Mother! and the Cli-Fi Conundrum III

But Mother’s association with earth turns the film into an ecofeminist’s nightmare. The insertion of the feminine “muse” amplifies the relationship between consuming the body and consuming the land by drawing on what Annette Kolodny calls “America’s oldest and most cherished fantasy” grounded in “an experience of the land as feminine…enclosing the individual in an environment of receptivity, repose, and painless integral satisfaction” (The Lay of the Land 4). This feminization of nature draws on multiple gender stereotypes. For Kolodny, “men sought sexual and filial gratification from the land, while women sought there the gratifications of home and family relations” (The Land Before Her 12). As ecofeminist Jytte Nhanenge argues, “there is an interconnection between the domination of women and poor people, and the domination of nature” (xxvii).

Mother! opens and closes with the fire, ash, and rock of a woman, and it is Him (Javier Bardem) who adds her crystal remains to his stand, a clear demonstration of his dominance over Mother and the earth she represents. Him lost everything in a fire when he was younger and found the crystal in the ashes. “It gave me strength to begin again,” he explains. But “Mother fixed up every room by herself.” Jennifer Lawrence’s milky-skinned Mother supports Him through the majority of the film, worshipping Him as the storywriter, even though only she, as both earth and literal Mother, creates, preserves, and renovates the domestic world around them. Despite her industry, Mother claims Him is working too hard on his writing. We see Mother in close up while she cooks, refurbishes, and collects firewood to serve his every need. 

The first intruder in Mother! disturbs Mother’s creation of paradise.

This need for dominance gradually grows more violent when uninvited guests damage Mother and her home. Him cannot write until odd visitors disturb their home’s tranquility and punish the Mother who created it. Him invites each into their home and embraces even their most destructive actions. The Man (Ed Harris) arrives first, claiming the house as a Bed and Breakfast. Him seems energized by the visit, but Mother nearly collapses in pain. “We don’t know him,” Mother explains, but Him welcomes the Man, despite the coughing that seems to interact with the throbbing lung in the wall. His entrance introduces the fire that opens the film when Mother walks barefoot into a dank basement to collect linens. As she scuttles over the uneven floor, flames erupt from an old furnace, and we see the fire from Mother’s point of view. In the morning there are more signs of disarray—cigarette butts in the ashtray and a vomiting Man with a big cut on his back. “Give him some privacy,” Him orders, and Mother’s suffering becomes palpable as she knocks an ashtray off a table and buckles over in pain.

Public sexual displays amplify the destruction of Mother’s domestic Eden.

The next visitor is The Woman (Michelle Pfeiffer), The Man’s wife, whose entrance distracts Mother enough that breakfast scorches and both Mother and the Woman burn themselves, but only Mother eases the pain with ice. The camera twirls around her as Mother serves food on a tray to the guests. The Woman thanks her for her hospitality but minimizes The Mother’s work: “Isn’t it a lot harder than starting fresh?” she asks, and presses Mother about children. “Then you’ll be creating something together,” she tells Mother. “This is all just setting.” The Woman’s sons enter Cain and Abel-style, violently, fighting to the death on a wood floor. During the funeral wake that follows one brother’s death, Mother is set up as a fiend who won’t let visitors mourn and celebrate, even though they’re destroying her home. Visitors ignore her as she tells them to get off a sink sagging under their weight. Unreinforced, it crashes, gushing water everywhere. The house is a wreck, but the Woman only gives her dirty looks as she tries to clean it. Like a 1960s heroine, Mother screams hysterically, “It’s about you and your work. You think it will help you with your work. Bring new people and new ideas. I’m the one who’s suffocating. You talked about wanting kids. But you can’t even fuck me.” The nightmare for Mother and the interchangeable earth she seems to represent brings only pain.