I have some vague recollection of 1998, the year Darren Aronofsky saw the release of his first feature film Pi.  Four years out of high school, I was excelling grade wise in college but finding it extremely difficult to understand even a little bit what my life was supposed to be doing.  Looking back with a lifetime of experience, I can finally diagnose a few of the things that were troubling me, but even sitting here now I find the whole experience to that point and beyond to be a bewildering series of misunderstandings that require a level of unsustainable maintenance.  I saw that film at the local art house theater in Royal Oak, Michigan and adored it, yet haven't seen it since.  Just some vague recollection of the lead character Max, in black and white, putting a drill to his head in an act of contemporary trepanation in a finale that resonated with my own discomfort.

Watching Mother! for the first time for this podcast, the discomfort Aronofsky brings to the screen shines through a very different lens for me.  Perhaps the discord in each of us is the same, but the idea of relating to it in any meaningful way has gone from an exercise in empowerment to one of reinforced defeat.  Deign to hold something dear and dare yourself to not see it erode before your very eyes.  This seems to be at least some core theme that runs through the director's work, but the blunt darkness by which he does so, without an ounce of gratitude to be found among the strife of his characters creates a feeling in me of existential dread that I'm having a hard to shaking, even while trying to write this little journal piece to go along with the episode.

I'm not sure what I'm getting at.  It's been a tough week in a life that should have been much easier than it's been but won't ever be.  To that extent, Aronofsky is a dramatist that implicitly taps into dread and therefor horror.  It's making me uncomfortable to think about, to try to put words to, this dread, but I feel it.  I'm not sure I like it, but I respect it.  Have to, it's all there seems to be.

Shonny Consant

2.23.2020

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 Cover art for this episode by Crystal Mielcarek!  Find more of her work on Facebook, Instagram, or Smushbox.net