Darren Aronofsky Archives - MovieManifesto

The Whale: Fat’s All, Folks

January 6, 2023January 5, 2023 Jeremy BeckReviews

The first time we see Charlie, the protagonist of Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, he’s masturbating to pornography on his couch. You might think that such a recreational pursuit would grant him enjoyment, but Aronofsky stages the scene with sober, funereal gloom. The lighting, by the cinematographer Matthew Libatique, is dark and muted; the music, by Rob Simonsen, is swollen and sinister. Charlie’s breathing is ragged, and the intensity of his effort presumably stems from his weight—a gargantuan 600 pounds. His obesity, we instantly realize, has plunged him into deep despair, such that even a ritual of pleasure has become a labor of misery.

Aronofsky is no stranger to depicting anguish, and Charlie shares with the director’s other heroes—the feverish addicts of Requiem for a Dream, the haunted dancer of Black Swan, the panicked housewife of mother!—an essential helplessness. Typically, Aronofsky amplifies this level of torment by wielding his own restless energy and rambunctious filmmaking imagination, but The Whale requires a more restrained approach. Based on a play by Samuel D. Hunter (who also wrote the screenplay), it’s an intimate chamber drama, set in a single location (Charlie’s Idaho home) and featuring minimal action or excitement. Read More

mother!: In a Pastoral Bliss, Houseguests Open the Gates of Hell

September 22, 2017May 7, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews

Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem in Darren Aronofsky's "mother!"

The first shot in mother!, Darren Aronofsky’s head-spinning fever dream of a movie, is of a woman wreathed in flame, gazing impassively into the camera. It’s a bracing introduction, but it’s fairly mundane when judged against the standards of this film, which treats—or perhaps torments—viewers with all manner of twisted, hallucinatory imagery. Is this testament to mother!’s genius or its inanity? The answer, even more so than with most pictures, is likely to be a matter of individual taste. Yet Aronofsky’s commitment to his demented vision is so absolute, so uncompromising, that mother! is all but certain to elicit a response, whether it be delight or disgust. By the time the closing credits roll on this maddening, mesmerizing movie, you may not be entirely sure what you just saw, but you’ll know for sure that you saw something.

What you see most of the time—and this is a decidedly sound piece of filmmaking strategy—is Jennifer Lawrence. For all the otherworldly sights in mother!—the bleeding floorboards and breathing walls, the glistening crystals and charred flesh—none is quite as compelling as its lead actress’ face. The camera, operated by Aronofsky’s longtime cinematographer Matthew Libatique, spends roughly half the film studying Lawrence in intimate close-up, watching in quiet amazement as she creates a topography of human emotion. Her eyes widening and narrowing, her countenance rippling into expressions of anger, confusion, and dismay, Lawrence pulls you in, trapping you inside her character’s headspace, a surreal nightmare from which there’s no escape. Read More