'Mother!' -- Vegan Film Analysis

Feb 27, 2020

"Violence begets violence."
-Neal Shusterman,
The Toll

Beware...

This is not a film for the faint of heart. While I don't know if I'd classify it as a horror movie, it certainly becomes quite surreal and horrifying and feels intensely claustrophobic at times. If you are sensitive to emotional manipulation, violence (especially toward women and children), or gore, maybe this isn't the movie for you. While there isn't much plot per se to spoil, other than the fact that this movie is about a couple whose home is overrun by fans of the husband's beautiful poetry, I will be discussing the climax in depth. So, let's delve in.

The Religious Interpretation

Mother! is not a movie that you can watch mindlessly; it forces you to think. On the surface level, it's clearly a religious allegory. The first act focuses more on ancient Christianity, primarily through a modern interpretation of the tale of Cain and Abel. The second act is more about modern religion and the lengths to which people will go in the name of whatever they worship and how we, as outsiders, view these strange customs.

We see this play out as Mother's home is destroyed by fanatics. Then the military arrives, and the house turns into an actual warzone, with people being executed left and right. However, there is a huge exception as the film draws to a close. After Mother gives birth, her husband -- this "prophet" poet all these fanatics have flocked to their house to see -- takes the baby away to show his followers, who then take him and accidentally kill him. Then, they all take a piece of flesh and eat it. Clearly, the baby is a symbol of Jesus and the cannibalism is the Eucharist. It seems that the writer-director was mainly going for this overtly religious tone, but there are still many other ways to interpret the story.

The Environmental Interpretation

Mother's house is beautifully situated in an open clearing surrounded by forest. This version of Mother represents Mother Nature. The invaders to her home are us, humans. We are completely oblivious to the damage we're doing to her home, but she, being the caretaker of this sanctuary can see exactly everything we're doing to destroy it. She keeps yelling at us to stop destroying the house, to get out, but we don't listen until it's completely demolished. First, this is by water as a pipe bursts and floods the kitchen. Second, at her breaking point after losing everything and everyone important to her after losing her child, she sets the house ablaze, killing everyone inside, including herself. We're destroying our only home, and the planet is trying to warn us that what we're doing is wrong, as hurricanes annihilate countries and fires ravage forests. Yet we still don't listen. As long as it's not our personal home, as long as someone else is the collateral damage, we can continue in blissful ignorance.

The Agricultural Interpretation

Obviously, as a vegan, this is my preferred way to interpret this movie, though I know that this is in no way what it's intended to represent. To me, Mother represents all the mothers used for breeding in animal agriculture, primarily in the dairy industry. She is basically viewed as worthless, not even acknowledged by the fans -- representing dairy consumers -- or even her own husband until they need something from her. Usually, she relents to their requests, but when she finally stands up to them, she's met with foul insults or physical abuse (or both).

When she gives birth to her baby, her husband -- representing a farmer -- drunk off the adoration from his fans, tries to take him away from her, but she stays awake holding him tight. After at least a full day has passed, sleep finally gets the better of her. Even though she dozes off for just a moment, it's long enough for her husband to remove the child from her grasp and send him into the voracious waiting arms of the fans, so eager to hold the child of their messiah. She has to watch, and listen, as the baby screeches, being bobbled around carelessly over the crowd; she sees his neck bend unnaturally and the snap resonates through the crowd, who are, for once, silenced as she wails in agony. By the time she reaches him, his fragile little body is nothing but a gory carcass, with the fanatics each eagerly tasting pieces of his flesh. Then, her husband tells her to forgive them because they had the best intentions. This is eerily similar to what mother cows go through on dairy farms, with their days-old children being taken away from them forever and killed or similarly exploited to produce milk for hungry carnists.

Even though watching a human baby being killed, however accidental, is incredibly disturbing, the most traumatizing part to me, oddly, was seeing the baby carried off from Mother's perspective in the distance; we hear him crying loudly and see urine start to spray all over. I'm not sure if infants can feel fear, but the body often naturally responds to trauma in this way, even if the mind isn't consciously aware of what is actually happening. It reminded me of when I was working at a doggy daycare and had to break up the worst dogfight I'd ever personally witnessed. Well, it wasn't a fight as much as an attack because the dog being bitten was screaming in fear and lost all control of his bodily functions. After we finally broke it up, there was urine and feces everywhere.

I can't imagine how frightened I would have to be, scared enough to think that I would actually die, for that to happen. And then I think of the dozens of billions of farm animals slaughtered for food every year. I think of the videos I've seen from vigils and the amount of feces on the floor and dripping down the sides of slaughter trucks as these animals, also babies, are driven to their demise. I wonder how many of those billions of individuals literally shit themselves with fear. I'm sorry to use that kind of language, but I think it's necessary. If you're not disgusted and infuriated by the fact that you once, or still do, caused someone to be terrified enough, knowing that they were about to be killed for absolutely no reason, to do that, then...I guess I don't have a response to that. It must be sad to live that way.