I haven't seen it yet, but from what I've heard, Darren Aronofsky's MOTHER! is a rather polarizing film. The story goes that after its release in Venice a few months ago, the horror thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer left several critics feeling divided as to what they'd just witnessed. In the wake of all the negative feedback, Aronofsky says that the experience has left him "traumatized," and that he doesn't "want to do anything right now" other than catch up on shows like RICK AND MORTY, GAME OF THRONES, and THE DEUCE.
The above quotes come courtesy of IndieWire's Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast, and were part of some larger comments shared by Aronofsky during the interview.
In extracting some of the conversation's most relevant bits, Aronofsky remarked about his plans now that MOTHER! is out in the wild.
“I don’t want to do anything right now. I want to chill out and relax and let it settle,” he said. “The way we finished this movie it was such a rush because the studio pulled our release date by a month, they wanted us to go to the festivals and come out big and see what’d happen and I was all game, but it just meant that I’d been working 20-hour days for a month. I didn’t have a summer. All of August was 20-hour days, literally seven days a week for five weeks. That was August. We finished. I had maybe a day or two off and I had to go get a suit for Venice. It was insane.”
Shortly thereafter, the BLACK SWAN director added that we shouldn't expect to hear from him anytime soon when he said, “I’m a little traumatized by the whole thing and I just want to relax for a little bit and catch up on ‘Rick and Morty’ season three and ‘Game of Thrones’ season seven and ‘The Deuce’ is coming out, so I got a lot of relaxing to do,” Aronofsky added. “Never mind, ‘Naked and Afraid XL’ season three.”
Oh wow! Netflix and Chill party at Aronfosky's place, you guys! Though to be fair, I can totally understand why he'd want to chill for a while before sinking his teeth into another project. Sometimes you just need a break, you know? Anyway, I'm going to go watch the movie, and see for myself what all the hubbub has been about.
MOTHER! was recently release on Digital, Blu-Ray, and DVD on December 19th.