Always Good Movies

Direction: Darren Aronofsky
Country: USA

A Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, 2000; Black Swan, 2008) in small form articulates ideas with unimpressive results in his newest film, The Whale, a painful drama based on Samuel D. Hunter’s play of the same name. The script by Hunter himself causes some emotional friction in spots, but this film will only be remembered for the burdensome mobility of its central character.

The film works as a new springboard for Brendan Fraser (The Mummy, 1999), whose career started to go downhill in 2010, but even his unblemished commitment to the role can't redeem this intimate behind-doors drama from excessive pathos and an inordinately staged posture that makes it less genuine than it was supposed to.

The story makes us acquainted with Charlie (Fraser), an introverted Idaho-based English teacher suffering from morbid obesity, who attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter (Sadie Sink) when he believes he's about to die. He had left home many years before to live with a male student. Refusing to go to the hospital even when dealing with congestive heart failures, Charlie is well taken care of by his best friend Liz (Hong Chau) at home. He also has unexpected visits from his alcoholic ex-wife (Samantha Morton) and an obliging door-to-door missionary (Ty Simpkins) who wants to save his soul.

The problem with The Whale is that the more Aronofsky wants to make cinema, the more it gets histrionic. In its desire to bring out emotions, the film skips over the more complex fallout of personal abandonment, in its physically and psychologically undertows. Corporeal deterioration achieved further notable triumph in The Wrestler (2008), and I suspect that many like me will find The Whale an underwhelming movie-going experience.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Country: USA

Only very few great filmmakers didn’t stumble in their careers. Stanley Kubrick is certainly one of them, occupying the top of a list that also includes Billy Wilder, Luis Bunuel, and David Lean. As an example of the present time, I can point Paul Thomas Anderson.

This introduction is just to say that this is not the case of the American helmer Darren Aronofsky, who conquered me with superlative works such as “Black Swan”, “The Wrestler”, “Pi”, and “Requiem For a Dream”, but failed to engage with trifles like “The Fountain” and “Noah”. However, if the latter two demonstrated to be shaky and debilitated in their conception, his brand new thriller, “Mother!”, feels highly formulaic and infuriatingly decrepit, not to mention pathetic.

Forcing ambiguity and obscurantism, the director not only messed up his writing with futile symbolism, but also didn’t give names to any of the characters.
Javier Bardem plays a vain literary author who is struggling with writer’s block. He lives secluded somewhere in the country with his insecure, childless wife, embodied by Jennifer Lawrence, who manages and fixes everything in the huge house when not paralyzed with uncanny seizures.

Even still bonded by love, their life is immersed in cold monotony for quite some time, and nothing better, according to the novelist, than housing a weird, dysfunctional married couple to stimulate creativity.
The strange man (Ed Harris) is a doctor and also a staunch fan of the writer. In fact, he is dying, and the kind invitation to stay with his idol for an indefinite period of time is accepted like a grace. He brings his nosy, impertinent wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) to stay with him, causing discomfort and anxiety in the confused Lawrence. Serious trouble coincides with the arrival of the strangers’ unbalanced sons.

Up to this occurrence, one still searches for something palpable, giving Aronofsky’s plot the benefit of the doubt. Illusion! From this moment on, the film falls into ludicrous situations, including anarchic home invasions, which not even Lawrence's charm was able to repair. Moreover, Bardem’s character, choosing fame over family, feels phony in his vanity. The actor was never accomplished in his role.

"Mother!" may be visually arresting but it’s hollow at its core, embracing an implausible, nearly-surreal darkness that is inept and devoid of any sense.
As one of the worst movies of 2017, this is a clear sign that Mr. Aronofsky needs urgent help for his next script.