"Mother!": A Complex Allegory of Environmental Destruction and Biblical Parallels

The theme that I have drawn from the movie “Mother!” is an allegory, a reoccurring cycle which has probably happened numerous times before, and an environmental film which has a very deep meaning to the films and many Easter Eggs, it depicts the rape and torment of Mother Earth.

Jennifer Lawrence was Mother Earth. She never left the house at all throughout the entire film no matter what happened. She has a very strong connection to the house like when she touched the wall, she could feel a heartbeat and when there are more people which invaded the place the heart slowly dies a little until she could not take it anymore; Javier character was a poet whom represents God, a creator, the film started from fire that only Javier survived, and end with Javier being engulfed in flames but still survives and the whole story repeats itself; . Ed Harris's and Michelle Pfeiffer as Adam and Eve. The first two humans that roam the Earth as stated in the Bible; there's Cain and Abel the first two sons of Adam and Eve; the setting sometimes resembles the Garden of Eden as there isn’t any other houses but instead the whole house was surrounded by trees. Most characters are given no name so there are many interpretations for the audience, and only at the credit scene you know the roles being played by the actors except for one with the capitalised name: “Him”. There isn’t much conversation throughout the whole movie probably it’s because the film wants you to try and understand the movie more than the conversations. The entire movie was shot hand held and it only has three camera angle, “POV” “Over the shoulder” and “Close up”.

The lighter which appears throughout the film bears the “Wendehorn”, that symbolizes the great opposites of the universe: life and death, order and chaos, good and bad. From the very beginning, Mother recognizes the lighter as a tool of destruction, a chaos. Ed Harris’s character has a smoking habit, a lighter is a tool that fuels this habit. Alternatively, the light could simply stand for fire, which can create or destroy. Mother asks the man to not smoke in the house, but he does anyways. Her response was to hide the lighter. At one crucial moment near the end, Mother spots the lighter amid all the chaos in her house. Still seeing it as a tool of destruction, but the man figured out ways to desecrate her home, her sacred space. At this moment, the fire was her salvation. Once a destruction becoming a means of cleansing her space of the human infestation. Lit up the house, and the fire cleanses. Which is similar to the world now, the humans have founded the fire, to us it is a very good tool to get things done, things like cooking and keeping us warm, but it is killing us too. In a way of global warming, the more we use it the faster the o-zone layer depletes the warmer it gets.

The structure of the film was from the Bible, following closely to the Bible and trying to represent the characters to show how the Earth started from the very beginning. But it was also meant to be sort of ambiguous because that’s not really a story, it’s more of a structural thing. And I think that there can be many different opinions from other people of how humans started to live on Earth.

Darren Aronofsky is the Director of the film “Mother!” what he wanted to interpret was the Story of Mother Nature from her point of view, so the environmental crowd is not too far off. He also mentioned if the audience have a sense that they are talking about other stuffs or they allow themselves to take a ride on that, they are not going to resist it and not have a good time. Aronofsky said that the exclamation mark in the title reflects the spirit of the film and corresponds to an exclamation point.

I love how the movie has hidden meanings, because when I was first at the cinema with my friend, we were really lost at what the movie was trying to interpret. So, when I went home and Googled the plot and theme of the movie. Then, I finally understand part of the movie. It was until I re-watched the whole movie that I find relations of the movie and how it was taken from the Bible. I really like how the movie can relate very closely to the Bible. I am interested in religions and probably that is why the film caught my attention. Another reason was that I personally like things that are related to the environment. To me the film was a wakeup call for us that we are very close to the brim. “Mother!” has a very low rating probably because no one really understand what the director was trying to say in his film because of the complicated scenes but it was a very intense movie with a little bit of horror at the end of the movie due to the death of the baby. That is why I chose this film to write about, the complex movie line was very interesting to me. Afterall, this movie has a lot of meaning packed in a film.

There are many learning points for me after I learnt more about the movie. The first one is that we should not take things for granted, just because it is fine now it does not mean it will be fine forever, just like how it is in the movie where “Adam” takes everything for granted just because “God” let him do what he wants he technically destroyed the whole house. Another point is how you can try to link the film to social media, Javier was so engrossed with his book fans that he totally forgot he has a wife to attend to and even after his son was born, he let his “careless” fans crushed the baby to death. Just like how everyone is right now, we are all in on social media either trying to be someone popular or someone one that is a “fan” of another, that we often lose track of the ones closest to us. Another thing is that we need to listen well to others when they are talking or telling us not to do thigs that are dangerous or things we aren’t supposed to do. Adam and Eve was not supposed to enter that room, but they did, and a series of bad things keep happening to them including the death of a son. Lastly, I think that we should not be selfish, humans are greedy by nature but its not a very nice thing to do, just like the film when they started to fight over the properties of “mother”, the things we have now don’t really belong to us, it belonged to the Earth, but we are taking it just like its ours. We need to be a little more selfless at times just like how “mother” even though she was very upset at the beginning she chose not to chase them away.

I think the film is basically related to the environment and what the world has become and as stated by Aronofsky, we are destroying the Earth to the point where it is quite critical. Just like in the film no matter how Jennifer Lawrence whom represented the Earth tried to plead the humans the stop what they are doing, they completely ignored her, even doing things to provoke her like when she told them to get off the sink, they bounce on it like nothing is going to happen but instead collapsed it. We are constantly caught up with our own and we don’t spare a thought for the environment. The film has an ending of how the “Earth” destroys the human infestation. But it has not happened to us yet, so it is telling us that it’s not too late to change our lifestyle into a way we can protect the environment.

In this society we only believe in how we interpret things and we could be wrong, but we chose not to believe that we are wrong. We always think that we are right no matter what. Like how the film shows the people doing taking things from the house which does not belong to them but used a statement they saw on the book written by Javier and that is “he said to share”, but that’s probably not what he meant.

Overall this was a great movie that let audience interpret the movie the way they want it. The movie was very thrilling because you would not know what is going to happen afterwards. Simple to understand but has a deep meaning to it which audience might not be able to get it at first. A lot of thinking and piecing up the story bit by bit.