mother! DECODED

My interest has been piqued by the various reviews and reactions to Darren Aronofsky’s latest film ‘mother!’ starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer. On account of the strange plot of the film it is hard to talk about it without spoilers so I have been able read most of the salient points of the movie. I will come straight out and say that I have not seen the movie and have no intention of seeing it. Nevertheless I still want to share some of my insights as to what the movie is about which I gleaned from namely two reviews and an understanding of Aronofsky’s believes/philosophy/master code I picked up watching his previous film ‘Noah’.

The first review I want to mention is that of Michael Knowles at the Daily Wire.ⁱ Knowles boldly declared that while all other conservative reviewers where bashing the film he was going to defend it as a Christian movie worth going to see. Knowles’s great insight into the movie is to see that the character of mother, played by Jennifer Lawrence, is Satan, even though the film’s director has said she represents the earth/nature. Knowles insists seeing the mother as Satan radically changes how we see the movie and it makes a lot more sense. Having mother as Satan also provides the missing character in the Genesis story that the first part of the film allegorises, with Bardem the mother’s husband representing Yahweh, Harris and Pfeiffer as Adam and Eve and their Children as Cain and Abel and the house in which the film is set is the earth/nature. While the film toys with some interesting theological themes found in scripture, I still take issue with Knowles that it is a Christian film.

This brings me to the second review by Bishop Robert Barron which the Catholic Herald headlined as ‘How “Mother!” gets the Father all wrong’. Bishop Barron summarises the first half of the film as an allegory for the Old Testament by which in “their selfishness and violence, sinful people indeed ride roughshod over nature, ruining her beauty and offending her integrity”.ⁱⁱ The second half of the film allegorises the New Testament. I want to quote a couple of paragraphs from his exquisite and insightful analyses:

“The husband emerges here as a sort of Christ-figure, and his devotees are exhibiting all of the fanaticism, conflict, and violence that have sometimes dogged Christianity across the ages. Then things get truly weird. During a lull in the chaos, the woman gives birth to a beautiful baby boy, and she holds him tight, refusing to allow his father even to hold him. But while she sleeps, the Bardem character steals the child and shows him to the crowds who then take him, kill him, rip him to pieces, and proceed to eat his body. Beside herself with rage, the mother retreats to the basement and sets off an explosion that brings the whole place down.”

“The filmmaker seems to be gesturing toward the sacrificial death of Jesus and the sacrament of the Eucharist. Now if the Old Testament associations were at least in the ballpark, these are just off the farm. First, the true God does not need the adulation of his followers and does not remain indifferent to their moral outrages. Moreover, Jesus is not taken and sacrificed by the people in the manner of a pagan offering; rather, he gives himself away as a free act of love. Finally, the dying and rising of Jesus is construed by the New Testament as not simply beneficial to human beings, but indeed as the salvation of nature itself, as a healing of the wounds of creation. Thus to set the Bardem character and the sacrificed child over and against the good of mother earth is just not Biblical.”ⁱⁱⁱ

Lacking Knowles’s insight that mother is Satan, and seeing her rather as representing the earth/nature, Bishop Barron finds Aronofsky’s message that it “is trying to convey is, at best, pretty ambiguous.” He does however see that it’s theology, “clearly reflects the anti-Scriptural prejudice of the cultural elite today.”^iv

Aronofoskys’s previous film ‘NOAH’ also contained many similar ambiguities eg, a harsh creator God called Yahweh and a religious ritual with a snake skin that brought light and wisdom. The snake skin seemed to be something inherited from the Garden of Eden in which case it could only be a relic of Satan. Some Christian reviewers praised the film while most disliked it. However my own confusion over the film was cleared up when a friend pointed out to me that films point of view was not Christian but a Luciferian Gnostic one. From this point of view the serpent in the Garden is Lucifer the ‘light barer’, the bringer of knowledge and enlightenment to mankind while Yahweh the creator of the evil material world is a jealous, harsh, antagonistic God who wants to destroy mankind. From this point of view the film makes complete sense as does ‘mother!’.

It’s not just that the cultural elite have an anti-Scriptural prejudice they have bought into an anti-Christian world view. A Luciferian world view were the Good is evil and evil good. This movie points to a dark world that lies at the heart of Hollywood culture that is currently coming to light. It’s a culture that hides an immense darkness.

i https://youtu.be/eujuXBliTt4

ii https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/article/mother-and-the-god-of-the-bible/5603/

iii ibid

iv ibid