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Mother! | 2017 | R | - 7.8.5

A parade of strangers shows up at a newly married woman's (Jennifer Lawrence) house and her older husband (Javier Bardem) is slow to explain their presence. As the visitors become a crowd of admirers of her husband's poetry, the woman loses control of her life. Also with Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Brian Gleeson, Kristen Wiig, Jovan Adepo and Stephen McHattie. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. [2:00]

SEX/NUDITY 7 - A woman walks into a bedroom and finds a man and a woman having sex from behind: the man is kneeling behind the woman and clothed as the woman sits facing the camera, clothed in a slim dress that reveals cleavage and stockings with garters (the skirt is hiked up to cover her genital area and upper thighs) as the man thrusts several times and she is open mouthed and groaning, as the first woman slams the door shut.
 A man and a woman argue and the man picks her up roughly, kissing her neck and she closes her eyes and wraps her legs around him; he carries her upstairs and the camera cuts to the woman in bed with a blanket up to her armpits as she says, "I'm pregnant"; the man gets up and rushes to a desk and we see him in full nude profile, with a glimpse of his genitals.
 A woman being beaten by a crowd has her top ripped off to expose her bare breasts (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). A nude man with his back to the camera kneels before a toilet and we hear retching as a clothed man behind him pats the nude man's bare buttocks. A nude man with his back to the camera sits on the edge of an empty bathtub. A woman is shown briefly from head to waist wearing only a bra that reveals cleavage. A man lies across a bed in a darkened room with a large towel around his stomach, groin, and upper thighs (we see his chest). A woman wears a long gown of undershirt material several times and an actual undershirt later that outline her breasts and nipples as well as her buttocks and thighs. A pregnant woman wears a long dinner gown that reveals cleavage. After having a baby, a woman wraps the infant in a blanket and pulls down her dress below the frame; the camera cuts to a brief view of the baby nursing (we see the woman's partial bare breast with the infant obscuring the nipple). We see a pregnant woman's belly twice in close-up, once when she lifts a loose blouse to look at the belly and once in a shower scene where we see only her belly and her face, both in close-ups.
 A man and woman at a gathering enter a bedroom and sit on a bed, but a woman tells them to leave her room, and they do so. A man rubs the breasts of a clothed woman, slams her against a wall, and examines her teeth.
 A man and a woman kiss briefly in three scenes. A man and a woman kiss passionately at the front door of a house and at a dinner table with friends.
 A man looks at a woman's behind below the frame and says, "Nice view." A man asks a married woman to take a walk in the dark with him and when she declines, the man calls her names and leaves. A woman shows another woman lace underwear and tells the second woman to get some of these if she wants to have sex with her husband. A woman tells a married couple to finish breakfast and get to it (have sex and become pregnant); the couple ignores her. A woman nags another woman about not having children and the second woman says she is too busy.

VIOLENCE/GORE 8 - A husband and his wife argue about their newborn baby and when the wife falls asleep the husband takes the baby downstairs to a crowd; the wife awakens screaming and runs after him, only to see the crowd grab the baby and lift him toward an altar where a man is putting ashes on the foreheads of the adults; the wife fights her way to the altar, where she screams at the body of the baby lying there, torn apart into small pieces, the ribcage intact and bloody and she turns to see dozens of men and women eating pieces of the baby with their bloody fingers; she screams and punches many people unconscious with one punch each until a man yells for her to die and another man slams a metal object into her forehead to stun her and the crowd beats her, rips her top off, and kicks her until she is bruised and bloody and her nose is smashed flat.
 We see a woman after an explosion and she is hairless with charred skin and some spots of red flesh as a man carries her to a table where she begs for him to let her go and he pushes his hands into her charred chest and pulls out her blackened heart as she gasps wide-eyed in pain and dies as the man squeezes the heart in his hand.
 A woman falls into a room where a dozen men lie on a floor with hoods tied to their heads and their hands tied in front of them as another woman shoots them each in the head (we see some blood) and shouts, "Finish her!"; a man aims at the woman until a SWAT officer takes her away and a bomb explodes, throwing the woman off-screen and a shot kills the SWAT officer with a little blood flow.
 Two men enter a house and argue and then fight with their father and their mother and another woman are shoved against a wall and to the floor; the men fall to the floor, rolling and punching, a man is pushed into a wall, and a face is smashed into a mantel and some broken glass (the man's forehead is bloody) as the two women scream several times; one man lies still and the other men carry him out of the house with shirts soaked in blood (we later hear that the man died).
 A woman falls down basement stairs, gets up and pierces a fuel oil tank with a sharp object and tosses a lit cigarette lighter into it, causing an explosion that fills the screen several times and throws people off-screen. A close-up of a woman's face and shoulders burning in a house fire fills the screen; her skin is splotchy with red and black patches, blood and sweat streak her face and her eyes are swollen as the camera cuts to the large house standing in ashes and the woman (looking healthy) waking up in bed.
 A woman places the palm of one hand on a house wall four times and we see in her vision a beating heart in the wall. A woman sees blood seeping up through floor boards and she covers it with a throw rug, but the blood seeps through; in one scene, she presses the bloody spot on the floor and it crumbles into an almost anatomical opening (like a mouth or vagina) with blood and glowing embers around the rim. Blood seeps down to a basement and a woman goes down as a light bulb fills with blood and explodes all over one wall and the woman sees a large indented area of the wall that seems to groan and she leaves hurriedly. A woman uses a wrench to punch open a wall and finds a room where a large frog croaks and hops out. A woman finds several bloody tissues and tosses them into a toilet that backs up, she plunges the toilet and we see a beating heart at the bottom of it; the heart squirts blood and goes down the drain.
 A husband and his wife argue because dinner was interrupted by increasing numbers of men and women coming to their house to ask for he husband's autograph; they all have a photo of him that looks like a Catholic holy card and hundreds of people invade the home, eat all the food and begin dismantling the house as loud music plays, people steal paintings and vases as the wife fights her way through the crowd; the husband's hands are covered in ashes and he puts ash on the foreheads of the people in a quasi-religious ritual. A man and a woman enter a house crying after the death of their son and many other mourners also enter and break things around the house like knickknacks, vases, and a sink; a woman sits on a sink and mocks the homeowner as she tells the woman to get down and the woman bounces up and down until the sink breaks off the wall and also breaks a water line, spewing water.
 A woman goes into labor and grunts loudly; she falls and we hear a helicopter as police and SWAT officers appear at windows and doors, shooting them out while men and women scream and a fire bomb fills the kitchen with fire and smoke and another fire bomb sails through the kitchen and through a wall to someplace off-screen. In a long shot, we see the entire house and acres of fields explode in fire to fill the screen. Two flashbacks show a completely charred house frame and the fields charred black, with glowing embers here and there.
 A woman tries to tell a pregnant woman to push her baby out, the pregnant woman crawls over dead bodies and her husband arrives, takes off a wolf mask, and takes her to an upstairs bedroom where he slams the door on a crowd twice and blocks the door with a bureau; his wife sits on the floor grunting, crying and screaming as a slime-covered infant is seen (there is some blood on the woman's nightgown hem).
 A woman touches the handle of a cast iron skillet, yelps, and moves away as another woman grabs the handle and drops the skillet on the floor (we do not see the injury) as a smoke detector beeps for several seconds. A woman sees a bee drop dead on the kitchen counter. A woman drops a china cup that shatters loudly.
 Protestors wave their fists and shout. A woman shouts, "They butchered our son!" A woman yells at a couple who enter an off-limits office in a home. We hear a crash off-screen and then we see that a couple broke a large crystal gem as a man enters, shouting. A man slams his office door shut, slams his fist on the doorknob to break it off and then boards up the door. A man is seen standing in a doorway and a woman is startled.
 A nude man with his back to the camera kneels before a toilet and we hear retching. We hear urine hitting a toilet from off-screen as a man walks into a bathroom. A clothed man with his back to the camera stands in front of a toilet and we hear urination. A young boy stands in a puddle of urine after he has urinated on the floor (the bottom of his trouser legs looks wet). A woman scrubs up a blood stain and pours a bucket of red water down the bathtub drain. A physician enters a home and coughs in several coughing fits; he and his wife argue about smoking and we hear that he is dying. A house makes noises like bubbling liquids, groans, heartbeats, and screeching voices.

LANGUAGE 5 - About 3 F-words, 3 scatological terms, 2 anatomical terms, 3 mild obscenities, name-calling (insane, arrogant, creepy, murderers), exclamations (shut-up, shut it), 7 religious exclamations (e.g. My God, God Help You).

SUBSTANCE USE - A woman becomes panicky in four scenes and mixes a solution into water and drinks it, and a woman asks for pain killers at a home and another woman tells her there are none. A long dining room table is filled with empty beer bottles and full glasses of beer and wine, many men and women drink a toast with wine at a dining table twice, an inebriated man falls off a chair while laughing loudly and breaks a glass that falls to pieces on the floor, two men sip whiskey from short glasses in a home and a flask sits on an end table, a man offers a woman a drink and she declines, and a woman says her glass of lemonade is strong and it may or may not contain alcohol. A man smokes a cigarette in a house and at a doorway before throwing the butt out of the house, a man lights a cigarette from a gas stove and smokes in the kitchen, and two dishes on tables are full of cigarette butts.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Age differences among spouses, narcissism, hero worship, exotic religions, plagues of the Old Testament, human sacrifice, cannibalism, disrespect, abuse, neglect, fear, abandonment, pain, agony, death, immortality, cycles.

MESSAGE - Marriage to a narcissist searching for everyone's love can be unbearable.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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