I have to say that given a night's sleep, mother! was the first thing on my mind this morning and to be honest, it's still there inviting me to explore it further. I tried to get the full blast of the experience under some control by diluting it with the Kingsman sequel but no... Kingsman: Golden Circle is great fun but you can't clean blood up with a meringue. Hand on heart, I thought I'd be covering Kingsman and letting mother! slip by. I'm shocked it's the other way around and also somewhat delighted. Cinema is alive! I have had the same level of reaction to mother! as I had to Dogville. Yes, it's that good. It is extremely rare for a studio to make such a statement (above) in support of their creatives just after a film's release and subsequent box office nose dive. The execs are either clinking champagne glasses or burying their heads at the wonderful or woeful cold, hard numbers. But all that is usually kept well out of the public eye. Ms. Colligan cares deeply about the film and I applaud her for it. But she's asking people to accept that there can be a wider palette of cinema than is currently available. She's right to widen the net but the net of true originality has much wider holes. Embrace filmic innovation by all means but mother! is a radical, allegorical drama with some explicitly difficult ideas and imagery that doesn't pander once to the perception of what works to guarantee an audience. I qualify that as a positive aspect of the film. Number crunchers will think me mad. Let's face it; most people will be challenged beyond their own tolerance to enjoy a film like this. You don't 'enjoy' films like mother! unless you're somewhat masochistic. But to take the challenge of artistic interpretation is, to me, like swallowing water in a desert. It's a tough sell and it stars Jennifer Lawrence, one of the very few movie stars whose presence 'opens' a picture. Those two facts should not be neighbours as true as they are. You could pack your movie with the cast of the Avengers and with a film like this one, you'd still not get back your investment. I salute Paramount for getting behind this film in this way. Yes, you could see the statement as a rallying cry of "We want to make more money!" but I'm not buying that. I think her words are heartfelt and sincere. How naïve does that make me?

mother!. Even the title is problematic. The lowercase 'm' and the exclamation mark... It's a verb too remember as well as a noun. It's also the title of one of the boldest movies of recent years, one that in a screening I attended yesterday provoked verbal exasperation; "Oh, for fuck's sake..." being heard at least twice from my left and laughter from the couple seated behind me. I sat there, took it all in and naturally recoiled at some of the sharper and more disturbing imagery and ideas but as an artistic accomplishment in the medium of film, the work is astonishing. There is no way I can write a review or touch upon the movie's many levels without vomiting spoilers, a fact Trevor Johnston of Sight and Sound had to warn his readers about in his insightful piece on the film ahead of the magazine's review in next month's issue. So I will make this review short. I'll allude to events rather than state them specifically. mother! has seeped into my darker recesses. And it's not going anywhere for a while. When it's more well known, perhaps at its Blu-ray launch, I'll re-review it so I can talk about it in more detail. The feast is a sumptuous one but not for those easily offended or those with an intolerance to horror. A partial synopsis will read like so much flour, eggs, cocoa powder and sugar. It's only at the end of the film do you see the beautifully iced but dark chocolate cake. I booked my ticket online utterly confused by the artwork on display thinking that Paramount's marketing department was off its trolley. It was only afterwards I realised that the web page was showing only the top half of the poster. I'll say nothing about it but will let the poster speak for itself...

Any meaningful interpretation of mother! requires rules. Without the framework, one that the viewer is required to impress upon the drama, the events are meaningless. The movie's very first image (you can hardly call that a spoiler) is a woman, not easily recognisable, beaten and bruised and in flames and in apparently no distress. This should have told me something from the start. What you'll read in most reviews is the following synopsis: Javier Bardem plays 'Him' a writer's blocked poet and Jennifer Lawrence, plays 'mother!' a frustrated interior decorator. She is doing up a grand house that once burned to the ground. She wants to make the home "a paradise" – there's one clue to a reading right there. Physically located far from anywhere, we are surprised as much as Lawrence is by a knock on the door. Bardem takes in a stranger, an intrusive and creepy Ed Harris shortly followed by his wife, Michele Pfeiffer, who manages to make me feel unwelcome in my own cinema. Here the clues start to show themselves. During their first socially inappropriate open mouth kiss, all I could think was "Yuck, he's just finished a cigarette..." These strangers do not act like human beings. Wait. Let me qualify that. They act like the very worst visitors and like Lawrence, we are repelled by them and their astounding moral digressions and blunt, unapologetic rudeness. It's during these scenes that the intimation of allegory started to tap me on the shoulder. I am not watching 'real' people in a realistic domestic setting. Something is seriously 'off'. Writer/director Aronofsky has something much different in mind for us. This is what's known in the trade as 'an understatement'. Bardem makes a lot of excuses for his rude guests because we are told that they are fans of his work. In retrospect, this is when a key (certainly not the only key) starts to playfully tease its lock. Once the rude couple's sons turn up, you'd have to be a bit slow on the uptake to think that you are watching a household drama with any resemblance of normality. Here, the full allegorical power of the piece starts to exert its sure and subtle grip. To say any more of the plot would be disrespectful to you and the filmmaker but you do need to be warned. Aronofsky, Bardem and Lawrence do not flinch on their way down the steps to hell...

Directorially, mother! should slowly grind you down – perhaps this was the intention. Eighty per cent of the film is Jennifer Lawrence in mid shot and close up. We are anchored to her throughout the film with barely a let up. To facilitate this dizzyingly relentless point of view, the surround sound work is first class and I spent most of the first half hour of the movie extremely nervous. Aside from a song over the closing credits, there is no music but the sound design is exemplary. The acting is absolutely superb across the board and all power to Lawrence for having the guts to play this role. There is a moment in the film that is so horrendously brutal that allegory or not, you feel every blow (and still in mid shot to close up on Lawrence). Because of this repetitive framing, every time Bardem's face comes into shot, it seems supernaturally enlarged. Like everything in the film, you feel directorial intention by the bucket load. There is a huge and satisfying irony evinced by the directorial style that living the film through Lawrence's character belies until the very end. Personally, this was one of the film's most pleasing moments and revelations and you're not getting a peep out of me about that here.