It occurred to me, watching one of the opening sequences of "Mother!" that for someone who seems to be trying to make a statement about the abuse of young women for societal shits and giggles, Darren Aronofsky, who wrote and directed this film, seems awfully willing to participate in it, whether by pretending to sodomize Jennifer Connelly in "Requiem for a Dream" or making "Natalie Portman" masturbate and have pointless lesbian sex with an understudy who might not exist (so masturbating again? ) in "Black Swan", or the stuff that happens to the two young women with names in "Noah" or having Jennifer Lawrence walk around in a nightgown that makes it abundantly clear she isn't wearing underwear. And that's sort of a meta theme in "Mother!", as Javier Bardem's careless embrace of his own fame has consequences to his young wife, played by Lawrence, as well as the effects of his creative difficulties. The plot structure relates a repetitive act of creative futility, and the overall concept is basically Aronofsky trying to do the same thing he did in "Noah" - use Biblical imagery to push his environmentalist sensibilities. But "Noah" seems to have been largely panned, with both ends of the targeted spectrum disliking it for various reasons, so now he seems to be just pandering to critics.

The issues of environmentalism, animal rights and the evolution debate seem to be inextricably linked with the Book of Genesis in some people's minds, and Aronofsky either tried to bridge the divide by trying to reconcile the former with the Bible for its fans, or else he was trying to perversely utilize their imagery and concepts for his own purpose and give them the finger by doing so. "Mother!" suggests it was more of the latter to me.

Anyway, if you go to movies for the story on the screen, this one doesn't make a lot of sense. One older guy asked me as we left the theater, "Do you know what that was about?" and not in a 'are you someone with whom I can discuss the themes and use of images I noted in this film' sort of way. When I offered my off-the-cuff interpretation, he just kind of said "Ohhhh!" and rolled his eyes with his whole head. Like maybe he was expecting "Rosemary's Baby" from the marketing material, the way I was going in.

SPOILERS
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Javier Bardem is a poet struggling with a creative block, while his wife, Lawrence, is working on remodeling the old house they live in, which was destroyed in a fire. A man shows up on their door, thinking it was a bed & breakfast, and the poet invites him to stay the night, and takes a shine to him, despite the wife feeling intruded upon and bothered by his presence. Then his wife shows up, and she also makes a pest of herself. Both of them are fairly inconsiderate and keep making a mess and breaking the established rules of the household, by leaving water running, or smoking indoors, or messing up her cooking in a way that makes her feel like the bad guy. And they keep trying to go into the poet's study, where no one is allowed to go alone. Finally, they go in, and break his most cherished possession, a strange piece of glass on display. While he is busy walling up the study to prevent future violations, their two sons show up and continue a long-standing family argument over their inheritance, which turns violent, with one brother assaulting the other. The poet and parents rush him to the hospital, while the wife tries to clean up the blood, which has rotted through the floor boards, and revealed the outline of a plastered-over door in the basement, where an oil tank is stored. The couple and poet come back full of grief for the son who died, and then their friends and family come swarming into the house for a memorial repast, much to the wife's discomfiture, and begin messing with the place, including painting without her consent, and eventually breaking a sink she keeps warning them not to put their weight upon, until a pipe bursts and she kicks them all out. She and the poet then conceive a baby, and on the eve of its birth, a crowd of over-the-top poet fans show up at the front door and an impromptu book-signing party commences, with still more willful damage to the house, by people who want souvenirs of the poet, and take his statements of sharing property to mean they have a right to take whatever they want. The poet shushes his wife's protests by saying that their stuff doesn't matter, the fans have so much less than them. Then, apparently all in the space of one night, a cult of the poet moves in, and fights break out and people are imprisoned and SWAT cops show up and fight protesters and the wife is reeling through the chaos getting pummeled and abused, until she goes into labor. The poet opens up his study to give a place to give birth and she has a son. She refuses to let the poet hold him, or even help her undress to nurse him, until she dozes off and wakes to find the poet showing off the baby to the adoring crowds in the house. They tear the baby apart and then start eating him and proclaim it an act of reverence and pretend the baby isn't even dead. The wife, who in the early acts, was suffering from periodic bouts of weakness and fuzzy visions suggestive of a heart, for which she took medicine that she threw out once the baby was conceived, now suffers a major relapse, and hints that her infirmity was somehow connected to the house are confirmed, as the floors crack open. She goes down to the basement, bringing a lighter that the first visitor brought into the house, and which she passive-aggressively knocked behind a dresser in annoyance with his smoking, but which turned up in the tumult. She opens the oil tank and in spite of the poet's pleadings, uses the lighter to burn the whole place down. The poet is unscathed by the fire, and cradling her burned corpse, carries her to their bed, and says she still loves him and he needs her love. He reaches into her chest, and pulls out her heart, killing her, and tears open the heart, to reveal a piece of glass, which he places in the same display stand in his study, and fire damage melts away and we get the movie's opening sequence, as the corpse of the wife comes alive again and she gets up just before wandering through the house with the aforementioned lack of underwear.

"Game of Thrones" has more subtle and nuanced symbolism. Seriously, this is right down there with "I'm not a Stark...whoa, dragon flyby!"

But the critics, of course, have to praise the emperor's clothes, or else they might not be found suited to their jobs!