While I myself am not a woman of religion I am able to recognize the symbols of a Christian god and his followers within the movie "Mother!" starring Jennifer Lawrence as the captivating lead. The plot of the movie is gut-wrenching despite having no intense action as compared to a movie such as "Hunger Games" but it relies heavily on the human psyche and hidden details. Lawrence's character is an unnamed wife who tends to an old style home while her husband struggles to put words on a page to publish his next poetic piece.
General plot
Approximately just over nine months passes throughout the whole of the movie, however, as an audience we see about three days plus or minus some daylight hours total on screen.
Lawrence's character is a shy, crowd rattled woman who would rather spend her days alone with her husband and avoid any company within her space.
When an overly interested man comes along looking for a place to stay he rudely brings his wife home with him to spend some nights. They make a mess around the home, rudely persist into unauthorized areas and even break a precious crystal that the husband owns from a childhood disaster. Later, the strange couple's children track the parents down aggressively to fight over the father's will.
A rough fight spins out of control after a few quick minutes of introduction to new characters and the female lead is traumatized into watching a man die before her eyes at the hands of his brother.
The husband, along with the two strangers rush the dying son to the hospital while the murderer is set loose in the woods leaving Lawrence's character alone and afraid.
The man who killed his brother startles Lawrence's character as she finds disturbing, bloody holes and spatters around the home and she is saved in the nick of time by the arrival of her husband.
The two fall into an argument about communication and even the fact of whether they wanted children or not and the female lead accuses her husband of not wanting to have sex. An aggravated push and pull of kissing and biting leads to the characters making love and getting pregnant with no complications.
The plot skips ahead almost nine months and the next scene shows Lawrence's character showing a rather round belly as her husband proudly shows off his finished poem.
This leads to a dinner celebration in the evening and things go rapidly and dangerously downhill once the husband decides to let a crowd of fans invade their home.
Superficially the final arc of the movie appears to be a fan riot gone horribly wrong. The fans break things within the home, they loot and burn and push and shove leaving the female lead distressed and fearful. Police arrive and a shooting takes place. Even men in riot gear storm the home and the lead finds herself pinned against walls multiple times as she tries to find safety for herself and the baby.
Men and women are being shot all around her, dying in all corners of the home, and just as this all happens the life inside her tries to break free.
Lawrence's character is found by her husband, pulled upstairs, and hidden away in the husband's study to give birth to a beautiful boy.
The next day the three hide within the study as the female lead keeps her son tight in her arms, but exhaustion finally takes her over and the baby is taken from her by the husband to be displayed like a king to the obsessed fans outside the door.
\When the wife sees this she races to get her son back but the crowd is anxious to touch him, to hold him, and in their excitement, the baby's neck is snapped and he dies instantly. Lawrence's character screams in agony and disgust when she finds the body on a table ripped to pieces as his body is consumed by the circle of fans around her.
In a rage of heartbreak and horror, the wife runs into a boiler room and ignites the entire home in flames in an attempt to kill herself and all those around her. In the end, the last people standing are a burnt up wife and the wholly cleaned husband holding her in his grasp. He tells her he loves her, tries to make her understand that the love they received was well worth the death of their son, but the wife begs him to end it.
In compliance, the husband rips out the wife's heart and crushes it to ash, revealing the pure crystal from earlier which he places back on his mantle, restoring the house to as it was before and revealing a new wife to take Lawrence's place, indicating the whole situation would replay for all eternity.
Hidden symbols
While the movie did leave me with an upset stomach and a racing heart I was able to pinpoint the religious symbolism hiding in plain sight throughout the entire film. In brief, the husband represents God himself with the wife being his lover or rather Mother Earth. The home in which they live is the earth itself and the fans are the loyal followers to the gospel, with the crystal representing the forbidden fruit of Eden.
Mother Earth is loyal and loving to God, just as the wife adores her husband and listens to his rules. She forbids the strange couple from going into the husband's study-Eden-and touching the delicate crystal from the husband's past (the apple from the garden of Eden).
When the couple breaks those rules and subsequently breaks the crystal, the husband (God) loses his temper and banishes the couple from his home and from his previous compassion. As God is known for doing, however, the husband forgives the couple and holds the hand of their son as he dies later in the film as the Christian God would do for any of his followers (if that's their belief).
As the movie continues more symbols are revealed as is done in the scene where the wife finds hidden holes and broken walls within the home that lead her to see disgusting or dirty effects of having guests in her home. This compares to the earth in which we live where the earth provides us with a blank slate and Mother Earth tends to the earth and introducing humans to the setting results in destruction and violence.
During the funeral party, this is expanded on when the wife pleads with a couple to get off her sink and they ignore her. The couple even bounces on the sink to prove a point and the end result is a broken sink and horribly cracked wall and the wife throws a tantrum to send everyone out of the house. In reality, it's the way the Mother Earth we can imagine, might react with global warming and hurricanes etc in response to us humans ignoring the environment around us and simply doing as we please.
Finally, the end of the movie holds the most power in terms of symbolism. Once the wife gives birth, her son is a messiah to the fans inside her home and she desires to keep him close and keep him safe.
On the other hand, the God or husband in the film wishes to take the boy and flaunt him to the crowd to show what other beauty he is capable of creating aside from his poetry.
The zealot fans lose control of their faith and love, and kill the day old infant as a result, crushing and blackening the heart of the wife and destroying the capability of tenderness she had for her home, for the earth, for her child, and for the people her husband wants to take care of. The symbol hidden here is of God wanting love and adoration from his followers because he gives them a message they may interpret as they please, and Mother Earth's desire to protect what she must (her home and her child)
When neither of those desires can be realized, the wife sets her home ablaze and her husband lies her down in his arms.
From here the religious tone takes over as Mother Earth lies burnt in effect of human senselessness and God remains untouched and unburnt.
He rips out Mother Earth's burnt and damaged heart and crushes it to take back the apple of Eden (the crystal) and he places it back where it came from in his garden (the study). The world around him turns from black to white, burnt to cleaned, dead to alive and he is given the chance to start again, forgiving the sins of his followers and allowing them to have another chance at his love at the cost of Mother Earth's life. She herself us reborn with the world so she may try again at nurturing the home, her earth, and has a new face to match the new world.
While I may not speak for all of those who follow the word of God, it is hard to say that there is absolutely no Christian symbolism woven into this movie.
It was slow, fast, intriguing, and completely horrifying all in one sitting. I recommend watching it for the literary standpoint, though I do send caution as there are several gruesome images throughout.
