Part I: Modern Environmentalism

DARREN Aronofsky, the acclaimed director of `Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream’, and `The Wrestler’is known for his psychological horror and surrealist films which present neurosis and paranoia, disturbing content, and a myriad of wild themes. With his new film, `Mother!’, there is no doubt that Aronofsky is on a wavelength of creative and artistic ambition that aims high above what was executed in his previous work, which is saying quite a lot considering the stellar body of films he has created in the past.

However, it seems that not everyone agrees that `Mother!’ is a film that is worthy of recognition or praise, and this is okay because, after all, film is art, and as with all things artistic, no individual is expected to react in the same way to the same piece of art as every other individual. However, for those who do see most of what the film aims to offer, there is much to take away once the show is over and the sheer absurdity and horror that was witnessed have been processed.

There are probably three main layers of interpretation that can be established, several of which have already been highlighted by the director and the lead actress, Jennifer Lawrence. These are: the interpretation which posits that the main character represents the Earth, and everything else that happens represents the destruction of the Earth; an interpretation which seeks to claim that the film is an allegory for the early portions of the Bible; and thirdly, as Dana Stevens writing for Slate says, the film also functions as “a merciless indictment of the artist-muse tradition in all its patriarchal violence.” This article looks at the theme of the destruction of the earth and natural environment, and it contains spoilers.

Jennifer Lawrence says that her character “represent[s] Mother Earth” and that the film “depicts the rape and torment of Mother Earth.” The unnamed character Lawrence plays is a good place to start if one wants to do an environmentalist critique of the film. For most of the film, Lawrence plays her character as extremely meek, soft-spoken, loving, and gentle – all character traits that set her character apart from the other more dominant, strong-willed personas in the film. She is beautiful in every frame and exudes a delicate personality that only falls apart when she is pushed to her very limits.

Aronofsky is not only trying to present an image of the beautiful, kindly Earth Mother figure who gives and gives without asking for anything in return through the character’s personality traits, but also uses particular imagery to do so: framing Lawrence in the doorway of the house so she is superimposed against the lushness of trees and other vegetation in the surroundings, making reference to the character’s breasts at least three times during the film in order to impart a sense of what we see when we look at images of fertility and nature goddesses and generally making the character the centerpiece of creation and creativity.

While her husband is the poet, Lawrence’s character is the one who is truly able to create and initiate the process of creation, as seen when she is able to singlehandedly recreate the house they live in, by being a source of inspiration for her husband (Javier Bardem) and the poetry he writes (in the same way that nature and the earth has inspired writers and artists for thousands of years) and, of course, in her ability to bring forth a child into the world. Lawrence, at the beginning of the film, represents the Earth at its best, in all its full glory.

The other characters, if we are to use the interpretation given by the actress, would represent the elements that destroy the earth. At one point, the character played by the fabulous Michelle Pfeiffer, after firmly establishing herself in the house created by Lawrence’s character, says, on a self-guided tour of the other woman’s house, something along the lines of: “Relax, we’re just exploring.”

The concept of “exploration” to the post-colonial ear is a herald for death and destruction and this is exactly what happens soon after. Before long the house built by Lawrence’s character is overtaken/invaded/overrun by strangers, who at first trickle in and then stream in and then take over the entire house, crowding and creating mayhem to the point where the central character herself is pushed against the walls of her own home, forced to watch as it is destroyed by people who party, pray, dance, and, eventually murder each other, oblivious to the plight of the woman at the centre of it all; the woman who created it all; who created their very reason for being there. Before long, the mob destroys the house and, soon after, they seek to destroy the lead character herself.

The invasion of the house and subsequent brutality might symbolise many different things (overpopulation, pollution, moral collapse, capitalism, war) based on what is gleaned from the dizzying array of images (violence, cult-like worship, explosions, a showdown with the police, marvellous close-ups of Lawrence’s traumatised face, etc.) that Aronofsky presents to us in the film’s climax.

It is a lot to take in and the director is definitely heavy-handed when it comes to ensuring that the audience understands exactly what he wants them to understand. However, it is this heavy-handedness that sometimes helps to emphasise the reality of our [real-life] situation [of our natural world] by presenting it symbolically in the film.

Lawrence’s character being abused and beaten, and her newly-born child being killed by the crowd is one of the most gruesome scenes in the film, but it is the scene that drives home one of the film’s main points: our abuse, neglect and destruction of nature itself, of Mother Earth and, subsequently, our annihilation of a future for ourselves, symbolised by the death of the child. Sure, it is a bit heavy-handed, but it ensures that the audience gets it. Surely, this is preferable to being so abstract for the entirety of the film that the audience does not understand any of it.

Although, Aronofsky is guilty of this kind of abstraction as well, in parts, and it is important to note that this is one of the things that might have contributed to the film being a regarded as a flawed piece of art. There are questions that we never get answers to and while they may be important to the director, as audience members, we never get to share in this knowledge or learn from it because the meaning is never made explicitly clear. A good example of this is the meaning behind the golden concoction the central character drinks throughout the film.

Does anyone really know what it represents? But then again, isn’t that part of the challenge of analysing art? Isn’t establishing meaning a part of what makes the process fun? Aronofsky and other creators do not owe it to us to tell us what they mean, though it does help, sometimes.

The film is important to the Guyanese writer, especially because of the recent discovery of oil deposits and our increasing interest in keeping our rainforests pristine. To the writer whose main subject is the environment, the film can be regarded almost as a class in how to write about the environment without resorting to cliches.

Aronofsky shows how one does not need to resort to writing explicitly about trees, about rivers, about flora and faua in presenting an environmentally-themed piece of work. He uses a poet and his muse, a crowd of strangers and a heavily symbolic house to persuade us to try and save the natural world. This is a lesson that can be applied to any kind of writing, whether environmentally-themed or not.