Sight Unseen

There’s a reason Darren Aronofsky doesn’t want you to know anything about his latest film, Mother!

- Abraham Riesman

“MOST PEOPLE, after they see the film, they don’t even wanna look at me,” says Darren Aronofsky with a basso profundo chuckle. Clad in New Balances, a Montreal Expos hat, and a black T-shirt bearing the logo of electro-punk label DFA Records, the 48-year-old auteur is introducing his latest outing, the secrecy shrouded Mother! (exclamation point required), to a micro audience of four—of which I am a part. We had to turn in nondisclosure agreements before being permitted to see the film, and a viewing of it suggests the reason why: Aronofsky doesn’t want you to know how, exactly, he’s going to push your buttons. But he’s going to push your buttons.

Aronofsky’s filmography is rich with moments of oft-surreal discomfort: It’s hard to shake off Winona Ryder stabbing herself in the face in Black Swan, or Russell Crowe nearly murdering a newborn in Noah, or Jennifer Connelly’s climactic scene in Requiem for a Dream, which I can’t even describe delicately here. But Mother! might be the most alarming entry in Aronofsky’s two-decade career. The film envisions a few months (or is it a few days?) in the countryside home of an idyllic couple, played by Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem. Unexpected visitors (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer) arrive; horrifying entropy sets in.

Beyond that, Aronofsky would prefer to stay secretive about details. “It’s a cruise missile shooting into a wall, this film,” he muses a few days after the screening, seated in a dimly lit equipment room at a Manhattan sound editing studio. “I want audiences to be prepared for that and prepped that it’s a very intense ride.”