Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week has seen me diving into Persona 3 Reload, which has unfortunately provoked a swift and deleterious effect on basically every other aspect of my life. There’s just something about Persona’s mixture of pokemon fusions and schedule management that tickles all the right parts of my brain; somewhat ironic that a life planning sim tends to overwhelm my ability to plan my own life, but I suppose it’s always easier to hit a button that says “do your chores” than to actually friggin’ do them. Anyway, mentally I am in the halls of Tartarus right now, but my film review buffer is as well-stocked as ever, so our weekly reflections may continue without incident. Let’s burn down some feature films!
First up this week was mother!, Darren Aronofsky’s fantastical exploration of familial breakdown, the eternal friction of god and mankind, the onanistic obsessions of the artist, or perhaps something else entirely. Jennifer Lawrence stars as the unnamed “Mother,” who maintains the house of the patriarch Him, played by Javier Bardem. Lawrence is at first happy to support her husband’s stalled poetic efforts, painting and shelving as he grapples with writer’s block. But soon, Bardem begins inviting strangers into their home, furnishing his life with an onslaught of ego-stroking supplicants as dear Mother becomes increasingly overwhelmed.
Offering a straight plot summary of mother! is a hopeless endeavor, as the film is essentially a series of open-ended metaphors, and its narrative is driven more by vibes than any sort of clear narrative consequence. That might seem like it’d present a frustrating viewing experience, but Aranofosky’s continuous escalation of intrusive variables, persistent hints of a darker underbelly, and ultimate coherence of parallel metaphors actually lends the film a clear sense of momentum; you’re never sure quite what’s going to happen next, but each piece lands as a quasi-natural expansion of the previous lunatic encounter. Additionally, Jennifer Lawrence does very much with very little, managing to find a relatable humanity in a character who is fundamentally defined more as a symbol than a person.
Between Aranofosky’s claustrophobic filming and Lawrence’s increasingly fatigued performance, a portrait of conflict in multiple spheres slowly emerges. Bardem is the lord of this world, a fickle tyrant who finds only passing satisfaction in the adoration of his wife; you could easily see him as either god or mankind, each cruel and selfish in their scouring of the earth they have claimed. Of course, the film’s archetypal domestic scenario and persistent reflections on feminine duty also point towards an interpretation hinging on gender relations, and the tenets of propriety that bind women while allowing men dominance of their environment. Then again, such a reading ignores the film’s prioritization of the “artist’s burden,” and how our valorization of creation and pursuits of the mind can become a destructive, indulgent form of faith. Bardem’s repeated compulsion to “give back” to his people while it is Lawrence that is consumed works gracefully on all three levels; regardless, mother!’s shift from slow-burning to manic escalation ensures the film stays viscerally gripping, allowing its thorny metaphors the needed time to latch in the brain. The film defies easy solutions, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
We then checked out Cowboys and Aliens, a recent slice of genre-splicing ephemera directed by the villainous Jon Favreau. Perhaps more than any other single person, Favreau is the artist responsible for Disney’s current glut of endlessly reproducible and eminently disposable Content, having led the charge on their stewardship of both the Marvel and Star Wars universes. Hell, he even directed the live-action Lion King, which possesses the distinct honor of being the most soulless, anti-art film I’ve ever watch. And coming soon to a theater near you, you’ll be able to catch his upcoming The Mandalorian and Grogu, his apparent reward for helping to kill the era of prestige television.
Favreau sucks, and cinema would be far better off without him, but there’s frankly not much to say about Cowboys and Aliens. Because Favreau designs and shoots films within a series of greenscreen chambers (his foul works also brought us The Volume), there’s none of the sense of place or atmosphere that define great westerns; because he’s an entirely journeyman director with no personal vision, he fails to draw convincing performances out of his leading men. Like most of Favreau’s films, Cowboys and Aliens proceeds like a productive board meeting covering the next quarter’s series of advertising initiatives, hitting predictable narrative beats while mostly wasting everyone’s time. Capitalism in action.
We then checked out Armored, a quasi-heist film about a group of armored transport drivers who conspire to steal their own cargo. The plan almost goes off without a hitch, but the impromptu execution of a homeless man who overhears their plans sends a crack through the group, leading to a tense cat-and-mouse game between the armed conspirators and the holdout, who’s locked himself in one of their armored vans.
Armored is a tightly structured thriller, an oddly beautiful B-movie (all credit to cinematographer Andrzej Sekuła, who also shot American Psycho and Tarantino’s first two films), and an absolute waste of a banger cast. In spite of featuring Lawrence Fishburn and Jean Reno, the film focuses basically all of its attention on Columbus Short and Matt Dillon, leaving its true talents to play “the wild card” and “the strong number two.” The film as it exists is fine enough, if largely forgettable, but what a waste of the cards on the board!
Next up was Saint Maud, a recent British horror feature starring Morfydd Clark as hospice nurse Maud, a troubled woman who seems driven by a uniquely personal relationship with God. Maud is assigned to care for Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a former dancer now suffering from stage four lymphoma. Amanda mostly just wants to live out her final days pleasurably with friends, but Maud is determined to save her unbelieving soul, taking increasingly desperate measures as her own faith and identity are tested and found wanting.
Saint Maud is billed as psychological horror, though to be honest, the psychology of its two leads is never particularly mysterious. Amanda is a worldly, cynical artist facing death with all the grace she can muster (“you have no idea how boring it is to be dying,” she at one point admits). Meanwhile, Maud is driven entirely by guilt and loneliness, hounds of personal recrimination that drive her into a kind of negative faith, wherein only God’s light can blot out all the deficiencies of where life has brought her.
The two circle around each other for forty or so minutes of Persona-lite, religiously tinged musings on life’s purpose, but it’s only when Maud is fired for her increasingly controlling actions that the film really kicks into gear. Maud’s descent is predictable but harrowing nonetheless, buoyed beyond its generic textual content via cinematographer Ben Fordesman’s striking visual compositions. It was hard to escape the impression that Saint Maud wishes to be more than it is – a statement on faith, or death, or gender, or something, much like the recent, excellent She Will. Unfortunately, Maud herself is more caricature than character, and watching drawn-out sequences of her ritual flagellation doesn’t bring us closer to any sort of human truth. A reasonable yet ultimately disappointing horror feature, whose stately visuals belie its hollow core.
