A film I consider to be “wild” is Mother! (2017), directed by Darren Aronofsky, in which Jennifer Lawrence (Mother) and Javier Bardem (Him) star. It follows the story of a pregnant woman and her husband living alone in the countryside. One night, a stranger appears at the door, and the husband allows him to stay. Eventually, the man’s wife and two sons also become guests in the home. The husband is protective over a crystal that the new couple ends up breaking. As the days go by, more people unexpectedly arrive at the house. The baby is due at any moment, and Mother wants everyone to leave, but her husband refuses. Eventually, Mother gives birth, and the people want to see it. She refuses, but her husband gives the baby to the crowd against her wishes. In the process of passing the baby around, the baby is accidentally killed, and the people begin to eat its corpse. Mother is angry at the crowd, and they begin to beat her until Him stops them. Determined to make them pay, she goes to the basement and causes the house to explode. Everyone but Him dies, and he goes to pull a crystal out of Mother, and the story begins again. The themes of this movie are violence, loss of humanity, and destruction. I consider this film “wild” because it showcases total human savagery and loss of inhibition. Throughout the movie, the guests destroy the home and become more uncivilized. Despite Mother’s pleas, the strangers in the house disregard her and cannot be tamed.
In one scene, the police enter the home which sends the mass of people into further disarray. I believe this scene best reflects the movie’s wildness through its sheer intensity. The director creates a sense of wildness and chaos through the quick-paced shots and sounds of screaming people. The scene intentionally overwhelms the viewer to emphasize the barbarity of the guests. This scene is impactful because it begins to show the true nature of the guests that have begun to take over the house.
Anna Allen
This film seems so intense! Its wild to think how all those events happen after the husband tries to do a nice thing by helping out a stranger. I’m curious on why the husband defied the mothers wishes on all those accounts. His actions seems unusual and I wonder if it had to do with the crystal. To add, the most wild thing is when you said that they eat the corpse of the baby. In our society eating animals is justified unless it is another human. However, I feel like eating a baby goes beyond that and is so cruel. As I watched the trailer, I began to understand how wild the people become and how careless they are. The house goes wild and even the police attacks the mother without regards to her being pregnant. Everyone there except the mother acts like an animal that hasn’t lived in a society and does what they want. It really showcases our true nature if we had been undomesticated.
I haven’t seen the whole movie but from what I’ve seen and read about it so far, the whole thing can be seen as sort of a theatrical, detached-from-reality depiction of humanity from a biblical perspective. Like the house is Earth, the mother is sort of a Mother Nature/Virgin Mary type of figure (depending on your belief system, I guess), and the father is sort of the traditional Christian God. That might even explain the scene where the father gives the people the baby because of how the traditional Christian God is often (but not always) depicted as loving and trusting of humans despite our numerous flaws. Also, I went down the youtube rabbit hole after watching the clip you linked in your post and I watched the scene where the brothers fight in the house which reminds me a LOT of the Cain & Abel story in the bible. Following this train of thought, maybe the people going wild in the house is a metaphor for humanity in the house created by God/Mother Nature being extremely destructive and violent. That seemed to be what you were getting at in your post too, I just found it cool that there might be this added biblical metaphor layer. I don’t know if any of that makes sense, but nonetheless, this film is truly a really interesting thing to think about especially in the context of wildness, morality, & humanity. Great choice!