mother! - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of mother! or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to mother!

[cameron]

Some of the protestors who barge into the house can be heard chanting "so-so-so-solidarité" (French for solidarity). This is a common chant at left-wing rallies in Quebec, where the movie was filmed. Film extras are usually drawn from the nearby population, so they were probably Québécois.

[maureen]

Originally titled Day 6, which was meant to be a title that references the biblical account of God creating the Earth and the Universe in 7 days, and the film's events would be an allegory for the 6th day in God's creation of the world.

[jeffrey]

Jennifer Lawrence dropped out of The Rosie Project in order to work with Darren Aronofsky on this movie.

[bernard]

There is a 21 year age gap between Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence, who play a married couple in this film.

[dustin]

The end credits are all being simultaneously written as they scroll down, and as Javier Bardem's poet character is supposed to represent a creator, God, this implies that he is still creating even as the movie ends.

[ella]

Jennifer Lawrence is barefoot for the entire movie.

[tom]

After mother walks in on man and woman having sex, the next scene shows mother confronting them again in the same room and woman answers the door, her bra appears to have a leaf motif to it. This is a clear reference to when Adam and Eve covered up their nudity with leaves after eating the forbidden fruit.

[kylie]

Aronofsky has stated that mother's baby is a messiah. This is confirmed by the fact that he is the son of Him (God), the fact that Him's followers offer gifts for the newborn (the gifts of the Magi), and the fact that after the baby's death (the crucifixion), the religious leader says he is not dead (faith in Christ's resurrection), the worshippers eat his flesh (just as the eating of communion wafers symbolizes the eating of Chist's flesh). Additionally, mother may be a virgin mother, like the Virgin Mary. Indeed, she tells Him "you can't even fuck me", suggesting they may have never had sex. Even though she gets pregnant, she is not shown having sex with Him. After they kiss and head toward the bedroom, she looks to the sky and the screen fades to white (white being a symbol of virginity).

[ethel]

The film was shot using 16 mm film. This is the fourth time Darren Aronofsky has shot a film on this format.

[cassandra]

Aronofsky has explained that Him is God. As the film begins, Him is a writer who hasn't been able to write anything new for a long time. The book he wrote, which earns great praise from his fans, may be understood to be the Old Testament, or Torah, and its followers represent the ancient Jews, the first monotheists. When he impregnates mother (the impregnation of the Virgin Mary), he is suddenly inspired to write something new, which earns him even more followers. This second work represents the New Testament, the basis of Christianity. The explosion of his fan base after the second book may reflect the fact that Christianity has far more followers than Judaism.

[kyle]

After the house has descended into chaos once Him's fans storm in, mother walks around trying to get to safety and sees various acts of cruelty and violence including sex trafficking, scenes alluding to political protesting, religious execution of non believers, and human sacrifice for the sake of religion. According to the filmmakers, these scenes are all meant to be a criticism of humanity's worst faults and of religious and political fanaticism.

[bessie]

The graphic death of the newborn baby in the ending led to difficulties in finding a distributor for the film. 20th Century Fox turned away the script (after having worked with Aronofsky for quite a few films) along with several other studios, because of this scene. Paramount pictures was only convinced to pick up the film after seeing who would be cast as the characters.

[gabriel]

Jennifer Lawrence appears in every scene of the film, except the opening and the closing scenes.

[kenneth]

Darren Aronofsky submitted a written statement about the film when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival, in which he revealed that he wrote the first draft of the script in 5 days ("a fever dream," he called it) and that the idea was inspired by current events, "the endless buzzing of notifications on our smartphones," and his experiences going through Hurricane Sandy in downtown Manhattan. "It is a mad time to be alive," he wrote. He also wrote that the film should be "drunk as a single dose in a shot glass. Knock it back."