Pi, Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain were all a little off-kilter and you expect some bizarre-to-abstract shit to happen during one of his films. I watched Mother! the other night and...he's taken a bit of a jog off the path. This movie is streaming on Prime or Netflix, so I don't give a shit about the spoilers.
JLaw and Javier Bardem live in the middle of nowhere while Bardem (a one-hit wonder of a poet) tries to get his mojo back. The movie opens with JLaw rolling over in bed to find Bardem already up and out. An older gentleman shows up unexpectedly, claiming that he was told they run a rooming house. There's tension from the setup (remote location and strange character) and DA builds on that for about an hour. During this time we're introduced to Bardem's prized possession: a crystal (a gift, but not from JLaw) that he prizes above all else.
More characters are added as the first guest's family come calling. There's a fight between the sons of the first guest over the contents of their father's will and a tragic accident occurs when the fight is taken too far. Bardem accompanies the injured son and the parents to the hospital over the protests of JLaw who is concerned the murderous brother might return to finish off the witnesses (there was a sizable inheritance at stake.)
After the family returns from the hospital, Bardem invites them all to stay over (over JLaw's objections...which have been many and justified) and he delivers a heartfelt toast over dinner.
All this time, the plot seems reasonably within the realm of possibility.
Then Bardem loses his prized possession and all hell breaks loose: police/SWAT storm the house, there are rival tribes that form within the house, Bardem emerges as Poet Laureate to the world at large apparently, then is seen as a messiah.
At this point, shit gets disturbing. JLaw pops out a baby and tries to win a staring contest to keep Bardem from taking the baby from her. She loses and wakes up in time to see Bardem hoisting the newborn above his head triumphantly...then handing the kid to the mass of humanity swarming around him. They crowdsurf the baby through the house and JLaw follows, horrified at the carelessness with which they're handling her infant. Then you hear an audible snap and see the baby's head extend far too much towards its heels. It's gonna get worse, so stop if you're squeamish.
JLaw fights her way up to retrieve her baby's body and finds that these disciples of her husband have butchered the kid and are serving bits of the raw flesh to the faithful.
Making her way to the basement, JLaw fights all the warring factions populating the house and sets a stolen/secreted lighter to the leaky furnace, incinerating nearly everyone.
Bardem, the blessed poet, picks up JLaw's crispy corpse and places her reverently on a table. As he's soliloquizing his profound realization, whatever it was, she crumbles to ash to reveal...a crystal much like the one whose destruction started the crazy shit in his house before.
The movie closes as it opens, with Bardem's wife rolling over in bed to find him already up and out...but this time it's a different woman.
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