correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly implied that cinematographer Matthew Libatique also shot the 2010 film “The Fighter.” That film was shot by cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema.This version has been updated. 
 
 Movie critic 
 
 'Mother!," Darren Aronofsky's tour de force of allegorical misdirection, is about many things, in succession and simultaneously. What begins as a creepily insinuating chamber piece of domestic discord quickly takes on more metaphorical meanings, with drama giving way to outright horror: Here, a parable of marital anxiety becomes a lurid, Boschlike meditation on environmental destruction, idolatry and — ultimately — blind devotion to a greedy and insatiable god. 
 
 Mostly, though, this intriguing but ultimately frustratingly undisciplined experiment is about Jennifer Lawrence, who proves once again what a supernatural screen presence she is, delivering a performance of transparency, stillness, physical grit and self-sacrificing courage. As the enigmatic title character, she's our surrogate and guide through the highly charged environment Aronofsky has conceived: In this case, it's an elegant Victorian house, standing regally in a serene field, that Lawrence's character is restoring as an idyllic home and creative cocoon for her husband, a famous poet played by Javier Bardem. 
 
 Fans of "The Shining" will think they have "Mother!" sussed when Bardem turns out to be blocked and when Lawrence's wary but radiant heroine begins to sense a beating heart underneath the house's sturdy bones. But then a strange couple — played in wickedly observant turns by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer — shows up, injecting a malign, anarchic force reminiscent of Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon in "Rosemary's Baby." 
 
 And, yes, a Polanskian air of maternal dread — the primal fear of loss of control and privacy — suffuses "Mother!," which at its most astute and provocative could be a mirror to Aronofsky's own ambivalence about fame. Specifically, he seems to be zeroing in on auteur worship, parasitic fandom and women playing muse, vessel and protective space-maker for male genius. Lawrence, who exudes a stunning combination of innocence and watchful wisdom, pads through the characters' eight-sided house with the same alarm as Mia Farrow four decades ago, but also with more assurance and self-possession as the stakes of her fight become not just higher, but surreally so. 
 
 
 
 In a performance recalling Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby,” Jennifer Lawrence plays a wife who sets out to make the increasingly creepy Victorian home where she and her poet husband live a creative haven. (Niko Tavernise/Paramount Pictures/ Protozoa Pictures) 
 
 But even Lawrence's magnetic powers can't keep "Mother!" from going off the rails, which at first occurs cumulatively, then in a mad rush during the film's outlandish climax. Shot by Aronofsky's frequent cinematographer Matthew Libatique with the intimate close-ups familiar from "Black Swan" and "Requiem for a Dream," this is a movie whose sense of claustrophobia becomes woozily stifling, its dreamlike shots and pans, always from Lawrence's point of view, growing more nauseating by the minute. 
 
 As the visual language becomes increasingly nightmarish, the message of "Mother!" becomes exponentially more obscure. There's a Cain-and-Abel subplot suggesting that Aronofsky wasn't finished with the Old Testament after his 2014 movie "Noah," but then again, maybe this is his own viscerally graphic version of the Jesus story. Or, as he has intimated in comments to the media, perhaps this is the cri de coeur of an artist overwhelmed by environmental, social and cultural destruction. Whichever it is, "Mother!" seems assured to divide the filmmaker's fans, many of whom will celebrate another audacious statement from a master of cinema as dreamscape of our darkest unconscious, but some of whom will think he misses the mark in the interest of pulp excess and flamboyance. Wherever you land on that spectrum, it's difficult to argue that, while it lasts, "Mother!" flies its freak flag with intensity that is bracing, febrile and uncompromising. ||||| Starting in 1998 with “Pi,” Darren Aronofsky has directed, with mixed results, a series of dazzling and confrontational movies that combine visual virtuosity with intense probings of dark psychological themes. His new film, “Mother!,” follows suit. It’s a horror story about the beleaguered wife of a narcissistic writer and includes some remarkable visions of hell on Earth. 
 
 Aronofsky’s movies are not for everyone — provocations like “Requiem for a Dream” and “Black Swan” can feel assaultive, a deliberate test of audience endurance. Viewers willing to accept the challenge will be rewarded with passages embodying extraordinary moods and images. 
 
 In “Mother!” Jennifer Lawrence (who, in real life, is romantically involved with the director) plays an unnamed woman who lives in a large, remote house with a blocked poet (Javier Bardem), also unnamed, and spends much of her time fixing up the place, which was the site of a catastrophic fire. Some disquieting notes of marital discord are sounded, one of which involves her hope to become pregnant. 
 
 A stranger (Ed Harris) knocks at the door. He claims to be a doctor, though he smokes and suffers a hacking cough. He turns out to be a fan of the poet, who generously invites him to stay, against his wife’s wishes. This is the first instance of what will become one of the film’s major points, the wife’s increasing sense of encroachment, her loss of boundaries. And it’s only the beginning. 
 
 Another visitor (Michelle Pfeiffer) shows up, the wife of the Harris character, and she is even worse — a hard-drinking harridan with a bad attitude about her hostess. Next up are the violently quarreling sons of the Harris and Pfeiffer characters. It’s a nightmare situation, but the Bardem character doesn’t see why. He says they just need to be generous to their “guests.” 
 
 It’s hard to believe that Aronofsky does not have “Rosemary’s Baby” in mind as he recounts the Lawrence character’s growing sense of paranoia and isolation. No one seems to understand why she’s upset about what amounts to a home invasion, one that’s going to reach apocalyptic dimensions. The outsiders are rude, destructive, menacing figures who sneer at her concerns. 
 
 Are they anything but projections of the poet’s intense selfishness? The scores and hundreds of guests all seem to worship his books, and he feels obliged to be nice to them. The Bardem character is an artist incapable of loving anyone but himself; nothing matters apart from his work and its acceptance by the world. 
 
 The movie has its share of wicked comedy, but it nevertheless builds to an over-the-top climax that’s a frightening image of the outbreak of collectivist madness overwhelming the individual. The invaders are reminiscent of “Rosemary’s Baby’s” Satanists, but lacking even a pretense of a civilized veneer. 
 
 Aronofky gets exactly what he needs from his top-notch cast. Lawrence is appealing and never allows herself to be reduced simply to a howling victim. Bardem, Harris and Pfeiffer are menacing in their own varying ways, with Bardem capable of turning on the charm at key times that makes us wonder if we haven’t misjudged him. 
 
 In short, if you’re game for it, “Mother!” is another of Aronofsky’s ominous extravaganzas. 
 
 Walter Addiego is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: waddiego@sfchronicle.com 
 
 Mother! 
 
 Drama. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. (R. 121 minutes.) ||||| Published on Aug 7, 2017 
 
 jennifer lawrence, javier bardem, ed harris and michelle pfeiffer star in mother!, directed by darren aronofsky. see it in theatres 9.15. 
 
 
 
 a couple's relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence. from filmmaker darren aronofsky (black swan, requiem for a dream), mother! stars jennifer lawrence, javier bardem, ed harris and michelle pfeiffer in this riveting psychological thriller about love, devotion and sacrifice. 
 
 
 
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 youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/paramount ||||| Title Mother! Written by Darren Aronofsky Directed by Darren Aronofsky Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer Genre Horror Classification 18A Country USA Language English Year 2017 
 
 ★ for the Aronofsky agnostic 
 
 ★★★★ for the Aronofsky acolyte 
 
 In the beginning, so we're told, God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning of Mother!, Darren Aronofsky creates a heaven on earth. 
 
 Paradise here is a massive octagonal wooden home in the middle of the countryside, inhabited by a nameless woman (Jennifer Lawrence), who has spent who knows how long sprucing it up, and her similarly anonymous poet husband (Javier Bardem), who's spent the same amount of time struggling with writer's block. The two are in love – or so each of them professes – and their days are filled with leisurely meals, lazy wanderings from room to room and furtive glances at the giant, mysterious crystal the husband keeps in his study. 
 
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 Until one day, when a stranger (Ed Harris) comes knocking at the door. He's looking for help, and the husband takes a shine to him. The woman – she's not quite sure of the man's intentions. Soon enough, the stranger's arrival is followed by that of his drunken, overtly sexual wife (Michelle Pfeiffer). And then their two warring sons (Brian Gleeson and Domhnall Gleeson) show up. And then – well, all hell breaks loose. In an extraordinarily literal sense. 
 
 And this is where Mother! either falls apart or opens up a chasm so wide that it threatens to swallow the theatre whole. Which is what happens when a filmmaker decides to play God – and make no mistake, Mother! is Aronofsky's very own creation myth, a profoundly upsetting and furious apology for what he considers humanity's original sin: existence. 
 
 If that sounds grandiose, it is nothing compared with the gonzo experiment Aronofsky has devised. Up to this point, the marketing campaign for Mother! has been light on details, heavy on atmosphere. Perhaps you've seen the trailers and assumed the film was a modern spin on Rosemary's Baby or The Shining – an eerie thriller centred on a young woman whose better half succumbs to some unspeakable evil. That log line is true in a sense. But there is so much more to Mother! – and also so much less. 
 
 Without wading too deep into spoiler waters, Mother! is a tale of what happens when a creative mind is given unfettered power and destroys almost everything in his (or His) wake. That indictment applies to both Bardem's character, who takes and takes from Lawrence's put-upon wife without giving her anything in return, and Aronofsky himself, who mines a history of genre tropes only to dismantle everything cinema stands for. In 121 minutes, the writer-director creates a vision that is equal parts horror, satire, polemic and sheer abomination. 
 
 For those devout members of the Church of Aronofsky – basically, anyone who has stuck with the auteur since catching Requiem for a Dream on cable when they were 14 and realizing that movies could be as scuzzy and dangerous as the mind's own limits – Mother! is a masterpiece. A frenzied plunge into Aronofsky's deepest fears and humanity's darkest temptations, it can be viewed as the latest escalation in the director's bombastic aesthetic, all chaos and carnage. 
 
 For those who remain skeptical of Aronofsky's previous efforts (even his most mainstream film, The Wrestler, is mired in darkness), Mother! will spark instant revulsion, even charges of heresy. Here he goes again, screeching into the megaphone like a grad student leading his first march on insert-corrupt-institution-here. Aronofsky is never one to whisper, but he shouts so often that he risks losing his voice entirely. 
 
 Yet even those who find themselves sitting between these two camps are guaranteed to walk away from Mother! feeling … something. Perhaps enlightenment. Or outrage. Or just a general sense of gobsmacked disbelief. By uniting the themes of his entire filmography – Pi's obsession with the secrets of the Almighty, Black Swan's focus on the damage done to female bodies for the sake of the male ego, Noah's belief that God is a cruel and jealous creator – and wrapping them in barbed-wire visuals engineered to churn the most cynical viewer's stomach, the director has reached peak Aronofsky. 
 
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 Mother! is an unparalleled achievement, entirely unprecedented and unexpected in this era of studio filmmaking. However Aronofsky convinced Paramount to fund this film and roll it out in wide release is an act of God itself, a true modern miracle. By the time, about three-quarters in, that Lawrence's character suffers an unimaginable betrayal – followed, not one minute later, by an even more horrifying twist of the knife – it is impossible to deny Aronofsky's sheer audacity, as well as the gall of those who funded such fearlessness. 
 
 The world is lucky to have Mother! I am lucky to have witnessed it. Lawrence and Bardem and Harris and Pfeiffer are lucky to have worked on such a once-in-a-lifetime project. But I am also happy that I will never have to watch it again. ||||| Women give, men take and the Old Testament crashes into modern anxiety in director Darren Aronofsky's "mother! " It is an audacious, bold and fascinating fever dream of a film. It's allegory for, well, everything (the environment, marriage, art, spirituality, you name it!), that will challenge, distress and edify anyone who chooses to submit themselves to this creation for two hours. 
 
 Like many Aronofsky endeavors, "mother!" is a film doesn't fit neatly into one genre. It starts out as one thing, a sort of psychological thriller and chamber drama about a couple living in a stately and remote home, and devolves gradually and then very suddenly into jaw-dropping chaos that almost seems to be testing the viewer. How much of Jennifer Lawrence's suffering can you take before covering your eyes? Or storming out of the theater? "Mother!" will get under your skin, that's a guarantee. 
 
 This film begs for a viewing unencumbered by lengthy summarization. It's not that it defies explanation, what happens is fairly straightforward as far as nightmare logic is concerned. But the less you know the better. 
 
 The setting is a grand Victorian home, plopped down in the middle of a field surrounded by trees. There lives a married couple (Lawrence and Javier Bardem), and it is peaceful and bright. It is an Eden dressed in Restoration Hardware linens that Lawrence's character (who is credited as "Mother" but never called that) has rebuilt for her husband (credited as Him) from wall to wall after a devastating fire burned it to the ground. She is earthy and quiet and perches her head to the wall to listen to the beating heart of the home in order to find the right shade of yellow for the space. 
 
 And then one night, a strange man (Ed Harris) comes to the door. Bardem's character, a famous poet suffering from extreme writer's block, invites him in, and the paradise Mother has so painstakingly created begins to crumble. The next day, the man's wife (a wickedly funny Michelle Pfeiffer) shows up too. Mother, while trying to be polite and a good hostess and still continue restoring her house, is also understandably bewildered by the sudden changes and her own husband's apparent disinterest in her objections to these strangers occupying their home. 
 
 For all the stress and anxiety that "mother!" will inspire in viewers, this section is really quite funny, human and relatable as Mother grapples with her absent husband and rude houseguests who drink their liquor and break their valuables and ask invasive questions about why she doesn't yet have children. 
 
 It is a host's worst nightmare, and it only gets worse for poor Mother — the only sane person around who of course is predestined to be driven crazy by everyone else. Aronofsky has a special appreciation for hyperbolic depictions of female madness and suffering, whether it's an aging woman looking to lose a few pounds in "Requiem for a Dream," a ballerina striving for perfection in "Black Swan," or a wife just looking to make an impeccable home for the person she loves in "mother!" 
 
 It is a tense and exciting film — one of Aronofsky's best — and Lawrence has never been better. Hers is a truly stunning and elevated performance full of beauty, empathy and rage at her own powerlessness and the greed and apathy spiraling out of control around her. 
 
 "Mother!" demands to be seen more than once, and afterward discussed and dissected. I'd also recommend taking a look at the credits to see the names of the other characters who come into their lives. 
 
 My heart has not stopped its anxious pounding, nor my head from spinning since seeing this film. 
 
 Mother, may I have a Xanax? 
 
 "mother!" a Paramount Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for "strong disturbing violent content, some sexuality, nudity and language." Running time: 121 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four. 
 
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 MPAA Definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. 
 
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 Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr
– Darren Aronofsky's psychological drama Mother! Is a descent into chaos, told through the eyes of a woman whose home, which she shares with her poet husband, is invaded by various guests. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, and Michelle Pfeiffer, the film has an audience score of 53% on Rotten Tomatoes, though critics are more favorable at 74%. Here's what critics are saying: Like Aronofsky's other films (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream), Mother! is "assaultive" and clearly "not for everyone." But "viewers willing to accept the challenge will be rewarded with passages embodying extraordinary moods and images" in "another of Aronofsky's ominous extravaganzas," writes Walter Addiego at the San Francisco Chronicle. He applauds the entire "top-notch cast," but especially Lawrence. The actress "proves once again what a supernatural screen presence she is, delivering a performance of transparency, stillness, physical grit and self-sacrificing courage," writes Ann Hornaday at the Washington Post. Mother! on the other hand is an "intriguing but ultimately frustratingly undisciplined experiment … whose sense of claustrophobia becomes woozily stifling," writes Hornaday. An "outlandish climax" is off-putting, to boot. But Lindsey Bahr calls the movie "one of Aronofsky's best." It's "an audacious, bold and fascinating fever dream of a film" and an "allegory for, well, everything," she writes at the AP. It "will get under your skin, that's a guarantee," but the film also has moments that are "funny, human and relatable," writes Bahr, crediting Lawrence's "truly stunning" performance. According to Bahr, she's "never been better." According to Barry Hertz, Mother! is a "once-in-a-lifetime film" that, at the very least, will make viewers feel something. But for fans of Aronofsky, "Mother! is a masterpiece … a frenzied plunge into Aronofsky's deepest fears and humanity's darkest temptations," he writes at the Globe and Mail. "The world is lucky to have Mother! I am lucky to have witnessed it," he adds. "But I am also happy that I will never have to watch it again."