A New Era in Aronofsky’s Style? or Yeah, Next Time It Will Be Better?

It is difficult to talk for a movie full of metaphors without giving any spoilers. Even this is a spoiler itself. But, if you are used to Aronofsky’s movies, you already know what you will face with in Mother!. So, I will not talk about the details of the movie, or try to reveal out the metaphors, which would need a few tens of pages of explanation at least. Rather, I will talk about my own expectations and the relations to the old movies of Aronofsky.

In his interview for Mother!, he tells that he was not sure for making the movie, so he sent the initial text to a few friends and they encouraged him to make it. Indeed, you get this uncertainty when you are watching the movie. The director is not sure how to connect everything. The events are unrelated to each other. Sometimes there seems to be a relation in between stories. You expect it to be established. How distant can they be in a small house occurring in a limited timeline? But he’s making it once more. Everything is happening at infinity, but you don’t realise it. To be able to really understand what is happening, you must watch it a few times. The feeling of the curiosity is increasing from time to time. However, you still have the feeling that something is missing in the movie.

In mathematics, there is something called as completeness. The official explanation is “the state or condition of having all the necessary or appropriate parts.”. Since Aronofsky usually thinks in terms of mathematics, as you may have noticed from his movie ‘Pi’, I always expect complete movies from him. Indeed, this was the case until Mother!. Even if you don’t get it very easily like in ‘Fountain’, there was always a completeness in his movies. I mean that even if you don’t get the metaphors, it is still a movie with a plot. Everything starts and finishes in the movie, there is a story in front of your eyes, and a ‘secret’ story behind the metaphors. You can enjoy it with the feeling that there was something more in it. But in Mother!, this is not the case. If you don’t get the metaphors, it means nothing. The movie doesn’t connect the stories in the plot. This is not his style. Maybe this is a new era in his filmography.

Another point is of course the musics of the movie. There are good movies of Aronofsky without Clint Mansell, I agree. However, when he works with Clint Mansell, it is a classic: e.g.: Pi and Requiem for a Dream. You can watch these movies just for the music. They force a feeling of completeness in the movies. They must be occuring for a reason. This is divine.

Of course artists will try new things, they gain different experiences and reflect these in their new eras of their life. I totally respect this. However, I have to say I like the early style of Aronofsky. There was always mystisicm in his movies, but this is more than that. For my flavor, he needs the unseen hand of divinity, he needs Clint Mansell.