Darren Aronofsky is an acclaimed director who has made the same film seven times. 

each of his works are driven by an obsession – in Pi, with order; in Reqiuem for a Dream, with escapism; in Black Swan, with perfection; et cetera.

this alone would not make these films identical. these obsessions must share an essential form; drive essentially similar narratives. 

in every instance, obsession necessitates alienation. an Obsessor must shed everything which does not move them closer to some higher purpose. an Obsessor must be disciplined, isolated, and ultimately destroyed. no success may come unless all else is discarded. this suggests something interesting about Aronofsky – a man who is compelled to tell the same tale seven times, who sees everything at this extreme, must have some experience with self-destruction. what a living archetype he is! the obsessed artist, projecting himself time and time again on his tragic creations, obsessed with the same story, unfolding in the same way:

the detriments of each obsession pervade every moment of the film. there is no time before – we never see the Obsessor prior to obsession. gradually at first, detriments intensify, and then in a spiralling, nightmarish frenzy, punctuated by a cataclysmic ending which sees the Obsessor consumed and destroyed.

take Black Swan. Nina is obsessed with achieving the perfect embodiment; the perfect performance. as she sheds both her innocence and her humanness, the film descends into Aronofsky’s characteristic hellish surrealism and our Obsessor hurtles toward her own annihilation. in the film’s final shot, at the end of Nina’s performance on opening night, she is youthful again as the White Swan, blood seeping through the white lace of her bodice, eyelids fluttering as she teeters on the brink of death, mumbling the (heavy-handed) utterance: “perfect. it was perfect.”

this is, definitively, a happy ending.

Aronofsky is always intent on providing a subjective experience entirely from the Obsessor’s perspective. we see no event the protagonist does not witness; never divert from their point of view. as such, our Obsessor’s objectives are our only occupation. happy endings entail a fulfilment of these objectives.

we must concede, then, all tragedy aside, that the Obsessor’s destruction is worthwhile.

***

this concept, along with the notion of a singular Obsessor, is thrown into question by Aronofsky’s seventh feature, mother!. this was the only one I saw in theatres, and seemed to me the height of cinema when I was fifteen and had not seen many good movies.

upon each periodic rewatch, I saw mother!’s textual merit gradually disintegrate. yet, perhaps due to my emotional history with it, I am enduringly preoccupied. I ascribe this preoccupation to the shadow cast over mother! by its predecessors, and the new light it casts over them in turn.

in spite of  its intrigue, though, mother! truly is a shitty movie.

the film is an agonisingly straightforward retelling of Genesis, hailed by some (few) as a clever allegory for climate change which, in its painfully obvious execution, discredits Aronofsky at every turn.

the characters are few and unnamed; the setting is singular and ambiguous in time and geography. thus, even the girl on her phone or the guy cooking with one eye on the television is primed for a secret meaning. 

worse, as facile as it is transparent, is the story.  

a man arrives at the home of an artist (God) and his lover (Mother Earth). the man coughs up a rib and the next day his wife knocks at the door. next, their sons arrive, arguing over inheritance. then, the rest of humanity swarms the house, destroying it in one night. Mother goes mad and burns the house to a crisp, at which time God restarts the clock. new Mother, new Earth.

(New-Testament-Jesus is also in this film. another instance of its clumsiness.)

***

Aronofsky claims in a meandering IndieWire interview that mother!’s allegory lies in how “we abuse [...] these incredibly infinite resources.” his purpose is to compel us to “empathi[se] with Mother Nature, [feel] her pain and her wrath.” 

this is a retelling with generic messaging and without ambiguity, which bombed at the box office and garnered only vitriol from critics, so I must ask myself: why the fuck do I like it?

to politicise mother!, as Aronofsky does, is to foreground Humanity as the Obsessors. this breaks the thematic pattern that defines his other works, and furthermore, Humanity are merely extras in mother!, present purely to bolster the obsessions of Him and Her. 

this is why I wish to dismiss environmental politics, favouring instead the lens of precedent.

(I realise, in ignoring its creator’s intentions, that I am far too generous with this film. alas.) 

Humans are not our Obsessors.

so, then, it must be God. His agony over His average* poetry is followed by a feverish indulgence in the frenzied acclaim which obliterates His home, His child, His lover — this all evokes the aims of each preceding Obsessor: destruction in pursuit of the sublime. 

* I wonder whether the excerpts we hear are mediocre by intention, or if it’s just shoddy writing?

in mother!’s directorial execution, this is all boilerplate at best, especially in comparison to the   haunting subtlety of Black Swan or the gut-wrenching emotional meatiness of Requiem for a Dream. 

in saying this, I must admit that I am enamoured by the depiction of the Christian God as an egotist who created Earth merely because He sought the worship of His creations.

anyway:

Mother Earth is a more poignant Obsessor than God. 

with her in the foreground, an unintentionally clever subversion emerges. we are positioned from the perspective of the loved one who is alienated by an Obsessor, rather than being swallowed by the Obsessor’s objectives alone. 

take Pi: not a single shot deviates from the subjective perspective of the Obsessor, Max. the victims of his obsession are thus mere props. to follow suit, mother! would have to be told from a perpetrator’s perspective, such as God, or Humanity. it is not.

this is a story of pure victimhood, like none of the others were. 

the Obsessor which follows precedent, who we now view with a sort of discernment, is made secondary to another kind.

another kind – Mother, who worships Him, who obsesses over her obligation to serve Him. she is a perfect canvas for criticisms of the depiction of female characters – demure, virginal, submissive, obedient to the every desire of their husbands. this is where feminist readings of the film begin: Mother Earth embodies a classic movement from feminine softness to feminine rage.

Aronofsky thinks rage is the point. I am wholly uninterested in rage.

it is her softness I am interested in. a kind of softness to which subservience is not inherent, but which is co-opted by those who wish to be served. Lawrence is ethereal, drifting from room to room in flowing linen. her quiet intake of breath, how it gives way to a tugging at the corner of her lips, her gentle face awash with warmth when she gets the colour of the paint just right, when she steps back, and I can see her imagine how it will look bathed in morning sun… it draws me in. it makes me soft.

she is wary of strangers, for she did not build her home for them. her face falls when she learns she was not the first to read the poem, when she learns He will not be sitting down for dinner, but entertaining press instead. I hate God for He is grating and ugly next to her. He beckons her – come, come, you look beautiful, hold onto my arm and do not close your eyes against the flashing, smile, smile with your teeth and your eyes, be good, be quiet, be still, be kind, let them pull the phone from the hook and the timber from the walls, give them your food, give them your home, give them your child, give, give, give, give–

and she does. 

her softness is twisting; a giving corrupted by a taking.

here, I find the answer to my question.

Mother’s obsession with servitude is endlessly more compelling than archetypal masculine obsessions (to be great, to be loved, to be worshipped). 

Aronofsky has accidentally created an Obsessor who condemns these objectives all; who reveals them to be the flightful fancies of shallow, self-aggrandising actors. 

we do not empathise with God; we are not shown his point of view.

instead, we see Him from a distance, tearing through the house with violence and ire, absorbing praise with a shit-eating grin, handing over His baby to be cannibalised.

I wish the film had ended before we saw her in violence and ire too. Aronofsky could not bear, I suppose, the softness. could not imagine kindness without a catch.

***

mother! makes me feel a little foolish. 

foolish for wanting praise more than compliments, foolish for feeling as if being clever is more important than being kind, for admitting that to myself without challenging it. I wonder if Aronofsky felt foolish the first time he saw it all threaded together. I hope he did, because it means two things. one: he saw that he made God in his own image. two: this made him feel ashamed.

I do not understand how Aronofsky can make this film and then prattle on to interviewers about climate change and greed – not when what he has created is a profound, clumsy, stupid, brilliant, definitive damnation. or perhaps I do, I do understand, because he did not made this film on purpose, would not, could not make this film on purpose, because

Aronofsky damned his inherent nature. damned himself.
he became God, then humiliated Him.