Jennifer Lawrence Wants You to Know Her ‘mother!’ Explanation Before You See It
Zack Sharf
Between its critical acclaim and F CinemaScore, “mother!” is the movie that just keeps on giving when it comes to dividing audiences. A movie hasn’t caused this kind of vigorous reaction and theorizing among moviegoers in quite some time, and to many of us that makes “mother!” one of the most essential releases of 2017. Darren Aronofsky recently sat down with IndieWire’s Anne Thompson to reveal as many secrets as he could about “mother!,” and Jennifer Lawrence has now done the same with Entertainment Weekly.
The Oscar-winning actress didn’t exactly keep a lid on things while making the press rounds before the movie’s release (she couldn’t help but talk about the movie’s environmental themes), but now that “mother!” is out in the world Lawrence can break her silence on what she personally took away from Aronofsky’s script. More importantly, she thinks every viewer could benefit from knowing just a few things about the movie’s intentions before they actually see it.
“I got it immediately but that was because before he had sent me the script he had come to me and told me these ideas that he had for an allegory and the metaphors he wanted to work with. I was in,” Lawrence told EW. “It was the most unique sounding movie I’d ever heard, and incredibly brave. I feel like there’s different schools of thought on this movie. Some think: don’t tell anyone anything, let them figure it out on their own. I feel like it’s better to know and understand the metaphor and allegories because then you know what you are looking at. I’ve been spilling the themes and metaphors all over town!”
So what exactly are the metaphors every viewer needs to be aware of? As Lawrence explains:
The movie was called “Day Six” [on set]: it could be about the creation and the end of the universe. You have the creation of man and women and then the corruption of man and woman and then overpopulation and creation of religion and so on and so forth.
[Darren] is stripping out all nationality away from everyone — if something happens on the other side of the world, you don’t care. If it happens to your neighbor’s house, you care. If someone puts out a cigarette on your carpet, that matters to you. So what he’s saying is this is the entire world, This is our one earth. This is all our sink. So stop bouncing on it!
Heading into “mother!” with some of the thoughts Lawrence explains here will definitely ease the viewer into Aronofsky’s madness. The first half of the movie is especially subtle with all its references, so it actually might help people to listen to Lawrence for a little pre-screening guidance. But we still think going in cold and letting the experience hit you like a shock to the gut is best. “mother!” is now playing in theaters nationwide.
