Lowery’s pop-star exploration gets bogged down by metaphors and self-importance
Writer/director David Lowery (Pete’s Dragon, A Ghost Story, The Green Knight) is one the finest visual directors working today. Lowery’s deliberately paced stories pack surprisingly emotional gut punches, and he doesn’t let his distinct style get in the way of the story. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for his latest film, Mother Mary, a musical surrealist drama. Inviting audiences to interpret the events of a film’s ending, or major moments, or striking visuals, is one thing, but requiring audiences to fill in the narrative gaps while interpreting the events of a story is a tall task, and a distracting one. Mother Mary has visual panache and vibing music, but lacks a complete story, instead relying on pretentious dialogue and dreamlike imagery to gloss over its shortcomings.
Mother Mary stars Anne Hathaway as the titular pop star (the upcoming The Devil Wears Prada 2) and Michaela Coel (The Christophers) as Mother Mary’s former fashion designer. After a bizarre mishap at a concert, Mother Mary pays a surprise visit to Sam Anselm (Coel) in the latter’s large fashion estate outside of London. The two have not seen each other since their professional and emotional relationship was severed years before. Mother Mary asks Anselm for a new dress for her upcoming comeback concert, leading to the two ladies spending the ensuing few days and nights sparring with verbal barbs, poking into each other’s emotional depths, and reopening old wounds while discovering a shared metaphysical experience.
We don’t know much about Mother Mary or Anselm’s background, or the details of their broken relationship. We don’t know why they each carry such complex emotional baggage (and speak slowly and philosophically about it). Mother Mary’s script sprinkles tiny hints, but doesn’t bother clearing the air of any knowledge gaps, leaving the audience sputtering to care about either character. Musical sequences at Mother Mary’s concerts are sublimely choreographed and shot, and the music itself, consisting of original songs by Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff, and FKA Twigs, is catchy and energetic.
Mother Mary would’ve been better served as a fictional concert film, since the energy gets drained whenever the film returns to the slow-paced two-hander of Hathaway and Coel, despite their strong performances. Both actresses do what they can with the pretentious material they’ve been given. Hathaway and Coel stare in disbelief, constantly shed tears, and utter profoundly obtuse dialogue about the dark depths that the creative process goes to, where emotional bowels are scooped out in service of crafting a dress or pop song that has the potential to define oneself with perfect clarity. In one scene, Mother Mary performs a planned dance to her newest song for Anselm. Lowery uses the dance’s animalistic rawness (there’s no musical accompaniment) to punctuate the inner turmoil at the core of a pop song’s origination and intention. Exploring the creative process this way would have been more potent if the dance scene was in direct opposition to more relatable, less figurative scenes surrounding it. Instead, the dance scene’s rudimentary uniqueness blends into the film’s nonstop metaphorical messiness.
The Mother Mary soundtrack is the most awe-inspiring result of the film’s production, and the aspect most deserving of replay. The soundtrack album, titled Mother Mary: Greatest Hits, and consisting of seven songs performed by Hathaway, is full of legitimate bangers. Mother Mary’s visuals are also impressive. Lowery and his team have crafted a handful of masterful tracking shots, which are only possible through exacting choreography, blocking, and edits. The surreal color saturations and otherworldly sequences are beautifully shot. If only the story could’ve met the high standards of the music and visuals, perhaps Mother Mary’s comeback tour would’ve been a bigger success.
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Mother Mary opens in theaters on Friday, April 24th.
