mother!
mother! (2017) is a film directed by Darren Aronofsky that absolutely slayed me through second-hand embarrassment. There are so many palpably awkward and uncomfortable scenes in the beginning of the film between the Wife and Husband. 1
Over and over, the Wife’s needs are continually ignored by the Husband, who decides to prioritize the needs of the guests who appear at the house. He even goes so far as to offer everything the Wife intends for him to the guests that appear. The guests are more impolite, laying waste to the house that the Wife has put so much time and energy into fixing and renovating. 1
It feels like the film is an allegory for humankind’s environmental destruction of Mother Earth. The guests in the film never treat the house with respect and lay it to waste, taking from it whatever they please without regard. The film even ends with the wife literally lighting the entire house and its surroundings on fire, either killing or expelling all of the guests — much like how global warming threatens to do. However, the Husband remains unscathed and the film loops back to the beginning, suggesting that humans will always repeat the cycle of laying waste to our homes. 1