Over the past few months as I’ve continued to rewatch my favorite film of last year, The Testament of Ann Lee, it has developed deeper personal meaning for me each time. On first blush, David Lowery’s Mother Mary feels like it could evolve into that impactful of a film for me. I stress “for me” in both cases because I totally understand why these films won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. In Mother Mary’s case, this is because it is an operatic indulgence on Lowery’s part, and I was happy to indulge him from beginning to end here.
Lowery is a filmmaker whose work I’ve followed from almost the very start of his career, and which I’ve sort of grown up with in a way. I remember seeing St. Nick, his second micro-budget feature film, at the St. Louis International Film Festival in 2009 when I was a sophomore in high school. His folksy sensibilities were apparent then, and he has since adapted them to fit a western (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints), the best Disney remake (2016’s Pete’s Dragon), an existentialist musing starring a bedsheet-wearing ghost (A Ghost Story), and a gorgeous Arthurian-flavored medieval epic (The Green Knight). A Ghost Story found me in a time of severe grief and mourning, and it really spoke to me on that basis, so I do feel a fair amount of personal connection to Lowery’s work. Mother Mary finds me at a different stage of my life, one in which I’m re-evaluating goals and relationships and what it means to be fulfilled. The film is a heightened version of this kind of exploration, starring Anne Hathaway as the titular pop star and Michaela Coel as Sam, her original costume designer — and former lover.
Mother Mary incorporates Lowery’s penchant for arthouse horror without being singularly pinned down to any one genre. I think it’s best described as a romantic horror pop opera — perhaps the first of its kind. Amid all of these heightened elements, however, the thing which initially grabbed me about the movie as I was watching it was the fact that it miraculously remains grounded by focusing on conversations between Mary and Sam. These are so impeccably written and acted; the script could easily be produced as a one-act play, and it would be one of the best you’d ever seen, at least as long as Hathaway and Coel were the leads. Although we don’t get a huge amount of specifics on their backstory — the film plays out mostly in Sam’s large backyard work shed after Mary has asked her for a new dress for the first time in years — the actors bring so much depth of feeling to their characters that we completely understand their dynamic. Even before the events which separated the couple, Sam seems to have always been the icier one, her teasing unable to land as well as it probably once did now that Mary is in a state of emotional crisis. It’s a verbal game of one-upmanship until the heart of the film kicks into high gear.
That Hathaway is as gutsy and dynamic as ever should come as no surprise. Rising star Coel, however, commands much of this film, and she is an utter revelation. Both characters break down several emotional barriers here, but the story goes as Sam goes because Mary is trying to break through to Sam’s softer side. Their dynamic is heartbreaking because it’s so relatable. If you’ve lived long enough, you probably have a love story in your life as epic as this one, or at least a “one that got away.” In my view, Lowery is exploring what it’s like to love someone, and how haunting that can often be. The struggle of getting the stars to align can be as ethereal and terrifying as anything in the horror canon. The heart can be a scary thing in and of itself, as it can be our greatest villain in life just as easily as it can be our most noble hero.
All of this analysis is to say nothing of the wonderful costume design by Bina Daigeler, the excellent original songs by Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff, and FKA Twigs (who also plays a crucial acting role in the film), and the absolutely stunning cinematography by Andrew Droz Palermo and Rina Yang. I assume that if you’re not as in tune with some of the core ideas of this film as I was, you probably won’t think quite as highly of its technical accomplishments. However, even taken purely as a piece of visual and auditory art, Mother Mary is hard to totally dismiss, like an old flame brought back to mind by a piece of clothing or a memorable needle drop. | George Napper
