Mother and the Cli-Fi Conundrum, Part II

The experimental look of Aronofsky’s Mother! is also a return to modernist cinema of the 1960s and the movement’s prevalent exploitation of women. Ingmar Bergman’s explorations into the soul via The Silence (1963), Winter Light(1963), and Persona (1966) showcase this modernist look, with intense close-ups, enclosed spaces, and fractured narrative lines. Mother! most readily brings to mind Bergman’s Shame (1968), wherein a man and woman sharing an isolated home are suddenly invaded by forces out of their control and forced to become refugees in a world destroyed. Mother! also encapsulates time changes and narrative ruptures ala Bergman.

In Bergman’s Winter Light (1963), intensity is derived from tightly enclosed interior spaces, a visual tactic that expresses the anxieties of the “contemporary woman.”	Bergman’s The Silence (1963) explores the soul through its Modernist aesthetic.[be more specific about visuals here]
Extreme close-ups in Persona (1966) reveal the feminine psyche writ large.	In Shame (1968), the world is destroyed, and forces out of a couple’s control invade their isolated home.

These tropes are also played out in Polanski’s Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), and Rosemary’s Baby (1968), isolating people in enclosed places and, most pertinently for us, examining women trapped both physically and psychologically. Luis Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel (1962) and Belle de Jour (1967) suggest being trapped in a place is a metaphor for being trapped within a lifestyle one wants to escape. Horror films from the 1960s like The Innocents (1961) amplify the threat women feel when trapped in a home that seems to be possessed. This domestic prison extends to bodies most explicitly in Robert Aldrich’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) and Hush… Hush,Sweet Charlotte (1964).

Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water (1962) isolates characters in a tiny boat.	Repulsion (1965) presents a masculine take on a woman trapped both physically and psychologically.
Aronofsky cites Luis Buenuel’s The Exterminating Angel (1962) as a major influence on the staging of Mother!. [explain how]	The Innocents (1961) highlights a woman trapped within the interior of an author’s and a director’s inspiration. [be more specific]

Mother!’s attempted environmental message seems inspired by both the avant-garde style and throwback heroines of these modernist films. Aronofsky seems to borrow both visual and narrative strategies like these to force his tale into an avant-garde milieu. The oppressive close-ups, which, of course, are far more challenging on a huge theatre screen, detail every facial expression, especially of Lawrence, bringing to mind the torturous role given to Falconetti in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). 

Dreyer’s imagery in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) has a key influence on 1960s Modernist filmmakers. [be more specific]	Aronofsky reintroduces the trapped woman in Mother!, as she was in the 1960s Modernist films and Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc.