I am not one to give you spoilers, so don’t read this review if you do not want a little hint as to what this movie is about. That said, I can guarantee that you will be totally confused without this hint. I went to this movie without knowing that the whole thing was an allegory. Knowing this upfront would have helped me get at least a little grasp of what was going on. I thought from the trailers that I would be seeing a kind of updated Rosemary’s Baby. I think the trailers were misleading. Ready? Here it is, your hint….the movie is an allegory for Mother Earth and the first book of The Bible. Each character, outside of Mother herself, represents a character in the Bible. I could readily discern Mother Earth, God, Jesus, Adam, Eve, Cain and Able. There are probably a lot more, but those are the ones I figured out. Even knowing this, “Mother” is bewildering. The cinematography is great, but that just isn’t enough. Jennifer Lawrence is very subdued as a newlywed who is married to a writer. They live in a gigantic, creepy house in the middle of nowhere. Ed Harris and Michelle Pfieffer are spooky as a couple who appear out of nowhere and are inexplicably invited by Jennifer’s husband, Javier Bardem, to stay with them. Things only get weirder, as more and more odd things happen, and crowds of people arrive in increasingly complex scenarios . By the end of the movie, it seems as if the whole of humanity is living, loving and fighting in that house. Will you like this movie? I really don’t think many people will like it. It is a brutal roller coaster of perplexing allegories and people doing things that just don’t make any sense. I am not giving it a rotten apple only because the performances are excellent, and I love Ed Harris and Javier Bardem. But I think you will be happy to have missed this one.
Westworld
Wow! What a great show. If you haven’t had a chance to watch this fascinating HBO series starring Anthony Hopkins, Jeffrey Wright, Thandie Newton, Evan Rachel Wood and Ed Harris, you are missing out. The series is based on the 1973 sci-fi movie thriller that starred Yul Brenner as a robot gone rogue. This reboot builds off of that premise and runs with it. Imagine an adult theme park for rich vacationers manned by automatons who interact with you as if they are human. Would you like to pretend to be a gunslinger, gambler, confederate soldier? What about school marm, madame or a Calamity Jane type? Westworld caters to the basest and darkest sides of humanity. You can kill (robots) with impunity while at the same time, they can not harm you……or can they? There is so much to think about after every episode. The first season ended over a week ago and I am still pondering the human and moral implications of what has happened so far. I eagerly await season two!