Director Darren Aronofsky says his film "mother!" — a delirious nightmare starring Jennifer Lawrence — is a "roller-coaster ride."
Fittingly, it thrilled some viewers at the Venice Film Festival, and left others a bit queasy.
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Director Darren Aronofsky says his film "mother!" — a delirious nightmare starring Jennifer Lawrence — is a "roller-coaster ride."
A horror story that travels from menace to mind-bending mayhem, the movie was greeted with a mix of applause and boos from journalists Tuesday at the Italian festival, where it's one of 21 movies competing for the Golden Lion prize.
Mysterious houseguests, played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer, trigger unsettling events that get progressively weirder. Imagine a cross between "Rosemary's Baby" and the teeming hell-scapes of medieval artist Hieronymus Bosch.
Aronofsky, who won the Golden Lion in 2008 for "The Wrestler," acknowledged the movie was "a very, very strong cocktail."
Some critics were impressed by what a review in the Hollywood Reporter called the "madhouse bacchanal" of the film's final stretch. Others wondered what it all meant. Variety found it impressive but empty, a "baroque nightmare that's about nothing but itself."
Aronofsky said the movie is his "howl to the moon," provoked by anguish at the state of society and particularly the environment.
Actors Michelle Pfeiffer, from left, Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem pose for photographers at the premiere of the film 'mother!' at the 74th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)
A horror story that travels from menace to mind-bending mayhem, the movie was greeted with a mix of applause and boos from journalists Tuesday at the Italian festival, where it's one of 21 movies competing for the Golden Lion prize.
Lawrence and Javier Bardem play a couple — identified only as Mother and Him — living in that horror-flick staple, an isolated old house. He's a poet with writer's block, while she devotes herself to restoring the house after a devastating fire.
Director Darren Aronofsky poses for photographers at the premiere of the film 'mother!' at the 74th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)
Mysterious houseguests, played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer, trigger unsettling events that get progressively weirder. Imagine a cross between "Rosemary's Baby" and the teeming hell-scapes of medieval artist Hieronymus Bosch.
Actress Michelle Pfeiffer poses for photographers at the premiere of the film 'mother!' at the 74th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)
Aronofsky, who won the Golden Lion in 2008 for "The Wrestler," acknowledged the movie was "a very, very strong cocktail."
"Of course there are going to be people who are not going to want that type of an experience. And that's fine," he told reporters.
"I've been making it clear that this is a roller-coaster ride: only come on it if you are really prepared to do the loop-the-loop a few times."
Actress Jennifer Lawrence poses for photographers at the premiere of the film 'mother!' at the 74th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)
Some critics were impressed by what a review in the Hollywood Reporter called the "madhouse bacchanal" of the film's final stretch. Others wondered what it all meant. Variety found it impressive but empty, a "baroque nightmare that's about nothing but itself."
Aronofsky said the point of the film "is that it's a mystery."
"It's constantly surprising the audience," he said. "You don't know where it's going to go. And we didn't want to make the audience ever feel safe, because Jennifer's character in the movie never feels safe."
It's easy to see an environmental allegory in the film, about a house that is invaded, besieged, flooded and set on fire.
Actress Jennifer Lawrence poses for photographers upon arrival at the press conference for the film 'mother!' at the 74th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)
Aronofsky said the movie is his "howl to the moon," provoked by anguish at the state of society and particularly the environment.
He said that while most of his films take years, he wrote the first draft of the script in just five days.
"It just sort of poured out of me," he said.
"It came out of living on this planet and sort of seeing what's happening around us and not being able to do anything," the director added. "I just had a lot of rage and anger and I just wanted to sort of channel it."
Actress Jennifer Lawrence poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'mother!' at the 74th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)
Viewers expecting naturalism should probably stay home. Aronofsky said the film is an allegory. Before becoming "mother!" the movie's working title was "Day Six" — the day in the book of Genesis on which God created humanity and gave it dominion over the Earth.
That makes the characters as much archetypes as people — a challenge for the cast. Lawrence, who has portrayed a string of strong women, here plays a meek helpmeet who seems destined to suffer.
"It was a completely different character from anything I've ever done before, but it was also a different side of myself that I wasn't in touch with and I didn't really know, yet," said Lawrence, who is in a real-life relationship with Aronofsky. "There is a part of me that Darren really helped me get in touch with.
"It was difficult. It was the most I've ever had to pull out of myself," she said.
Like Aronofsky's ballet movie "Black Swan," the film depicts creative artists as in some ways monstrous, using and consuming those around them. And it touches on the way success and fame can be devouring, in bloody and disturbingly literal images.
Lawrence — who drew crowds of fans in Venice, as she does everywhere — said she tries in her life to "find the balance in myself" between being accessible and protecting her private space.
She said the film spoke "to the insatiable need that we all have now, especially with the internet. We just want more and more and more."
Though the movie is dark and disturbing, Aronofsky says he is an optimist about the fate of the planet.
"America is schizophrenic," he said. "We go from backing the Paris climate (accord) to eight months later pulling out.
"It's tragic, but in many ways we have revealed who the enemy is and now we can attack it."
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Phish has been performing for decades, but never has the band played the same show twice.
Over the 40 years since the band was formed at a Vermont college, Phish has amassed a reputation for its dedicated legion of fans and the dazzling light shows that accompany the improvisational jams. It follows, then, that the next stop for Phish is the new temple of immersive performances: the Sphere in Las Vegas.
Inaugurated with U2's 40-show residency, the $2.3 billion arena will offer Phish fans something they've definitely never seen — or felt — before.
Mind-blowing visuals run up, down and across the floor-to-ceiling screen, designed to be manipulated in real-time during the band’s long jams. A sound system features more than 1,600 speakers, allowing for a Trey Anastasio guitar line in one spot and a line from Page McConnell’s keys in another. Seats make you feel like you’re inside every drum kick from Jon Fishman or bass bomb from Mike Gordon.
Starting Thursday, Phish will play four shows, with new visuals each night — and no repeated songs, of course. Anastasio, the band's frontman, says fans will be able to discern a theme across the shows … and find lots of Easter eggs. The shows will be the first to be livestreamed from the Sphere as well on LivePhish.com.
“I love getting up in the morning and creatively thinking of another cool thing to blow people’s minds,” Anastasio says.
Anastasio talked to The Associated Press this week about the teamwork that goes into these shows, how their “giant rolling family” of fans keeps them going and whether there will ever be another Gamehendge.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
ANASTASIO: It’s extremely unique to any venue that we’ve played before. One of the things that we’ve tried to do is sculpt our show so that we can be the band that we always are and play to our strengths while simultaneously using the technology to kind of expand the elements of the show — like the adventure and the breaking free of boundaries.
ANASTASIO: Constantly. Daily. Yesterday. We dropped some things yesterday. It’s a constant process of waking up in the morning and looking for areas that we can improve. Everyone on the team is incredible, but the level of communication and proactive teamwork is hard to describe. And that’s what it takes to get something like this mounted. But yeah, there were ideas on what the thematic narrative that was going to run through the four nights that went on for a month. Then we landed on one. Then it was what songs we’re going to play, what the (visual) content was going to be, how literal we wanted to make it. The answer to that is not very literal. Our fans are really smart and really involved, and we wanted to take a night or so for people to figure out what we were doing, plant a lot of Easter eggs and things like that. But it’s a never-ending daily improvement.
ANASTASIO: We’re a very different band. We’ve never repeated a set and we didn’t want to start now. So we created four unique Sphere shows, top to bottom. There was a moment where we were discussing adding shows, because the tickets blew out pretty hard. And we decided as a team that they would be good, but not necessarily astounding — which is the level that we wanted to operate at — unless we just repeated the exact same show over again. The other thing is that Phish is such a wacky community that it kind of set up this scenario where a lot of people would probably want to come back. It’s just the way our fans are. It’s kind of like a big, giant rolling family or community or something like that.
ANASTASIO: Always. Always. I just love the feeling of being part of a group, working on something creative, especially when it’s firing on all cylinders and people communicate well. It’s been one of the great joys of my life. That’s what a band is. A good band is a family. It’s a team. It’s communication and listening and it’s hard to describe what a joy it is when you spend almost a year working on — like what we did last year (with a New Year’s Eve performance of the band’s epic set of “Gamehendge” songs, complete with stage actors and puppets). It’s like you feel like you’re alive. And the Sphere has been like that, too.
ANASTASIO: Huge. It’s everything. The fans and the community are everything. We have intelligent, focused fans and we have to honor that. You know, they’re not casual fans and that’s really cool. It’s an honor and it’s a massive responsibility. I feel like the longer this goes, the more we owe. The fans have supported us for 40 years — it’s our responsibility to keep raising the bar. Which is a great challenge. And it’s very unique. If you really look at the series of events that we continue to put on, that’s the thinking that goes behind it. You know, the fact that there were people in the audience last New Year’s Eve who have seen Phish 300 times, who were crying according to what I heard — and I was too, by the way — meant so much to all of us. It’s everything that we want. Which is to honor and respect the people that have been coming to see us for years. We feel like they’re family and they deserve our care and attention about every detail.
ANASTASIO: I don’t know, I actually don’t know. ... OK, first of all, I wanted to improve it. As soon as it was over I was like, “Oh, I know what I could have (changed).” So then I thought, “Oh, we should save all these props that are really — they’re really expensive.” But then it was kind of like, if there is, it’s going to be better, or it’s going to be built upon. Sort of the way this one was built upon. The previous one, even though it was 30 years ago. I hope it’s not 30 years. I’d like to do it. In the Phish world, it’s like the second it’s over … the next morning you wake up like I start working on the Sphere. Go meet (co-creative director Abigail Rosen Holmes) downtown at a coffee shop with a laptop and start riffing. I mean, I’m here in Vegas, and yesterday morning I was on a call (about this summer’s Mondegreen festival) with the coolest, smartest people who are working on that. Oh my God.
Page McConnell, keyboardist for the band Phish, poses for a photograph during an interview on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)
Abigail Rosen Holmes, show director and co-creative director for the band Phish's upcoming show at the Sphere, poses for a photograph during an interview on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)
Trey Anastasio, guitarist and singer-songwriter of the band Phish, gestures during an interview on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)
Trey Anastasio, guitarist and singer-songwriter of the band Phish, gestures during an interview on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)
Trey Anastasio, guitarist and singer-songwriter of the band Phish, poses for a photograph during an interview on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)
Trey Anastasio, guitarist and singer-songwriter of the band Phish, poses for a photograph during an interview on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)
