for shock value and was extremely trashy.

HUNTERMANIA said:
And there were like literally 15 scenes stolen directly from Black Swan. It felt like he was saying, "Hey guys, remember that REALLY GREAT MOVIE I MADE? This is good, too!" but it wasn't.

I enjoyed them bc they reminded me of my favorite movie, but they didn't fit, at all.

HUNTERMANIA said:
I want to appreciate the fact that he's showing how people disrespect and fuck the earth up... but everything is just wrong in this movie. I can't muster any sympathy.


The only good scenes are the glass scenes. And the rest is just like um... what? and even making sense of it doesn't help because he doesn't make sense with what he's saying.

HUNTERMANIA said:
Yeah that really put me off too. So basically God, in Aronofsky's mind, is an attention-hungry, narcissistic p.o.s.

Like Earth has any claim to God's attention or that people even pay attention to God (hint: they never have). The idea that God is worshiped while the Earth is ignored is totally backwards for what he was trying to show. And God, in the movie, didn't interact with the people at all, not how God actually works. Everything about it is just wrong.

HUNTERMANIA said:
First, we do know what God is like: Jesus Christ.

Second, Aronofsky himself is saying this is what God looks like by using that story and gets that picture HORRENDOUSLY wrong.

Where was Jesus in the film? I didn't see the film but read all the spoilers and no one mentioned Jesus.

Agree with Noah. Film was disgusting.

The baby that was born and killed and eaten, and then God says, "no this is great, let's forgive them" --- it's fucking stupid, not the Jesus story AT ALL --- and then the mother kills everyone except her and God so she says, "I don't have anything left to give" and he says, "what about your love?" and takes the glass out of her heart again, killing her, and the story restarts. Jesus was not mentioned bc he is a minor character, when he is the fucking MAIN character of the real God story. Dumb as fuck.

Then, I read Aronofsky's explanation for the film, and I had this to say:

HUNTERMANIA said:
Reading Aronofsky's explanation... yeah it's a great movie if you want to depict what humanity is doing to the earth. (except for the fact that the earth is depicted not only as the house and the property, but specifically as a person in the film, which is deeply problematic).

But it's fucking awful, offensive, stupid, vulgar, vapid, and dumb when you include God in that depiction and get it completely wrong (using source-material that explains God exactly --- Aronofsky isn't inventing his own God here, which would be OK, he is taking God right out of the bible and completely missing the mark, purposefully missing the mark). I'm not worried about being offended, but at least TRY to be a little accurate.

I mean, comparing Jesus and Abel instead of Adam? Having God issue zero directives or instructions to the people besides to leave one single room? The movie is so deeply problematic intellectually that it makes no sense whatsoever, and it wasn't enjoyable aesthetically except for the last scene, which, as I have said, was beautiful only in that it was so grotesque.

I like the political statement, but involving all the rest of it renders that statement pretty much useless and makes your movie completely incoherent.

Ok, now I will actually go through the written parts of that article... but the summary triggered me so fucking hard because that is NOT an accurate summary of the movie.

I was HOPING, the whole film, the movie would be like that, I was HOPING THAT WAS THE MOVIE, but it wasn't and it never was, that description was merely the pretense for watching the movie in the first place and it was not the point Aronofsky was making whatsoever. So, already, that article is inaccurate, but I will read it.
 
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He often tries to wrangle together so many lofty themes and referents at once that they get in each other’s way; they seldom have enough screen time to fully gestate because he also tries to maintain the pacing of a conventional narrative, yet, despite his obvious penchant for the avant-garde, he refuses to abandon dramatic structure.

Yes. This is one of my favorite things about Aronofsky, but he DOES abandon the dramatic structure in this movie. He finally does abandon it, and wow, I see it in his eyes, this is his 'Perfect' moment, where he just ditches the 'story' once and for all:

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Except it wasn't.

Next!

The same was true of Noah when it was released in 2014, and The Fountain in 2006. Mother! is something else: a near perfect synthesis of psychosexual horror and cosmic irony, a feminist Third Testament, a masterpiece that seems to broach the limits of his art.

Ok, I'm buying this: "a feminist 'third testament'" but he gets the Old Testament and the New Testament completely wrong (which is why I'm buying the idea that it is a post-modern third testament, subversive with no claims to accuracy).

Despite his bohemian trappings, Aronofsky is essentially a melodramatist, taking hyperbolic domestic tragedies about self-destructive individuals and close-knit family units and amplifying them through a lens of the epic and the fabulous. In that sense, his work is more operatic than theatrical, and mother!, which plays out in an enclosed space that might otherwise seem suitable for something like A Doll’s House, is his grandest expression of this mode, grander even than his self-consciously bombastic Hollywood blockbuster Noah.
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But this is never really developed, this WOULD HAVE BEEN a good movie, but it was never developed because that was never the point. There is no moment, like with Portman staring down at her mother in the audience in Black Swan, that we see it all come together as it was for the original characters (as we understood them). No, instead he ditches all of this and tells us that Javier has been God the whole time. There is no desire to reconcile any of this.

And, because of that fact, the beginning of the story regarding the tale of a wife and her husband, can be simply disregarded because it was meaningless plot structure, and instead we look back and understand that it was God interacting with Earth --- and this is especially troubling, Aronofsky, wants to split up God's creations into many characters yet there relationship with God is different. Like, there is the house, there is Lawrence, and they are tentatively linked, but how humans interact with Lawrence and the house compared to how they interact with God is not at all how it actually goes. One of the main points of the bible is that every person has committed the sin of preferring creation to the Creator, so this point about how 'God' is so cool with the humans while the earth is neglected is dumb and backwards. No, humans deify the earth while ignoring the real God. Yes, the earth gets trampled on in the process, but that's the only thing Aronofsky gets right.

The boldness of Aronofsky’s religious metaphors makes it easy to misread the film as a theological allegory with Him as God, but metaphor is not allegory, and no allegorical reading of the film can be sustained. For instance, the first houseguest to arrive is simply called “man” (Ed Harris), and, after we see him with a strange wound near his ribcage, his wife, “woman” (Michelle Pfeiffer), arrives, followed by their two sons (Brian and Domnhall Gleeson), one of whom kills the other by smashing his head in with a doorknob. If you try to use this obvious parallel to the Book of Genesis as an entry point to “solve” the movie the way you might decode the self-important puzzle-box movies of Christopher Nolan, the entire film will collapse, and reviewers who have tried have used this as a way to dismiss the film as intellectually hollow.

Exactly. The article makes my point. But you cannot escape this reading of the film because Aronofsky FORCES YOU to accept it.

You don't get to choose to say, "This is somehow something different than what he is actually saying, even though he makes it plain, scene after scene, what he is referencing." You don't get to ignore that and interpret the film as something totally separate. This article has now taken off into the realm of the imaginary.

It is, indeed, essential to understanding the film to accept that Him is a metaphor for God, but only in the sense that “God” is itself a metaphor, a mystical (as opposed to theological) approach typical of Aronofsky’s work. Him is not Everyman, but he is Man, men, and, simply, a man. He is creative, but self-consciously so: while mother creates of her own intrinsic nature, rebuilding the house and bearing a child, Him needs her to inspire him, and, even then, he is only able to create poetry about her and her power, a metaphor producing metaphors. He needs not just her approval, but the approval of others, of strangers, of worshipers to make his art meaningful to himself.

Except Man and God are not the same at all, and Him is certainly not 'man', He is God, for sure. It would be nice if Aronofsky chose to make this film instead of making it about God, but he didn't.

He seems giving without ever actually giving up anything that he truly values, and, though he never shows anger or displeasure of any kind toward mother, he seldom displays anything but a distant, paternalistic kindness. It is just enough to keep stringing her along so he can get what he needs from her; yet he is not an abuser, as that would suggest that he chooses to behave worse than he might otherwise. What is truly disturbing and tragic about Him, what makes him such an uncanny representation of masculinity, is that he does not seem to want to be this way, yet he is powerless to change. It is the best that he can be, and, as this endless cycle of women destroy themselves against him, he never improves.

And God is not like this at all. I agree this is a good reading of the character, but that is why it's so problematic that Him is God and not Man.

All of mother!’s cosmic and mythic dimensions, all of its horror and gore and strange sensuality, stem from mother’s depth of intellect and feeling. If the film’s dreamlike associations between sex, love, gods, and death are complex and stimulating, it is only because mother is, and if they resist simple analysis and seem to slip out of your hands just when you think you’ve figured them out, it is because she is too multidimensional to draw a line around. Him is God, yes, but only because, in some way, mother perceives him that way.

No. This author has a very nice imagination, but this is ridiculous. Especially the last line, ahhahaha. And the movie, if it were saying this, which it wasn't, but if it was, it would be even worse than I am saying it is now. There is nothing remotely interesting about Lawrence's character or how that character was portrayed. I do not see the depth -- laughable. Multidimensional? She is no-dimensional. She's beyond basic.

Mother! provokes countless questions about the unending cosmic struggle between Him and mother (such as whether or not each mother is the reincarnation of their predecessor or someone new), but to accept an answer to any of them as definitive rather than suggestive would be to accept narrative logic and teleology as more important than subjective experience – in other words, to privilege Him’s story over mother’s.

Yes, here is something good, at least to help understand the author. If you want to privilege reality over unreality, then this film has major problems. Considering his source material is the bible, there is a clear delineation about whose story comes first: GOD'S story comes first, every time. And the earth isn't a person, either, and it is not to be personified. Ugh.
 
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Just to lower the tone did nobody involved with this Redford film ever say the title out loud before release?

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also, LMAO @ Handmaid's Tale winning an emmy. Seriously one of the worst shows I've ever seen. It was well-produced, I enjoyed the aesthetic, but I couldn't make it through 2 episodes. It was 'awful and dumb', like, not in the sense that the production was awful, but the tone was like, "THIS PLACE IS HORRIBLE AND EVERYONE WANTS TO DIE... except for a few moments where we talk like teenagers to make it awful in a different way." like 90% awful, 10% dumb.

And it just had nothing to offer besides the plainness of the environment being not a good place. I felt like I learned everything the show wanted to teach in less than 1 episode and there was nothing more to it. I honestly couldn't watch it.
 
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