The Bechdel Cast - Mother! with Anna Akana

Episode Date: April 5, 2018

Caitlin and Jamie are married and they live in a house and they invite special guest Anna Akana over and everything is fine until the movie Mother! comes along and ruins everything. (This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @AnnaAkana on Twitter! While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @hamburgerphone  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the bechdel cast hi and welcome to the bechdel cast my name is caitlin dorante my name is jamie loftus and we are your hosts of this podcast about the portrayal of women in movies you're damn right we are hell yeah i'm coming from chuck e cheese you're coming from chuck e cheese yeah i'm uh not coming from there well that's on you i know my bad um sorry it's thursday afternoon where why am i not at chucky cheese you're right grow up well uh we have a podcast uh we talk about how women are represented and treated in film. Cinema. Cinema. Yeah. We use the Bechdel test as just sort of a jumping off point.

Yardstick. A yardstick, if you will. And our version of the Bechdel test requires that a movie has two female characters who speak to each other. They also have names and their conversation has to be about something other than a man. It's really only a two line exchange. That's all we need here at the Bechdel cast. Hey, we're not putting you out. No. H-Wood. Not that difficult. Oh, Hollywood. I see. Okay. I was like, well, H-Wood. Who's that? I'm sorry. I'm coming from Chuck E. Cheese. I'm like full of hubris and like just

have a wild energy at this time. I ate pancakes like an hour ago, so I'm actually very tired. Oh, nice. That's like a nap food. Yeah. Well, we've really established that we have pretty leisurely, chill lives. That's great. Good for us. Yeah.

Wow. Anyways, I'm excited to talk about the movie we're talking about today because it is a polarizing film. Yes. In every conceivable. I was reading. Have you seen the Rotten Tomatoes page for this movie? No, but I know that it got an F on CinemaScore. Oh, okay.

I mean, the reviews between the positive and the negative. I mean, it's like both. Some people loved this movie. Other people, it truly made them want to walk into the sea which is we'll get to it yeah well that's how i felt and i believe that's also how our guest felt but i will let her speak for herself yes and let us introduce her she's an actress you've seen her on comedy central's corporate and she's starring in a show on youtube red called youth and consequences anences, Anna Akana.

Hello. Hi. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, guys. So you brought us the movie Mother. Mother! Mother! Exclamation point!

Mother! I hated it so much that I was like, I want to talk about how much I fucking hate this movie. This is a fun, this is like my favorite kind of episode. Yes. Just like pull out the bloodied corpse and then just whack it. Yes. Yeah. So did you see it inied corpse and then just whack it. Yes. Yeah. So did you see it

in the theater? I did see it in the theater. I was also mega high. You do. I thought I would enjoy it from that perspective at the very least because I heard about

the polarizing reviews before going in. So I was like, you know, go in with really low expectations and it still managed to shatter those

low expectations and have a whole new bar of just terrible movie but yeah it was 60 of the movie felt like it was just a close-up on jennifer lawrence that is yeah that is i think it was very deliberately shot that way and then like the last half hour is straight up biblical torture porn and it's just oh god i can't like as the movie goes on i hate it more and more like yeah there's no repeat i saw this movie very high as well, higher than I was expecting to be. And so the first time I'm like, I don't know if I just really hated that movie or if I thought I could hear everyone's skin.

And that was the problem. Because it was that kind of high. I'm like, oh, there's a bald man in front of me and I can hear his scalp. That was like. What drug were you on? Were you on LSD? No, it was like, I think it was like a really strong, because I don't drug that much. So when I do.

How many units of drug did you do? A couple. Too many? I don't know. But the people I was with were better at drugs than me and so they were like having a great time hating the movie and i was like i can hear this man scalp and i cannot tell anyone least of all him although i want to tell him so bad that his skull can speak and it's speaking and wants to get out but um yeah, the sound, for what it's worth,

the sound editing in this movie is a lot. Well, it's there. So yeah, seeing it in theaters was definitely, I mean, it's like, did you feel trapped? Yes. Yes, okay, yeah. It feels like you can leave, but I don't know. I mean, it's very grating and it's, okay. It felt like, it feels like you can leave, but I don't know. It's a, I mean, it's very grating and it's, okay.

It felt like it would never end too. It almost felt like the movie was like, you think it's going to end here? No. Because I would have been, I wouldn't have been shocked at any runtime on that movie. It could have been an hour 15 or three hours and it just felt like forever. Well, because no real narrative is set up. It's just an extended metaphor. We'll get into it.

But, like, there's no goal that any character is trying to achieve necessarily that we know about. So we don't know anything that's going to happen. Like, any event that happens, we're just like, oh, wait, what? Oh, this is happening now? Okay. Anna, were you a fan of Darren Aronofsky going into it I was I loved Black Swan I loved Requiem for a Dream um I was excited to hear this especially because I'd read some interviews with Jennifer Lawrence and she was like I thought this was a

masterpiece I loved this script I loved his idea and so I went in knowing like okay well I'm a fan of his work like I'm I want to be open at least to what's going to happen. But the moment they ate the baby, I was just like, die. Really bad. Really bad. And even Jennifer Lawrence later turns on this movie because when during the, I don't know like at what point it started, but I didn't realize until after I saw the movie the first time and was less high and able to google things uh that she and darren aronofsky were like hot and heavy while this movie was being made through when it came out and then from and i'm sure it's not this simple but they broke up shortly after the movie came out partially because uh and jennifer lawrence like

sort of said this she was just like yeah he like couldn't handle how much people hated mother and he wouldn't shut up about it so i was like actually i have to be going which i thought was pretty badass of like um calm down yeah which there's an interesting parallel of in the movie where like bar dem is like my writing and she's like well what about me yeah right except uh unlike her character jennifer lawrence dipped immediately which you've got a hand at her that's pretty good you mean you don't offer someone your weird glass heart at the end of a relationship and become dust i keep thinking of that she did not turn to dust every time i see that on screen i want to call it the heart of the ocean,

Titanic reference. It doesn't deserve it. It doesn't deserve it. You're right. Yeah. So I don't feel right calling it that. Yeah. The only metaphor,

like I'd read like some fan conspiracy theories after seeing it, because for those of you who haven't seen the movie, it's so heavy handed in biblical references. And literally just the whole message of the movie is humans are bad. We're killing mother earth. We're so self-centered. And God is this whole message of the movie is humans are bad. We're killing Mother Earth. We're so self-centered.

And God is this like self-absorbed asshole. Thank you, Mr. Aronofsky. Yeah. Really love your classic original viewpoint. Hot take. But the one that I did like is someone said, if you look at this movie through the lens of being with an abusive narcissist,

it actually is good. And so like they kind of ran through the movie of like, you know, your love is never enough for somebody and they absolutely have to have the adoration of others and they're going to put the family second. They don't even care how much your family life is completely destroyed by your art. And so through that lens, I was like,

oh, that would be a much better metaphor movie than this. Which, I mean, I guess it can work on that level. I don't think that that had anything to do with the intent, which just speaks to how fucking clueless Darren Aronofsky must be. Where I bet he's like, I'm here for him. Not so bad. Pretty smart guy. Seems cool. Seems kind of hot.

Yeah. Has a stone. Right. Yeah. There. God. I mean, seems kind of hot. Yeah. It has a stone, right? Yeah. There, God. I mean, the one good takeaway, and then I'll let you get into the recap, but the one takeaway for me is you do get to see Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer essentially raw dogging on more than one occasion, which you never see coming.

And there's always like a little weird, it's kind of like in the shape of water where they're like, no way are they going to let us watch the fish fuck. And then you shape of water where they're like no air they're gonna let us watch the fish fuck and then you're like oh i guess they're just gonna let us watch the fish fuck like they're they linger on uh ed harris and michelle pfeiffer raw dogging yeah uh and so you know not that not worth the price of admission but one of the more interesting parts of the movie to me and shockingly uh one of the least graphic yeah right of the movie at least uh i do enjoy the representation of like people over 50 canoodling very sensuously yeah but it's like yeah i guess representation i did not need to see it i did not need to see and maybe and this will not age well because i well because I'm really giving it to bald people today,

but I didn't need to see Ed Harris's bald head in coitus. I didn't. I'll say it. I didn't need it. Well, I mean, that scene is one of many that does not serve the story. Wait, what story? There isn't one. Okay, well, so yeah, let me do the recap of Mother!

Oh, yes, and I feel free to interrupt anytime. The recap is the most fun part. Yeah. So, Mother! is about a woman who's, we don't know Jennifer Lawrence's character's name, although IMDb lists her as Mother. She is married to... Oh, yeah, she goes, I am his mother. Yeah.

At that one point, you're like oh the title that's the name of the movie fine so she is married to a character played by javier bardem whose name we also don't know imdb lists him as him i think right yeah mother and him yeah yeah okay him capital h like that powerpuff girls. I do not know what you're referring to. Oh, wait. Yeah, I do know him. Yeah. The gay devil?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Clear icon him. Oh, okay. I'm on board. Really good. Yeah. So they are married and they live in a house and the entire movie takes place within this house.

At first, you don't really know what's going on. And then in the rest of the movie, you don't know what's going on. But at first, so mother. It's a metaphor, Caitlin. So Mother, they live in a house. Heviar is a poet. She is a homemaker, as far as we know. She's fixing up this house because

there was a fire. And we see a glimpse of this fire in the very beginning. And then she wakes up and she's like, better go downstairs and put some shit on the wall. Yeah. How did they meet doesn't serve the metaphor we're not no yeah yeah and then there's a visitor at the house played by ed harris he's like hey can i stay here and she's like you're a stranger but javier is like yeah come stay you're it's fine that bugs me so much it's like almost immediately the second the movie starts people start behaving nothing like people.

Exactly. To the point where it's just like, well, then what are we supposed to be like holding on to here? Because that would never happen. The only relatable factor was Jennifer Lawrence badly wanting a baby and Javier every time the conversation came up pushing it off. And so you're like, OK, like they're kind of this is a stereotype, but I at least understand it. Yeah. So Ed Harris shows up and then his wife, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, shows up. And turns out they're kind of metaphors for Adam and Eve.

Whoa. And then they have these two sons that show up who may or may not be Cain and Abel. I will say that it took me into the first viewing, it took me a little while to figure out exactly what the metaphor, because I did no reading on it. And then someone in the movie theater I was in was like, oh, the Bible. And everyone was like, oh, thank you so much. Genuinely, for me, it was helpful. Because I didn't get it in

the first... Well, the moment when the brother killed the other brother, I was like, okay, all right now. For me, it was the rib. When Ed Harris is getting sick and his rib is bleeding, I was like, oh, got it. Got it. I was hoping it would take a sci-fi turn and then I was like, no, it's just the Bible. It's just the Bible.

Yeah, I don't know what turn I thought it was going to take. I thought it was just like a straight up horror movie. And like the trailers made it seem like, oh, maybe there's going to be like a visitor that like comes and fucks shit up and they have to like fight off this intruder but like it must be so hard to have made a trailer for it too right it was all whispering over black yeah yeah yeah like what else are you gonna do like just get people in with the intrigue because no one's gonna want to see this right so the sons show up and one of them murders the other one so then like this is kind of when all hell breaks loose and more people start showing up and jennifer lawrence is like hey wait you can't be here this is my house how many times is jennifer lawrence and then we go

hey hey don't do that you can't sit there stop the sink is embraced get down from there there's so much she's like that's like the lowest level active you can possibly be it's like she's saying it and she knows no one's gonna listen to her but she's like well i get hey hey so things calm down because she's like get out of here there's like a funeral sort of thing that happens for the dead for the murdered son which one is oh god i'm gonna say his name wrong dom dom dom gleason the cute one yeah and then the other gleason plays his brother oh really yeah and no there's more than one gleason there's two gleasons i'm learning and is their dad the other gleason who what is in paddington too don't even tell me there's a third Gleason.

I'll pass out. Okay, anyway. Okay, so things calm down and she's like, oh, I want a baby, but you won't even fuck me. And he's like, yeah, I will. And then they have sex. Weird scene. We'll get there. Yeah, we'll get to that.

Yeah. And then suddenly she wakes up and she's like, I'm pregnant. I just know that I am. And then this inspires him, a.k.a. God, to start writing the New Testament. Uh-huh. Gotta get started. So he gets started and it's like this beautiful masterpiece. And then his publisher calls and she's like, oh, my God, it's great.

The twist is it's Kristen Wiig for some reason. Who is like wigging out in this movie. She's wigging. So then a whole new horde of people show up. And they're like, oh my God, God, you did such a great thing. We love you. More chaos breaks loose. And Jennifer Lawrence says, hey.

Hey. You can't be in here. Stop. This is my house. And it all comes to a head. She gives birth in public. She gives birth. Well, she's in a room, but then her baby immediately gets stolen and eaten.

Passed around. Passed around. Ripped limb from limb and eaten by now the fans who are in robes. Yeah. But there's also a rave happening in the corner. There's a rave. There's like executions in the house. Guns. Yeah. But there's also a rave happening in the corner. There's a rave. There's like executions. People have guns.

Yeah. And God's like, it's fine that they ate our baby. Like, they love me. It's fine. Also, so I think most people agree that Jennifer Lawrence's character is a metaphor for Mother Earth. Right. So like all these people showing up is ruining her and her home. Yeah. They're breaking her sink. Breaking her sink. It's not braced. That was one of my favorite lines in the movie.

Excuse me, that's not braced. Jennifer Lawrence, come on. Because she spends most of the movie trying to fix up this house and then people come and fuck it all up so there's the metaphor where humans are just fucking up mother earth so at the very very end she goes from being all like hey to hey and she like basically lights the whole house on fire she's all burnt up and she's all fucked up and everyone's like dead and then god carries her and he's like oh no what have i done and she's all burnt up and she's all fucked up and everyone's like dead and then god

carries her and he's like oh no what have i done and she's like i have nothing left to give and then he reaches into her abdomen and pulls out a la the fifth element when bruce willis's character takes some stones out of the opera singer you guys know what i'm talking about right no no he takes out the heart of the ocean the like this weird this like crystal from her and then i guess it resets time it fixes the house and now there's a new woman a new woman and she goes baby baby baby so god this movie is so annoying that's the story if you can call it that yeah yeah and it right so it's an it's an extended metaphor it's allegorical it's the laziest screenwriting i've ever seen well he wrote this yeah like best left in the evernote is my review of this movie like

i was reading an interview with darren aronofsky and he said that he wrote the... I know. Greg. Didn't he write the draft in like a day or something? He said five days. Oh my God. And it shows.

Yeah. I feel like every time someone is bragging about how quickly they wrote something and then you see it, you're just like, yeah, maybe do a second draft.

Take a little time. Yeah, like what was the rush to make Mother... Like it's not an urgent piece of anything five days wow wow so as far as the treatment of the female characters goes i don't even know where to start because this movie is such a heavy allegory. You could say, well, like, she's personifying Mother Earth, and Mother Earth is, you know, just a place. She can't be that active. But then why bother making a movie where your main character can't be active?

Because the whole movie is her reacting to stuff. She does not play an active role in pretty much anything. Decisions are made. Javier Bardem's always, like, calling the shots, inviting people in, not running anything by her. And then she just has to keep being like, wait a minute. Hey, you can't do that. You can't be here. So it's her being completely reactionary.

So even though she's the protagonist, she has no specific goal in the story. And she has, except to except to i guess be a mother that's sort of hinted at every now and then right she wants children and she wants to like be fixing up this house but it's nothing that specific and then and she's not active in the pursuit of any goal so she's just reacting to all the things that are happening which is one of the reasons this movie might not be very good yeah so you have a very passive protagonist until like literally the last five minutes of the movie. Right. And at which point her goal just changes to like either survive and then failing that to like, you know, wipe everybody out.

It's just, yeah, it's not fun to watch. And it's like there's almost every point when we were watching this movie together, there no real moment with with this character that you can't counterpoint with like oh but how would the metaphor work if that didn't but i feel like that just speaks to the fact that it then don't tell that story yeah right it should have been a short film it would have been a beautiful short film but also like the running time of this movie was like what two and a half hours or something two hours it did not need to be that fucking long. No. It was very long.

I mean, the closest, I think that like the gaslighting between Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence, there are parts of that that are very interesting and like his avoidance is interesting. And there's, I mean, a number of scenes where she's like, hey, this is wrong. And he's like, what are you talking about? No, it's not. Everything's great. Anyways, make toast. Goodbye. And you're just like, okay, there's some sort of, but even that is like barely paid off.

And paid off on isn't even the word. I think my favorite scene in this movie, even though it happens as the movie's getting exceptionally bad, but like the scene that worked for me was the scene where javier bardem steals the baby that was like the part of the movie where i felt like the most like my blood pressure was extremely high and that was like i don't know that was like the moment for me where jennifer lawrence's character felt most motivated and most threatened and like most able to control the situation and you have such anxiety of like he's gonna take the baby he's gonna take the baby the second she falls asleep and then she falls asleep and then he takes the baby and then things get really bad they eat the baby they eat the baby but they like? Yeah, the worst thing you can do to a fucking baby.

Very bad. Very bad. It's one of those weird things where I don't regret watching the movie, but I never want to see it again. I saw it twice now, and it said, if you sort of look at it through the lens of it being an abusive relationship, there's maybe some things to take away from it. I think there's also some things to take away if you sort of examine it from he's supposed to be God. Yeah. She is Mother Earth. But I think you also make an argument for her being just sort of like a metaphor for just like womanhood in general. Like if he's the patriarchy-ish sort of thing,

like her whole world is strictly domestic. It is. And I guess if you look at it like that, you could argue that the movie kind of makes a comment on how no one takes her seriously. No one listens to her. She's mistreated. She's there to serve.

And it's bad. And then she retaliates and sort of like there's like some sort of catharsis there. I don't know. I was thinking that too. That is reaching maybe. Well, because in the end, she still offers up the very last thing she has, which is her weird crystal heart. And you're like, okay. She never takes something for herself.

I don't know. I was thinking that too before I had figured out the Bible thing when I was seeing it the first time and I was like listening to this man's head. But at the beginning I was like, okay, maybe there's some sort of gender commentary happening. But then Michelle Pfeiffer's character comes in

and is just as awful. That's true. If not worse tofeiffer's character comes in and is just as awful that's true if not worse to jennifer lawrence's character and i was like okay so maybe that's not what is trying to be said here because the second woman we see on screen is just as dismissive and mean yeah that's in a way that feels if you don't recognize the stupid fucking metaphor, like most of what Michelle Pfeiffer does especially feels crazy unmotivated of just like, why are you being mean? Why are you asking this woman about her sex life? You're in her home.

Yeah. Right, right. Like, why are you getting drunk? She's drinking a Mike's Hard Lemonade, though. She is drinking a Mike's hard lemonade but it's Michelle's hard lemonade it's yeah that's true we femed it up of course it's weird I really enjoyed Michelle Pfeiffer's performance in this movie because I feel like she was possibly one of the only actors who knew that she was kind of in a campy movie.

Because I feel like she gives a kind of campy performance because she's always draping herself over a piece of furniture and is like, so, tell me everything. And you're like, okay, relax. But I don't know. And also, this movie could have been more fun if it had a more campy tone. But there's no fun in this movie. It been more fun if it was if it had a more campy tone yeah but there's no fun

it takes itself extremely seriously and it makes it for not a fun watch like it is right nothing entertaining about this movie and i think like the whole message of the movie is almost so immature and juvenile like a thought that we all have when we're like 13 of like oh we're we're bacteria man we're ruining the earth like oh man like so it's like what exactly motivated you to make something that's saying something that everybody has already thought and like kind of dismissed right and like yeah who who is the intended audience for this who's supposed to be learning right and what are we what are we even supposed to take away? Apart from the very obvious, like, yeah, we're fucking up the earth. But then, like,

because it's a metaphor for Old Testament and then New Testament, but then also, like, God is married to Mother Earth, like, her character doesn't really fit into that allegory. Because they make the house almost as Mother Earth, because that's what they're destroying. Yeah. So you're like, you you're trying he's like doing metaphor hats on metaphor hats yeah it's

like too many layers and none of it really works out especially because so many of the characters in this movie behave in ways that people do not behave so fine if you want to make a movie that's an allegory for something for example paddington one it's an allegory for immigration and racism and it's done very well but mother exclamation point is like all these metaphors mashed up together in a way that like none of it makes sense none of it works yeah it's like characters are like doing things that no one would do ever and behaving in ways that no one would ever behave it's literally like ucb 101 shit yeah of like you have to map something on something else that makes sense and if it doesn't make sense find something different to you know fit it into you can't just make something like

it's just so forced the whole thing is so forth And I think that he tried to possibly, I'm curious what you think, that Jennifer Lawrence was a metaphor for Earth, but so was the house. And they both sort of had a weird pulsing something where the house had a womb in the basement. But then also, like, she would touch the walls and then there would be like a heartbeat. They were connected somehow. I was like, it just didn't quite make us i think that but i'm like what is the takeaway from that she is the house what also the movie seems to be saying that religion destroyed mother earth which like what was kristin wiggs supposed to represent i don't know what was she a metaphor for see i so like popular religion or something maybe i've never read the bible brag so i did not pick up on the bible i can't stop reading the

bible i didn't pick up on it the first time i saw we i watched the whole thing and i was like what the fuck i was like i know there's a metaphor here i just don't know what it is i started reading about it and i was like oh oh, it's a Bible thing. And then I was like, because I'm not super familiar with the various stories of the Bible. I didn't pick up on it. They're not great. But I also, like the movie, but now that I know it, I was like, oh, yes, this movie does bash you over the head with all these metaphors. But also, I don't know well that's that's something that we were talking about too it was like it really bothers me and this is part of why like some david lynch movies don't do it for me at all

just like i don't like when you go into a movie and it's like whoever made this wants me to feel dumb as rocks yeah for at least part of it and i don don't like that. It's not a good feeling. It's a very pretentious movie as well. It felt like I was being condescended to the entire time. The same thing happens to me when I watch Eraserhead and I'm just like,

what am I supposed to be getting from this? What does this mean? I don't like feeling stupid. It's kind of interesting how a director and his script can just be so condescending

and dumb at the same time. Right. You're like, wow, this is a feat. You should get an award for this. Because Mother also reads

as like a short story that someone in ninth grade who's like a little subversive would have written. Right. Oh, it's a, it's a, it's a,

it's a, it's a metaphor. And then's a it's not great english also it's a metaphor and then they eat the baby yeah this reminds i'm just like oh i'm sure my brother's film school friends are frothing over this they're like oh my god he's a genius it's interesting because i i feel like you know aronofsky is like whatever this male auteur. Ever heard of a male auteur? They exist almost exclusively. Who chose to have a female protagonist and chose to do nothing with her. That really bothers me and I feel like sets a false precedent of, you know, I'm sure, you know, unless he's more woke than I give him credit for. That Aronofsky would look at this and be like,

female protagonist, so I'm a feminist icon. I did it. I did it because she's there and I don't photograph her like she's porn. And I did it. You see her face. And that bugs me so much because I feel like that just lets future directors get away with A, being like, a man can have a female protagonist let's just let men direct all the movies and and also it's like that character jennifer lawrence's character that person

doesn't exist that person's never i mean none of these characters have ever it's just i mean that bugs me and then it's just bad writing yeah as i mentioned I mentioned before, she's reacting to things that happen, but she's not driving the story forward. Things are happening around her and she's reacting to them. And she is putting up, she's protesting sometimes, but almost never in a way

that it actually gets results or anything happens because of a choice she makes. Like she's just reacting to the things that are happening around her. She never alters her approach. No, that either. Her approach is universally,

hey, stop. Hey, stop that. Which like, again, She never alters her approach. oh, well, you did this thing to me. I'm going to fucking have a hurricane on you. But it's just so weird to make the choice to personify something like that. But also, like, that character just rendering her so passive is like, what's the point? Why even tell a story? If you want to make a movie about people and how they've fucked up the earth, watch Koyaanisqatsi.

It's a weird experimental movie from the early 80s but it does a better job getting this message across anyway shout out to all my koyana scotty heads out there wow really flexing that master's degree today jesus christ yeah i think the problem was a he wrote it way too quickly and is and was so passionate about it and had the resources to make a film immediately that he probably spent no time actually thinking about it or putting it in the drawer and waiting on it for a couple months. Right. I mean, in a lot of the interviews, I know you haven't read them, but he's so fucking psyched on this. He's like, you know, because we ruined Mother Earth with climate change and we do all this and we're drilling into her and then and then all the an overpopulation and you're like oh wow like you this is a little passion project for you you think you're being so hashtag deep yeah i think

he didn't take the time that he should have to really evaluate this movie yeah i mean just in general like the more famous filmmakers and writers get the more they should like make sure the people around them are being honest with them before they start something. Because I'm sure that, you know, most famous people have enough yes men around them to be like, yeah, real hack, biblical metaphor. Love it. Amazing. Great. But yeah, I mean, that sucks if he genuinely, I mean, and it sounds like he genuinely didn't know how, like, juvenile and silly it was because perhaps no one said, um, hi. Excuse me.

This is dumb. Hey! Hey! Stop that, Darren! The sink isn't braced, Darren! Stop writing that script, Darren! Your script needs another draft, Darren! Hey!

Hey! And then he's like, too late, I'm printing it. another draft, Darren. Hey! Hey! And then he's like, too late, I'm printing it. And she's like, no! And then they eat the baby. Can we talk about the scene where, so it starts with

Ed Harris and all those people have left. And she's like, my life didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. You talk about wanting to have kids, but you won't even fuck me and then he like lunges at her and is like grabbing her and kissing her and she is very vocally and physically resisting she's saying no no and she's fighting back she's trying to push him off and he keeps doing it. He continues. And then it changes from her resisting to her being into it suddenly, which I think

sends a very dangerous message. And I think this is another hint that this is a movie with a female protagonist, but directed by a man. It sends a dangerous message. I see this all the time. All the time. There's a really good... Blade Runner is the one I always go straight to.

Resist, resist, resist. And now she loves you. Yeah. It happens in Empire Strikes Back, too, with Han Solo trying to come on to Leia. Pop Culture Detective has a really great video essay about this, about how a lot of movies will paint this scene of a man kind of aggressively coming on to a woman she is resisting right but then something happens all of a sudden because he keeps trying and then suddenly she's into it and she's thinks it's hot and what you are not mentioning is that every single character

that this video essay explores is a harrison for Ford character. Harrison Ford, you're fired. You're on notice. Yeah. Wow, predatory icon, Harrison Ford. He did not write those scenes. But he accepted every single role and check. Yeah. I feel like it was more acceptable back in the day.

Like, Say Anything was this huge romantic gesture. And it's like, if a fucker was outside of your house blasting music, you would be like, leave me alone, I'm getting a restraining order. Call the cops. Right. Call the cops. I was thinking of that recently

because I live on the first floor, so if someone did that to me it would be extra crazy because I'd just be like making direct eye contact with them. I'd be like, ew,

gross. But yeah, so many movies have done this and continue to do this where it's basically what starts out as a rape scene

and then it turns into this romantic thing where all of a sudden she's very hot because he just kept persisting and suddenly she's into it so it basically sends a message it's like men if a woman is resisting at first just keep trying try a little harder and then she'll be into it i mean granted at this point in the movie if any man is watching javier Bardem and is like, wow, seems like a good example to be following, they're already lost. But the way this scene, this movie's attitude

towards sex in general is very bizarro. Like, is this movie, this movie seems like anti-sex in a lot of ways because anytime

that Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer are going at it, they're like, the movie, I felt, was like, ugh. Ugh. Yeah, right. Like, that's going at it they're like the movie i felt was like oh yeah right like that's a weird thing they're doing yeah right and then there's this weirdly violent sex scene and then when they have sex

it results in disaster because it results in the baby and the baby getting fucked up well it's a disaster because of like god's hubris and like wanting to be loved by his followers and basically sacrificing the baby because of that and right this movie is stupid it's just like sometimes i have a bunch of bullet points i'm like do we even tackle it is there any point my notes are also so just I mean, the narrative is like... What is Kristen Wiig doing in this movie? Like, that was straight up distracting. Every time she, because she would show up every once in a while

and you'd be like, oh yeah, wait, what? And then she magically turns into like a military person in the basement and they're all at war and bombs are going off and you're like, what the fuck? This is, yeah, this is a bad thesis film. It's not great can we talk about i guess the relationship between jennifer lawrence's character and michelle

pfeiffer a little bit because that's relevant to our discussion i mean it does you know well we'll get into does anyone have names and therefore can it ever pass the bible right yeah so but there is a there's a sequence where where Jen Law and Michelle talk, and it's usually Michelle Pfeiffer prying about her sex life or sort of judging her for other choices that she's making. Everything she does is wrong is the thing. Yeah. Yeah. She makes all these backhanded remarks like, yeah, no, he probably still loves you. Like, yeah, your husband i guess maybe

likes you and and uh do you want some of my michelle's hard lemonade it's a family recipe and later on when she returns after like the random murder that happens in the house like oh yeah which leads to feminist icon floor vagina right when the floor of the house just has a vagina all of a sudden yeah and it grows it's bleeding it's free bleeding all over the place feminist icon floor vagina also feminist icon ed harris whenever he at one point is like jennifer lawrence you redid this whole house and she's like yeah and he's like every detail and she's like and he's like, yeah. And he's like, every detail? And she's like, mm-hmm. And he's like, so you're not just a pretty face. Feminist icon. Head hairs.

Oh, God. Just kidding. So the relationship, yeah. Michelle Pfeiffer and Jennifer Lawrence are just like a very bizarre situation where no strangers would talk like that. And I mean, it's mostly on Michelle Pfeiffer's part where she's just like, why do you do your laundry so fucked up what is this what is this i'm drunk blah and you're just like whoa like where what do you want like it's unclear to me outside of the metaphor what michelle pfeiffer why she's being so antagonistic and what kind of reaction she's hoping to get out of jennifer lawrence like it doesn't well they're all just, they're all props for the metaphor.

They literally don't make sense or don't exist outside of it. Well, I mean, again, I have a very limited understanding of the Bible, but it's Eve who takes the bite of the apple. That's, like, the original sin thing, and that's basically the fall of man kind of thing. She's temptation. She's belligerent. She didn't listen. It's, like, the whole so why why emulate that in a fucking current movie like that's not how it's just so stupid they're one of the things about jennifer lawrence's character and it's like this whole time we're like oh like we're really really reaching for things

here but the the idea of the female protagonist trying to be polite and like a good hostess and respectful to all at all costs was something that was like okay there was another moment during kristen wick's press conference you know when kr Kristen Wiig just starts having a press conference during this terrible movie. When there's like a mom and her son and Jennifer Lawrence is trying to be like, you cannot come in. She's like, but my son's pissing. And she's like, okay, fine, you can come in, but you have to leave. And then it turns out everyone's pissing for some reason. I was like peeing in her sink. Anyways, I thought I had a point, but it turns out I didn't. Well, well i mean maybe it's kind of what i was touching on earlier where if this maybe this

character is a metaphor for like the way women have historically been treated where you know we're conditioned to be accommodating and we have to be helpful and and and delicate and all of this stuff and and how that's not really serving anybody and like that's stuff and how that's not really serving anybody and, like, that's not good and that's not how it should be. But, like, I don't think that Darren Aronofsky was necessarily thinking that. I don't think he was thinking that at all. I don't think he was thinking that at all.

But it is, like, it is so infuriating to see. The only things you see Jennifer Lawrence's character doing is either cleaning stuff up or making breakfast or fixing up the house or just like endless domestic chores. Doing laundry and cleaning up a mess. We touched on this a little earlier, but I did want to mention like how the female protagonist is framed in this movie. Yes. And that like almost every shot is either a close-up of her face or a shot from her, like an over-the-shoulder or just a straight-up point-of-view shot from her perspective, which I think is, I guess you could call it interesting.

It's unusual. It's not what we usually see in most movies, especially because most movies are not told from a woman's point of view. Like in this, this one is, yeah, literally her point of view. It's like a point of view shot from, I mean, it's kind of, I guess, kind of an even split of looking at her and looking from her point of view. Right. So, I mean, maybe something I can take away from this movie is, okay, that's interesting that that choice was made made because often if it's a male director framing a female character it's usually sexualized in some way or like and i never felt you get to see her

sheer nightgown a couple times you do you see i mean they do have that scene where all the people are attacking her on the floor and like her boob comes out and they're like grabbing which like why what what's what is that serving why is that scene in the movie can you imagine being in a room with your boyfriend and he's like yeah yeah hit her yeah just lie down on the ground you're gonna grab her tit and i was like ah no no yeah how did he direct that scarf he's like hey jennifer just um lie here on the floor and uh get your face beaten in by all of these extras. For my awesome freaking movie.

You're going to love it. Mother! I almost felt like I could see the male gaze on Jennifer Lawrence the whole movie because she was completely perfect the entire time. She never got more in disarray as the movie went on until that very, very ending section. But even then, when she was running around and her hair was perfectly in place, all the shots were so close and intimate and this gorgeous lighting.

So it didn't feel like sexualized, but it felt like Darren's way of viewing her. That's a really good point. Yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way. It's too bad because i i don't think this movie got nominated for every razzie pretty much i think it got the most nominations this year and it's too bad because i don't think jennifer lawrence does a bad job

in this movie with what she's given which is not a lot no if 70 of the dialogue you're given is hey like there's only so much you can do and and given the fact that the camera is focused on her for so much of the movie i feel like she and like michelle pfeiffer i thought like did at least an interesting job with what they were given javier bardem i i don't know i was like not loving him in this movie kristen wick what are you doing here uh ed harris i'm maybe like afraid of bald men sometimes so i don't have a good gauge you're a fan of bald women i lost but bald women are in charge every single time they appear on screen bald men their scalps can talk and they have really scary secrets to tell you i mean one

of the huge problems this movie boils down to because the director was like we gotta have this metaphor it's at the expense of characterization so none of these characters feel like real people and therefore it's i mean it's kind of hard to talk about them so like before we started before we started recording, I was like, what am I even going to say about this movie? Like, how can I even talk about the female characters? Because they're like, they're not real people. They don't resemble human behavior at all. So, it's just like, how do you even talk about the portrayal of women when these female characters, they're just like metaphors and allegories and personifications of the shit and no one's relationship makes sense we don't know there's very little evident about like why javier bardem

and jennifer lawrence would love each other in this relationship what keeps their relationship together other than her constant service what one of the more baffling character connections was like ed harris showing up and javier Bardem just being like, I love this guy. And that goes through every single time. Ed Harris is like, I've been lying. And Javier Bardem's like, you're so fucking real. And they're weirdly... I guess it's because...

Because God loved... Those were his creations. So he loved them. And he's like, like wow look what a good job i did with all this stuff and i guess the movie's saying oh no god didn't maybe do a good job because everything got fucked up by the end aronofsky second draft come on come on it would have been great to see the third fourth 52nd draft yeah yeah or maybe that would have ended in the trash if anyone had taken a good long hard look at what this movie is, like, maybe skip it.

He should have sent his script to me for notes. I would have given him great notes. Does anyone have any other thoughts about the portrayal of women in Mother? I don't want to give this movie two more seconds. Yeah. All right. Well, how about we talk about whether or not the movie passes the Bechdel test? I'm going to say no.

I would say no, too. Because the characters aren't named? Yes. Okay. If they had names, it would have to pass, I'm pretty sure, because of the scenes with Jennifer Lawrence and Michelle Pfeiffer. But they don't have names, no matter what the IMDB page says. Sometimes the IMDB page says, hey, the twist is they did have a name, but we'd never find out what it is. We never find out in the movie.

Yeah, and we never, and it's, you know, I'd be more inclined to give it a benefit of the doubt if we knew, like, well, at least we knew a lot about the characters, but we didn't know anything about the fucking characters either. Right. So I'm going to, not to come to this movie's defense at all, but I'm going to argue that the caveat of the characters having to have names implies that,

oh, these characters have to be important enough that we would know their names. So it can't just be like a random person we see in one scene that has one line, and if that character talks to another woman with a name,

like, I think that's what that caveat of the Bechdel test is saying. scene that has one line and if that character talks to another woman with a name like i think that's what the that caveat of the bechdel test is saying so it's like it has to be two main characters speaking to each other so these are two main characters in the movie so the fact that they don't have names i think it's just like whatever and the artistic choice the fact that they don't have names isn't a gendered decision because no one has names. Correct. But the Bechtel test is extremely flawed and I don't. Right. So it doesn't. I still don't think it does.

Yeah. I mean, I'm fine with saying it doesn't because of the name caveat. Because otherwise, I mean, let's say they do have names. Then it does. Then those two characters, yeah, they talk about Mike's Hard Lemonade. They talk about Michelle Pfeiffer is like, you suck. And Jennifer Lodge is like, sorry. And a lot of what they talk about are's hard lemonade. They talk about Michelle Pfeiffer is like, you suck. And Jennifer Lawrence is like, sorry. And a lot of what they talk about are like domestic chores.

And again, that's a lot of what you see Jennifer Lawrence's character doing in the movie. But they are talking about things. They do mention men. But there are plenty of two line exchanges between those two characters that would pass the test if we knew their names. I don't want to give anyone a reason to be like, maybe I'll give this movie a chance. I think I won't give it a pass just because they don't have names in this movie. It sucks really bad.

Fuck it. In conclusion, let's rate the movie on our nipple scale. Zero to five nipples where we rate the movie. It's a lot of nipples. Based on its portrayal of women. I'm going to a lot of nipples yeah uh based on its portrayal of women i'm gonna go negative two nipples excellent uh yeah i'm gonna have to give it a zero just because of how inactive

the protagonist is how the relationship with the one other main female character is just like bonkers and doesn't make any sense but the movie isn't like pro man either that's the thing it's not like wow look how good of a job men are doing this movie isn't even like it's not specifically insensitive to women in a pointed way it's just insensitive to filmmaking and things that are good a slap in the face to anything that's ever been good yeah and then even at the end when she sort of has her like oh actually i do have a little tiny bit of agency and i'm gonna blow the whole house up and then she dies and then gets reborn into this other woman so she doesn't even get to

like have a cathartic moment that she actually gets to like enjoy and like reap the benefits of because then she just dies and then it's the whole thing of like oh well god gets to like enjoy and like reap the benefits of because then she just dies and then it's the whole thing of like oh well god gets to start over because he's god i give this movie zero nipples but i give it one floor vagina there's no way around it great um well that'll do it for our discussion about Mother. Anna, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, guys. Where can people follow you online? It's just my name, Anna Akana.

Great. Yeah. All right. Twitter, Instagram, check it out. All the stuff. You can go to our website, Bactelcast.com. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram and all the places. You can buy our merch.

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episodes. It helps us out. It helps you out. It's a win-win. You can't lose. Alright, well, what a rousing discussion about Mother! Guys, we did not like this movie! Oh no! Alright, well, what a rousing discussion about Mother! Guys, we did not like this movie! Oh no! Alright, well, bye! Bye! Daphne Caruana Galizia

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