Mother Mary

Is this about forgiveness as a pathway to love? Lowery doesn’t sew it up for us in a neat package or give us the answers, but I have no doubt that anyone who resonates with the film will come away with thoughts of their own.

Mother Mary is an art film at its core, and will not suit everyone’s palette, but for the audience it connects with, there’s a beautiful journey from sorrow to confession and possible absolution.

Lowery, clearly fascinated by the plight of the modern pop star, has made “Mother Mary” with both the fervor of a fan and the insight of a fellow artist. The questions the film asks about the identity of pop stars as well as the ownership of their music, their image, and their very souls don’t all have answers, and Lowery doesn’t provide them. He does, however, provide plenty of food for thought as he asks these questions, interrogating the relationship between artists and their audience and what each owes the other.

We’re watching extremely talented artists try to accomplish something grand and potentially embarrass themselves in the process, and it works because they’re committed to taking that risk.

The words these characters say to each other are mostly boring and obscure, and it’s a mad scramble to figure out what’s making them so agitated. Keeping up with the film becomes as hard as it is to care.

The downer here is that Lowery doesn’t seem to know what to do with his stars, performers who are never better than when they’re just doing what they do best — you know, acting.

Some might be willing to find depth in his stylish, stylized but gossamer-thin depiction of a woman at the height of her performative powers struggling to bear the weight of her stage persona. I found it a bore — self-consciously cool but distancing and empty.

Probably the best Lowery film I've seen. It reminded me a bit of Peter Strickland's In Fabric. Mother Mary is an audiovisual feast full of dream logic. I enjoyed it quite a bit

Mother Mary delivers an intriguing mix of drama, music, and psychological themes, supported by strong performances and impressive visual style. The film creates a unique atmosphere and tackles ambitious ideas about fame, identity, and personal relationships. However, its unconventional storytelling can feel uneven at times, and some emotional moments fail to resonate as strongly as intended. While there is plenty to admire in its artistic approach, the narrative occasionally struggles to maintain momentum. Overall, it's an interesting and well-crafted film that offers a worthwhile experience, even if it doesn't fully reach its potential.

For me, this movie is hard to understand and complicated, but there's something about it.

A time-honored adage astutely maintains that, in many cases, “less is more” – unless, of course, there’s little to hold someone’s interest in the first place, in which case “more” needs to be supplemented to create something more worthy of appreciation. At the same time, though, whatever is added to the mix needs to be inherently worthwhile to make its inclusion beneficial, because, if it’s not, it doesn’t matter what’s incorporated for improvement. And, sadly, that’s the core issue plaguing this latest dramatic release from writer-director David Lowery. After a protracted absence from performing, pop star Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) is on the verge of making a comeback after an on-stage accident. However, the mesmerizing, immensely popular singer, whose works have a spiritual bent akin to some of Madonna’s biggest hits, is frazzled just days before her long-awaited appearance. She’s particularly upset that her costuming doesn’t reflect the “authentic” look she’s going for, one that’s indicative of her character and fitting for her new material. And so, sheepish and desperate, she calls upon her long-estranged former lover and costume designer, Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel), to create the perfect dress for her performance in a matter of four days. Of course, it’s a lot to expect that they’ll be able to get right down to business given that they haven’t seen one another in a decade and have a number of unresolved issues to address, which they proceed to do in a series of long-winded, incredibly overwritten and pretentious dialogues. And, not unlike the nature of Mother Mary’s compositions, these conversations quickly bring up matters of a spiritual nature. In particular, they revolve around ghostly (or is it ghastly?) issues that both parties have experienced and tie back to the unfinished business between them. They also strangely link to the dressmaking process, leading one to think that this picture might have been more aptly titled “Phantom Thread” (even though that was already taken in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 release of the same name). Without giving anything away, it’s not too hard to figure out where things go from here, though, rather than address these issues in a straightforward, reasonably plausible manner, the material is presented in a series of overproduced quasi-surreal sequences that tend to muddy the waters more than to clarify them. The result is thus an offering that is innately thin (despite efforts to convince viewers otherwise) and that heavily emphasizes style over substance. There’s no denying that the filmmaker’s visual stylings are indeed impressive for the most part, especially in the performance numbers (though some of the ghost story backdrops are a little too Goth for my taste). Comparable praises can also be sung for the film’s soundtrack, vocals, choreography and set designs, all top notch. And the performances of the two leads are generally solid, despite the often-laughable quality of the material they’ve been handed to work with. In the end, though, these strengths can’t overcome the woefully intrinsic weaknesses of the story and screenplay of this overwrought drama/psychological thriller. In fact, in light of what’s on offer here, I truly believe I would have been more satisfied with a simple concert film instead.

David Lowrey’s last film was “The Green Knight,” which I gave 1.5 stars and called it “a tedious, pretentious slog” (my review). I can only go for 1 star this film. Anne Hathaway plays a superstar pop singer who travels to the home of her former best friend and costume designer (Michaela Coel) for a new dress. Thus begins a painfully tiresome interaction between the duo. In quiet tones with a languid pace, they interact with an endlessly low-key lack of energy. The usually dark cinematography doesn’t help. There are a few concert flashbacks that add nothing to the narrative and only break up the painful pace. This is an affected and deadly drama.