mother!

After all the press and all of the trailers, I finally saw Darren Arronofsky's mother!.  I'm a big fan of Arronofsky's, as tough as his films are, and I particularly liked his The Black Swan, so I had to check this out.  However, I didn't like this nearly as much as The Black Swan, and in fact am not sure I can even recommend it.  This is a hard, endurance test type of movie, about as hard of a film as I've ever seen.  The premise of the film is that a husband and wife live in a secluded house in the middle of the woods.  The husband is trying to write, and the wife wants to have a baby.  As the film progresses, these two ambitions come into conflict.  The husband allows two guests into their home, which leads to more conflict, and then to an all out assault on the house by pretty much every force imaginable.  Harry Knowles over at AICN claims that this next part of the film, extreme as it is, shouldn't even be interpreted as true.  I, however, rather do think it's true, and I refuse to accept or embrace the film because of the severity of what we see there, which I won't repeat.  I will say that Jennifer Lawrence is exceptional in the film, while the rest of the film seems rather exploitative and beneath her (basically the opposite of what Brian Tellerico writes in his review).  You might want to listen to domestic audiences and avoid this one.