Mother Mary

That artists of any kind will, at some point, slam into a creative wall is as seemingly inevitable as their ways to the other side of it are variable. A writer who feels unable to write may will the sentences to come anyway, just to stay nourished. A painter who feels unable to paint may step away for a time, existing in nature without having to record it on the canvas. Then there are the cases when an artist in such a condition grows more captivated with the act of chipping away at the stone than with the rediscovery of their spark. For some, the wall offers its own fascination, and were one to retrace their steps, the markings left in the space where their muse was once trapped may look like their own ornate, inscrutable works of art. A laboured metaphor? It’s in good company. David Lowery’s psychodrama Mother Mary is packed to the brim with them; it’s practically the love language of former collaborators and possible creative soulmates Mary (the pop idol of the title, played by Anne Hathaway) and Sam (a genius designer, played by Michaela Coel). Why would these friends-turned-nemeses state their various neuroses and afflictions outright when they can gild them, turn them over for inspection, tear them down and build them back up again? Their circular, meandering conversation seems less like a tense reunion of old friends and more like the feuding of two halves of a single brain that’s stuck running in place. Mother Mary is ruminative spiral as horror movie, an invitation into its director’s own brain-fog with no promise of epiphany. Whether you find the result alluring or simply befuddling may depend on how willing you are to get stuck in place with Lowery, trying to chip your way out.

Enticingly unclassifiable, the director’s career has up to this point balanced heady atmospherics (A Ghost Story, The Green Knight) with grounded folktales of the American West (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, The Old Man and the Gun) and dusted off IP (the remake of Pete’s Dragon and the aforementioned Wendy). The director has cited the discrepancy between the personal, rough-hewn projects edited on his laptop and his obligations to Disney bigwigs as a genesis point for this new feature, and it’s easy enough to frame his troubled popstar lead’s crisis of confidence and identity as a reflection of his own. Just as Lowery is relocating from the Disney+-bound Peter Pan and Wendy to this moody, acerbic A24 two-hander, so too is Mother Mary returning to old stomping grounds in hope of being shaken out of her funk. She hopes Sam will make a dress for her forthcoming, high-pressure comeback show, with the only obstacle being that Sam hates her for her perceived abandonment, only willing to grant a semblance of pity (though certainly not sympathy) if Mary works for it.

A plot of sorts emerges over time, as the two realise they are – interpersonal hauntings aside – haunted in the quite literal sense by the same ghost, appearing as a red piece of flowing fabric (though of course, it’s “red less like a colour, more like a feeling”, just as the phantom is, according to Sam, “a she. Or the idea of a she”). There are also occasional interjections of pop spectacle, with brief cutaways to Hathaway performing original songs penned by heavyweights such as Charli XCX and FKA Twigs, the latter even making a memorably bizarre cameo. Still, Mother Mary remains languidly unhurried, almost freeform. Whenever Mary and Sam seem headed for The Point, a new digressive monologue will set them off on a different path, and even the songs seem to be purposely withholding the euphoric release of the greatest pop music, more creepingly insinuating than earworm-y.

It’s this very listlessness that will fuel one’s fascination, or frustration (perhaps both), with Mother Mary, which Lowery largely seems to be making up as he goes along, following a dreamy train of thought with no urgent destination in mind. That his film feels somewhat unfinished may be deliberate, but it’s ultimately the human component that pays the price, with Hathaway and Coel only granted sustained notes of pleading desperation and preening contempt to play. It’s not that Mary and Sam’s emotions are unclear to us; it’s that they’re so relentlessly articulated (and re-articulated) that they seem to shed meaning over time instead of building it up. If they could only speak to each other directly, it might be easier to feel the pulse underneath it all.

Ultimately, this austere, verbose drama is equally striking and impenetrable, intriguing and frustrating, and as elusive as smoke. Mileage may vary on whether the result is an absorbing enigma or simply a beautiful journey to nowhere.