Despite the caginess surrounding the movieâs development, Darren Aronofsky and Jennifer Lawrence are ready to tell you what âmother!â is about.
Specifically, theyâre not hesitating to outline the storyâs defining parable, which canât be gleaned from the trailers. âI donât see the allegory as a spoiler,â Lawrence said Sunday during a press conference at the ongoing Toronto Film Festival, where âmother!â screened.
The movieâs marketing â including a poster that emulates âRosemaryâs Babyâ â presents âmother!â as a home-invasion horror of nightmarish proportions. Thatâs an apt logline, except it shortchanges how layered the film actually is.
Aronofsky, whose credits include the similarly dark âRequiem for a Dreamâ and âBlack Swan,â wrote âmother!â in five days, alone in his house, conjuring biblical ideas presented in Genesis and Revelation. Casting Lawrence, whom heâs since begun dating, and Javier Bardem as a married couple living in a remote mansion, the director concealed the plot from the public until its first trailer debuted in late July. Even then, a certain mystery remained. The only obvious story line involved another couple (Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Harris) arriving unannounced, much to Lawrenceâs characterâs vexation.
Itâs easy to see why secrecy was key: âmother!â is a scorched-earth thrill ride brimming with metaphor upon metaphor. Audiences wouldnât have the same experience had they known months ago what the movie contained. Now that studios tease out details from tentpole projects well before they open in theaters, the cryptic nature of âmother!â has been refreshing. Itâs an art-house firestorm that will shock, and perhaps infuriate, audiences when it opens Friday in wide release. What a beautiful thing to behold.
Itâs hard to discuss âmother!â with anyone who hasnât seen it. Hell, itâs hard to discuss with anyone who has seen it. But I did exactly that with Aronofsky in Toronto on Monday. Our conversation is general enough not to contain spoilers, though I recommend revisiting it after seeing the film. But first, letâs talk scarves.
Youâre wearing a signature Darren Aronofsky scarf. Are you aware that people are into your scarves? People being the internet.
[Laughs and looks confused] Look, I wear scarves, truly, because the weakness of my body is my throat. Whenever I get a cold, it starts in my throat, so itâs purely a Band-Aid. But Iâm making the best of it, so thank you very much.
Since the press screening on Sunday morning, I feel like everyone here has been swapping notes about their interpretations of the movie. There are a lot of readings, which begs an admittedly broad question: Is there a wrong interpretation?
I think anyone who thinks that itâs darkness for darknessâs sake is a wrong interpretation. Theyâre not really thinking. Thereâs no way weâre condoning violence in this film.
Is that the response youâre hearing?
Oh yeah. We knew that as soon as you throw a punch out at the audience, certain people get angry and punch back. And thatâs not at all the intention. The intention is from one of my teachers and mentors, Hubert Selby Jr., who wrote âRequiem for a Dreamâ: âBy exploring the darkness, you explore the light.â
This in no way condones the violence that itâs showing and the horror that itâs showing. Itâs a reflection. Itâs a cautionary tale. Itâs a tragedy thatâs supposed to lead to catharsis. And you realize that all these characters have an insatiable appetite that needs to be filled with consumption. As soon as you recognize that theyâre all kinds of tragic characters, it kind of frees you up to go, âOh, there are larger ideas here.â We always knew there were several metaphorical strains going through it, and thatâs great. We want people to talk about it and question it. That, for me, is a big win. But I completely have an intent with the film.
And when you say âintent,â you mean the allegory? The idea that Javier Bardemâs writer character, who is the dominant force in the charactersâ home, is a Judeo-Christian God figure?
Thereâs the Judeo-Christian stuff, but that was really more of a structural thing. For me, it was about telling the story of Mother Nature and giving the audience this subjective experience of what it was like to be the giver of life. I was inspired by [Mexican filmmaker Luis Buñuel], who basically, in âThe Exterminating Angel,â took a dinner party and locked everyone up in a room and gave a reflection on society. I thought, Hey, thatâs a really clever idea: to reduce this global experience weâre all having on this planet and turn it into a single home. Because throwing out a piece of trash in the streets of Manhattan â you just would never do that in your home. Thatâs a thing you learn in kindergarten. But once itâs in your own home, you can relate to it.
Youâre implying a more ecological view than I was expecting to discuss, which proves how many threads the movie has. Thereâs also a metaphor about the creation of art. Bardemâs character is a poet figure with hordes of devotees feasting on his work, while Jennifer Lawrence is just hanging around renovating their home. Did you intend to posit the idea of the artist as god?
Yeah. Thatâs great that you leaned into that. Thatâs there, too. And thatâs the type of film this is. Itâs very mysterious when you walk into it. You think itâs one type of picture, and then it shifts and you go, âOh, itâs this type of picture.â It becomes something else. I think itâs OK to have many interpretations.
Look, people talk about how there should be room in writing to have different interpretations. I think cinema, especially out of Hollywood, has gotten very narrow in trying to get as many people to have one experience as possible. Iâve always been here for the rickety rides, the rides where every time you go on them theyâre just a little bit different. Everyone can talk about their own experience when they go on it. In this, to me, thereâs a lot of dream logic â or, more likely, nightmare logic. And itâs really a ride for those who want to basically think and to talk and have a different experience at the cinema.
When thinking about the toiling-artist implications in âmother!,â a natural assumption would be to view Bardem as a surrogate for yourself.
I see the connection. When I did âBlack Swan,â everyone asked me if I was the Vincent Cassel character. The truth is, I was the ballerina. And Iâve never wrestled a day in my life, but I was the wrestler [in âThe Wrestlerâ]. I was the conquistador in âThe Fountain,â and I was the math wiz in âPi.â I connect to all these characters.
As a filmmaker, though, you are basically a selfish narcissist for about three months every two or three years, when youâre actually making the movie and youâre working 20-hour days. Personally, I call my friends and family and say, âHey, Iâm disappearing for the next three months.â But then filmmaking is a 9-to-5 job where you can go to work and come back and be a parent. Itâs a nice balance. But I do kind of feel what itâs like to get lost in the work. I do get lost in my work. Drawing a character that really is one of those driven creators is just an exaggeration, in the same way that [Lawrenceâs characterâs] caregiving is an exaggeration of myself as well. So I think itâs very easy to see the male ego in the movie and critique that. Iâm very aware of that, but I think it really comes from a defense of her. That was the idea: to really give the audience a sense of her.
I think the one thing everyone can agree on is that your sympathy is exclusively with her character.
Oh yeah.
Thatâs a complicated idea when thinking about the movie from your perspective. Bardemâs writer gets lost in his own work, to the point of ignoring or rejecting his partnerâs wishes. And here you are casting your own partner in the movie.
She wasnât my partner at the time, to be fair. But yeah, I really wanted the audience to be inside of Jenniferâs head and to experience that pain from her side. And if you think about it from that ecological point of view, itâs very, very similar. The nice thing about the film is you can definitely watch it again and see it in different ways. I think thatâs what allows for the violence and that intensity of pain. Itâs very truthful to whatâs going on right now.
But, first and foremost, the thing we wanted to make was an exciting, scary film. Thatâs why I leaned into the home-invasion genre. I know once you have a genre-esque framework, you could put all these big, lofty ideas. But at the core of it, people can enjoy it as a home-invasion film, which is anything from âNight of the Living Deadâ to âStraw Dogsâ to âThe Purge.â Itâs all these movies where people are trying to break into your home and take what belongs to you and take away your safety. Itâs something everyone understands.
In âBlack Swan,â I knew that it was scary to lose your identity. That would be very scary for people, to wake up one day and someone is trying to replace your life. That was the core of âBlack Swan.â With this one, Iâm hoping people will connect with the idea that itâs scary to lose your home and your partner.
You must have had some bad houseguests along the years.
[Laughs] You know what, youâre actually the first person to think: Is there anything autobiographical there? Actually, the only bad houseguest Iâve had [...] once came and rearranged his guest room. It was pretty hilarious.
The element that makes âmother!â an effective home-invasion thriller is the sound design. The house sounds like itâs alive as Lawrence moves through it. It reminded me of âRepulsion,â the Roman Polanski movie.
Oh, interesting. I didnât really study that for this, but Iâm sure we were working with the same kind of ideas, which are about how to create a subjective universe for everything to reflect back. Because thereâs no score in our film, which is really kind of weird and rare, I really had to use the kind of expressiveness of sound design to bring the audience into her experience.
âmother!â opens Sept. 15.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.