Mother!?
Dangit. I knew it from the first frame, but was out last night. It has to be mother!
Well, you gentlemen can keep your Aronofsky. Yuk. I’ll never get one of his frames.
C’mon, how often do you get to see a film that crescendos through WWI playing out inside a single house and culminates in the literal eating of a baby?
Holy cats! I’ve been away for a week and the movies and posts have piled up by the dozens. Navaronegun, do you ever sleep? In any case, I just want to remind you that we don’t need no stinkin’ badges.
Didn’t see it. After not liking Pi and The Requiem and then being forced to watch a film that everyone fawned over and I found below average, but not repulsive (Black Swan), I swore off Mr. Pretension.
If I want well done surrealist allegories, I’ll watch good ones. Like Luis Buñuel.
That premise you spoilered sounds wonderful! Imagine if someone with surrealist sensibilities who wasn’t a pretentious pastiche-merchant, like Buñuel, made it? Instead you get Aronofsky. It is what we are forced to settle for these days.
If felt too cliche to use that one.
Reading that I’m positive that you would HATE mother! with incredible intensity - you’d be superfly TNT, you’d be the Guns of Navarone. I’m convinced you would hate it so much it might actually be worth seeing, if only to read your rant about it on here.
Well, I suggested a thread, but I won’t start it. It seems like I’d be creating a thread dedicated to making me unhappy.
EDIT: @BellaConfusione you could always nominate it in movie club for NOV. The selling point while campaigning for it could be to make me rant about it.
I was going to say, “How about a thread where the movie itself doesn’t offend me, but everyone falling over themselves to praise it does?” But then I remembered we do that all the time in the Academy Awards threads.Edit: Which was the case for me with The Shape of Water.
I actually wasn’t sure what I thought about mother! after watching it. I find Aronofsky uneven. I really liked Requiem, but couldn’t have cared less about Pi and thought The Fountain was pretty terrible. I’ve not seen Black Swan or The Wrestler or that Genesis flood move. I confess I’m not enough of a cinegeek to know who Buñuel is (though I should probably look him up), so I guess I lean heavily on pastiche. I’m actually not a huge fan of surrealism in film, but tolerate it if it’s coupled with horror (as it is here.) I think mother! is just barely interesting enough in composition and framing to excuse its pretension. The allegory it’s painting, though, is sophomoric at best.
I’m also of the opinion that Aronofsky is well out of his depth here and would call it a failed experiment - i still don’t regret seeing it and it didn’t offend me, but it’s not something I’d nominate.
I do find your thread idea intriguing however, might be a better fit than the pretentious movie thread, since i think that classification depends a lot on wether you connect with something based on your sensibilites, which your thread would put front and center. For instance, I love The Thin Red Line, and watching it is an almost transcendental experience for me. Sometimes I’m surprised myself how well the combination of lyrical voice over, imagery and pacing comes together for me. But I could totally understand somebody who didn’t connect with it calling it pretentious and pointless. Same goes for 8 1/2, which my username is taken from (I’m a dude by the way and didn’t really think that choice through).
Basically. It’s not "self-indulgent’ if you connect with it (referring to that thread).
The mortal sin to me is copying and calling it homage. Pastiche. I can respect and not connect with someone’s work (Jodorowsky, Robert Downey Sr.). But Ladling other people’s techniques and work out as your own I do not forgive.
Absolutely, which is why I loathed Spring Breakers, which felt like a self important idiot ripping off Malick without any understanding of his work or the craft to back it up.
Yes, I love Malik, but (as you know) can’t abide The Tree of Sleep. Malik falls squarely into my “Lynch Proviso” category.
Yes, it is mother! (ding!) One of my top 10 of 2017. Is Aronofsky singing above his range? Sure, maybe. Is it a flawed film? Most definitely. But when the onscreen results come out this deliriously silly, who cares? I loved how it starts as this fairly normal domestic drama and builds to the histrionic operatic aria of an ending, O Fortuna-ing all over the screen.
If you haven’t yet, I recommend seeing mother!'s direct antecedent (in my opinion), Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession. In pretty much all ways a better film, but something that must have inspired Aronsofsky. And, then, of course, Antichrist. Also a “better” film, but I still appreciated mother! quite a lot.
Unfortunately, despite how quickly it was gotten, it’s not a great 20:20 film since roughly 2/3 of it are close-ups on Jennifer Lawrence’s head.
60
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Your turn @BellaConfusione!
New 20 coming right up:
Holiday Inn?
It’s not Holiday Inn.
How Green Was My Valley?
Good guess, but incorrect. The 40:
