Critic Reviews

A singular, hypnotic, and formally unbound psychodrama that’s staged between a Lady Gaga-like diva (Anne Hathaway) and the only person who might be able to quiet her demons (Michaela Coel), this talky chamberpiece of a film is almost entirely confined to an unheated barn somewhere outside of London, and yet it grows to feel as vast as the synaptic gap that stretches between literalness and metaphor. A wound and its memory. A pop song and the person who wrote it.

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 not scary, nor is it particularly violent. But it does conjure an emotional and metaphysical weight that is practically impossible to shake off post-viewing. This is the most successful Lowery has been at evoking a sensory experience.

Writer-director David Lowery sets the stage for Mother Mary, but it’s Coel—playing the jilted, acidic fashion designer Sam Anselm—who steps out center stage. Coel dominates the screen, keeping all our senses at attention; though she has been in films before, Mother Mary feels like her grand entrance.

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.

A certain leap of faith is required. But for those believe that movies can get into your head and under your skin in ways that sometimes defy description, and tap into the same transcendent state that great pop music does — that sensation of temporarily floating into some other dizzying realm — this is for you. It isn’t the movie you think you’re walking into. Amen for that.

David Lowery’s latest is a visually fascinating chamber piece with great performances from Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel.

It’s a bold, gothic, compelling study of the cult of fame, the creative impulse, the fragile threads that bind. Every aspect of the film is carefully crafted and calibrated in service of Lowery’s distinctive vision, and, while it may prove divisive, it casts a hallucinatory spell.

The film is about the cost of success. It is about the emptiness of fame. It is about the companionship of women (in small groups and in vast stadiums). Those themes are expounded with an invention and wit that add bounce to a film draped in rich, oil-painterly gloom. Approach with the most open of minds.

A defiantly avant-garde take on commercial chart-toppers. It’s not for everyone, but it deserves to be: a gorgeous fusion of film, fashion, faith, and certified bangers.