Maxence_G

Those who liked it, those who disliked it, horror fans, everybody gets out of the theater shaken and "ill-at-ease".

Titane is a big hyperbole, of which the bizarreness of its synopsis is one instrument out of many. When it screams: "Listen what I got to say", it forces you to listen attentively. The viewer's reaction is an integral part of the experience in the sinister vision of feminism, paternity, gender identity that Julia Ducourneau proposes.

Without restraint or complacency, it will crush your prejudices, shake your vision of the world. That is why the bizarreness is at once essential to itself and the themes. It is at once, the bizarreness to shock, to catch the attention, and the hyperbole to make the themes understood.

In substance, most of the film deals with unconditional love, more precisely with son-father unconditional love. Or, conversely on how the two protagonists, Alexia and Vincent, needed respectively to be given endearment and to give it.

Julia Ducourneau seems to demand a lot of commitment on her actor's part, but it pays off. Both actors, Agathe Rousselle - in her first role for cinema, a role of physicality, nuance, and duality of genders - and Vincent Lindon - also a very physical role - are incredible.

I think lastly, in Titane, we can feel a love for experimental/edgy cinema. Lots of people have cited Cronenberg and body horror as an influence. And, indeed, it is an important part of Ducourneau's artistic style, especially regarding how she deals with gender identity. But, I also see in the opening sequence references to Kenneth Anger's Kustom Kar Kommandos. Anyway, it's a nice bonus that I appreciate.

In the vein of his acclaimed film Black Swan (2010), Mother! Will nevertheless confound and bore those who do not know the director's body of work. As the film derives to complete mayhem, Aronofsky perfectly knows the absurdity of the plot lets most amateurs nowhere to hold onto. He expects the criticism of "pretentiousness". We can compare this view of things to The Tree of Life (2011), just to cite a recent example. However, far from me, the idea of putting Mother! On the same level as Terrence Malick's masterpiece. These are two films where the plot can't be understood without comprehension of the director's intention.

Mother starts slowly. The horror/supernatural is present but hidden from the viewer's eyes. Only through Jennifer Lawrence's incredible performance, can we detect something isn't right in the tranquil existence. Something is supernatural. In Lawrence's performance, there is both the worry of the stranger through the eyes of a neglected wife and the worry of the supernatural through the eyes of a mystical human being. This grows more and more obvious as we witness Mother's ability to feel the house's heartbeat (when she touches the walls).

Aronofsky to mixes opposite genres of horror - the subtle kind of horror I talked about earlier to a feverish horror - first misleads the viewer, objects first seen as psychological trigger points disappear for most of the film before becoming full-fledged mystical artifacts. The same goes for events and certain characters which progressively seem to adopt a quasi-religious role.

As a matter a fact, as noted by practically everyone, there is a lot of allegories to religion, love, life, and even some to politics. One, for example, is the prophet embodied by Javier Bardem. The film has tackled an impressive amount of themes. Some will already be dizzy midway through.

Another trick, of Aranofsky's, is to play temporality. There is the temporality of Mother and the temporality of the others. Initially hinted at the beginning by the "alarm clock" scene, characters don't live on the same schedule. Exponentially, the two timelines estrange from each other to create chaos and mayhem only perceptible by the protagonist, Mother.

Lastly, the camera, one of the most important elements in the mix of horror genres. Following Mother closely, at the start, with lots of close-ups and tracking shots, it progressively detaches from the protagonist to show us a crowd or to isolate the characters.

In this review, if I focused on the great elements of Mother! Note that I have a few reservations concerning characters and the way some turning points are brought up. I can not go into details without spoiling, unfortunately. I would also like to warn viewers who aren't into formalism because I'm disappointed to read that so many felt that this film was pretentious.

Even though I believe cinema and comic books have different appeals which can't be transposed or copied on each other without a part of its message being lost in translation. Sin City's aesthetic qualities and original ideas were nevertheless unique in their style in the 2000s. Indeed, like the eponymous graphic novel, the motion picture questioned the conventions on the form and impacted its respective medium. We still see the impact of this new ideology, namely in Zack Snyder's Post-300 work.

Part of Sin City's greatest innovation consists of the use of black and white, contrast, light, etc, that for a film exaggerating on film-noir, and pulp novels characteristics, is effective. There are also the sparely used dominant colors, not always where we expect them, not only accentuating scenes, but effectively triggering unexpected emotions from the viewer, colors that stick with us after the viewing, we can associate with moments, characters, so on. There is visual research with these colors that, not so surprisingly since Frank Miller co-directed the film, is much more pertinent and original than Schindler's List.

If, as I detailed above, I consider Sin City's aesthetic as a meticulous work on the form. The same thing can't be said for the content. It is often forgotten that Frank Miller is very engaged politically. That his graphic novels aren't just entertaining sexy/violent adventures of tortured heroes. We have seen it more recently with Holly Terror. His political views aren't the most nuanced and subtle. Sin City, for instance, criticizes corrupted/amoral authority and nazism. It disappoints me that his visual style merely covers up the flaws of his screenwriting. I notice this also in the depiction of women, always the preys, the victims of men, unless they fit his political ideas (the women of Old Town)

All that taken into account, Sin City isn't the masterpiece everyone has been raving about. Regardless, it can be seen by the general public as it was intended by Robert Rodriguez, as entertainment. And, possibly Robert Rodriguez's finest entertainment.