Movie That Can't Movie

Clever marketing I'll give them that. That's about all I'll give them.

So where do I begin ...I threw up, and I came home shaking. And no this wasn't from a night of heavy drinking. I don't drink anymore but after seeing Mother! I wish someone had stuck a bottle of vodka up my ass. So many things bother me about this absolute garbage presented as art, (and I should know, I wrote my graduate thesis on Warhol). So, let's start with the big one: ripping off so many filmmakers I can't even count. I'll take you through the short list. The obvious one is Polanski, in particular Rosemary's Baby, then the body horror sub-genre created by one David Cronenberg which was totally bastardized. The pseudo-realism of Michelle Gondry, and the female protagonist suffering and being unconscionably passive a la Cassavetes (who is one of my favorite filmmakers).

'What have you done to its eyes!?' The iconic ending of Rosemary's Baby proving that the real horror is on the face of the person reacting, therefore there is no need to actually show it. What the human mind can imagine is always worse than any horror you can show. Again, epic fail Mother!

Horror movie that took forever to horror was not so much a fright or a smart unraveling of a mystery like say Get Out, which breathed new life into a dying genre. This was just torture. I paid Aronofsky to torture me for 2 hours and three showers couldn't shake that shit off of me. 

This blog post might not make much sense but that's how disoriented I am. Fuck this movie, seriously. I know that Aronofsky has a penchant for religious symbolism and imagery but pick a fucking lane. You either utilize the symbolism or you go full monty on the blood and guts. This was the latter as if I was watching a film student ripping off the SAW franchise. To say that this was an unpleasant experience is an understatement, but back to the religion stuff. There's a shit ton of it and he's spreading it thick like cement; he's layering it like a parfait; pick a metaphor. 

This was in the trailer so it's fair game. Really driving the Garden of Eden metaphor all the way home. 

One thing that my friend and I agreed on was this whole idea that Aronofsky seems to be obsessed with is the parable from the Old Testament where God is apparently drunk on the job and keeps creating societies that he disapproves of, boom comes a flood, and clean new start. That's actually explored and nuanced (somewhat sloppily in his prior film; Noah), but that sentiment is crammed down our throats so hard with a chimney sweep's brush. Apparently Aronofsky has never heard of nor is familiar with the concept of subtlety. I really can't go further into it without revealing the plot and the marketing department made so sure that they weren't going to give away ANYTHING to trick people into shelving out 12 dollars to see CENSORED CENSORED of fucking CENSORED CENSORED. Here are a few biblical themes that I'm just going to shuffle for you just to confuse you because I'm confused and I don't want to be the only one: Cain and Abel, immaculate conception, Sodom and Gomorrah, Jesus healing the blind, lots of Jesus actually; garden of Eden, forbidden fruit, original sin, there's some myth of Sisyphus sprinkled on it as well. It literally just builds until even the most well versed graduate student in Divinity would go; fuck this shit. 

Director David Cronenberg in between takes with his star James Woods on the set of the film Videodrome; which this film steals heavily from and as a Cronenberg superfan, it's infuriating. 

Want to watch a competent film with religious allegory check out Fellini's Satyricon, Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, Todd Hayne's Poison, ANYTHING by Ingmar Bergman, or even some episodes of 'Lost' will do. 

Another thing that really pissed me off was that Aronofsky decided to throw out structure all together. You really would think that this was some bullshit made by a first year film student at a bottom tier film school (sorry film schools). Movie takes two and a half acts to movie and most of the first 110 or so minutes are following Jennifer Lawrence with a shaky hand held, camera making me more nauseous than watching Blair Witch on the big screen. It was done so much ad nauseam that I actually got to study her cool updo's and french braids pretty well because there was little else to do. 

Again, I really can't go into the plot, and if I did, you wouldn't see the film, but how about this; take my word for it. I'll even throw money into the pot. Don't see this movie. Or do, you might be a masochist, whatever. 

The golden rule of filmmaking that was first coined by the late great Billy Wilder and echoed by filmmakers worth their salt for generations is; 'respect your audience'. You're not making a film for yourself, you're making it so others will see it otherwise, what's the damned point? Aronofsky apparently didn't get that memo. 

Let Them Eat Cake

Jennifer Aniston as the newly suffering Claire, tries to find salvation in all the wrong places.

Cake (2014) starring Jennifer Aniston and an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink supporting cast including husband and wife team Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy, Anna Kendrick, Chris Messina, and Sam Worthington is a film I avoided. I heard a few things here and there about how Jen should have been nominated, but that's about it. It was there and then it disappeared. When it reappeared on Netflix, I took a bite (pun intended) and I really did love it. 

As a movie, it IS flawed. The script is very thin, and the premise is somewhat ridiculous. What carries the film is the performance of Aniston, and the character of Silvana, Aniston's character's long-suffering maid (played brilliantly by Adriana Barraza). It opens on one of those scenes where all of the exposition is right there. At some kind of support group, so we already know that Aniston's character; Claire is or has gone through something. We notice that she's covered in scars and barely moves and is addicted so much to pain killers she makes her maid drive her to Tijuana for refills when her doctors finally cut her off. It's not hard to figure out what actually happened, and even though the film tiptoes around that reveal, what it does do is offer some amazing albeit off-putting nuances about grief, suicide, hopelessness, loss, and redemption. This isn't Shawshank, but in it's simplicity it finds its niche.  

Desperate for company but loathing the idea of being around other people. Who hasn't had that paradox?

Now I don't get personal too often but there are aspects of Claire that I completely understood from the minute the film started playing. I understand why she's so resistent to help and treatment and what she sees as people telling her what to do, moreover what she sees as people who don't know what she's going through telling her how to get better.

She shuns everyone, except for an apparition of a girl from her support group who killed herself who doesn't appear as a friendly ghost filled with wisdom but taunts her about her selfishness and about how crass and self-serving her attitude is and how it is hurting those who love her. Many times people who have experienced trauma and loss want to dig a hole and cover it up after them, be alone, and shun everyone around them. They drown their sorrows because they don't see how it could possibly get better, and a lot of us are alienated by that. Which is totally understandable. 

During the climactic scene of the film, Claire's hallucination finally offers up some sage advice that ends up turning Claire's attitude around. 

Aniston's growth as an actress has never been more prevalent and transparent than in this role, which she wasn't even the first choice for. And what she brings to the internal transformation of Claire is so much more honest than any episode of Intervention that you might catch on A&E, though her problem is not drugs, it's only a symptom of her depravity. Of course the resolution to this kind of story is written into the script within the first 5 minutes; They will figure all of that out and change their ways, which does happen but not in the cliche way we've all grown tired of. There are some insanely funny scenes that perhaps shouldn't be, and the surreal aspect of it doesn't seem to mesh well, but then after a while, you get it, even though again, the script is pretty thin. It's a mediocre film effort, but for one reason or another I enjoyed it. I identified with the characters, (all of them) and though there's barely a plot, it does work. As I said, it's not a story about redemption, nor is it a story about the human condition in the Jean-Paul Sartre way as in we're all dying what's the point? It's just about people, the worst of us and the best of us, and how both incarnations are inside each of us at all times. It's streaming on Netflix, I'd recommend it but with caution.