Like the great novels dissected in every honors literature class, Mother Mary is not a love story and it’s not a ghost story. It is a feast of metaphors to be devoured and tasted and dissected. Watching this movie feels like engaging in textual analysis, down to the presence and symbolism of the color red. Much like those classes spent analyzing and parsing dense texts, one sentence at a time, Mother Mary is an exercise in patience and theory. In the most neutral sense of the word, Mother Mary is a slog. Its metaphors are tedious, repetitive, and heavy-handed. Again, that’s not a judgement value. There can be craft in tedium and repetition.
There was clearly a ton of care poured into this script, this set, and this film. In a conversation with Sean Fennessey at an early screening of the film, Writer-Director David Lowery (The Green Knight, A Ghost Story, Pete’s Dragon) described the writing and filming process as iterative and collaborative, saying that even while filming, he wanted everyone to feel good about what they were creating, so at all moments they were all checking in with each other and reworking as they went. His descriptions of the set are not surprising; you can tell while watching that the entire cast and crew bought into what was going on (so much so that they felt like they were “conjuring something on set”), which is critical to the film’s success. If even one person was on a different page, this project would fall apart. But for all that they conjured, and all of the layers of textual analysis that they built, I just wish they had conjured something more interesting.
The first act of the film is a two-hander chamber piece featuring Anne Hathaway as the titular Mother Mary and Michaela Coel as her estranged friend/stylist Sam. Mother Mary shows up on Sam’s doorstep, damp and distressed, requesting a dress. The two circle each other, clearly weighed down by their history and unclear which is the prey and which is the predator. Unfortunately, neither actually strikes, and the two spend almost the entire run-time slowly exhausting themselves physically circling each other and talking in circles. Their exhausting conversation is occasionally broken up by flashes of Mother Mary performing under flashing lights, singing her religiously-coded lyrics in front of thousands of screaming fans. The visuals of the movie are stunning, particularly in the changes of lighting between Mother Mary on stage and Mother Mary and Sam cryptically talking about their past in the darkness of Sam’s converted barn studio. Everything in the movie is textured; beautiful fabrics, the lighting on Michaela Coel’s cheekbones, the dusty wood floors of the barn, the water in Anne Hathaway’s hair (seriously, she’s damp for almost the entire movie), the tears in Anne Hathaway’s eyes, the rich wallpaper on the walls.
The dialogue attempts to be similarly textured, weaving together metaphors and riddles to attempt to build intrigue. But these metaphors collapse under their own weight. There are a million variations of metaphors for rebirth and cleansing—a snake on Mother Mary’s arm, rainstorms and baths, Mother Mary shedding her clothes like a snakeskin, a silent dance resembling an exorcism, an actual exorcism, red fabric being ripped from the body of Mother Mary, references to holy communion. There are similarly several metaphors for self-protection and reluctance to connect in relationships—images of Mother Mary and Sam in their youth where Mother Mary is wearing armor, draped fabrics that resemble metal, references to Joan of Arc, so many conversations about doors being closed and locked, scissors everywhere (used to symbolize a weapon, a key to a door, and a way to sever connections). In one of her many monologues, Michaela Coel’s Sam describes how she gave pieces of herself to the dresses she previously designed for Mother Mary, including a callback to her own holy communion where she spilled wine down the front of her dress. This metaphor is literalized in the red fabric ghost entering Mother Mary’s body, then being extricated from Mother Mary’s body, then being shaped into the final dress, and then again being used to physically connect Mother Mary and Sam in a dream-like sequence.
In Mother Mary’s own words, “These metaphors are exhausting.” Despite the beauty of the actresses and the set, the barrage of symbolism and the emotional labor steeped in every step of the process make this a thoroughly exhausting movie to sit through with very little payoff. Even the musical performances are low energy songs filled with religious symbolism. The highlight of the film is a beautiful sequence following Mother Mary through a series of performances, walking between stages while literally being supported and uplifted by her backup dancers. It’s a stunning visualization of the weight of fame and the idolization of a person. And, more than anything, it’s a teaser for what we could have had—a version of this movie where Lowery shows more than he tells, where the endless monologues are replaced by what he does best, and where the audience is allowed to be covered by and immersed in the rich textures of the story and the relationships.
There’s an interesting film buried somewhere in here, but this version of it feels like when the dress wears the woman instead of the other way around. It is overwrought, overcontextualized, and overconceptualized with an execution that isn’t quite brave enough to cut away the excess. Anne Hathaway is at the peak of her powers but spends the two hours of this film being meek and tearful, despite allegedly being the most powerful and important pop star in the world. Mother Mary would have benefited from her being allowed to play like Blanchett in Tàr; let her be rageful, humorous, horny, scared, confident, insecure, and sad. Let her wear the dress.
