A song is a prayer is a spell is a confession is an exorcism is a spectacle is a revelation is a birth
From time to time, horror writer Gabino Iglesias reposts this litany on his Bluesky profile:
Many people have a book in them,
but it takes a special kind of freak to leave the Land of Laziness,
cross the Plains of Procrastination and Insecurity Mountain,
find the Blade of No One Made You Do This,
and use it to cut your chest open and yank that book out.
Such is the view of art that permeates David Lowery’s film Mother Mary. The story sounds deceptively simple: Mary, a dance/pop diva in the middle of a creative crisis, returns to the workshop of her former costume designer, Sam, to apologize for breaking their professional partnership and beg for a new dress. Most of the film consists of this single conversation, like a one-act play that reveals entire inner lives as the two lead characters tear down their barriers and take off their veils. Within the space of a small interpersonal drama of wounded trust and unspeakable regrets, Mother Mary weaves its statement about what it takes to produce any genuine art.
Anne Hathaway’s performance as Mary, which includes providing her own voice for all the songs, balances, on one hand, an irresistible scenic presence capable of commanding the adoration of masses of fans (her character is presented as a world-class star on the level of Lady Gaga or Beyoncé), and on the other hand, when she’s off stage, a consuming sorrow that overwhelms her words and movements. Both facets of this character convey the same vulnerability, but it’s fascinating to see how differently she expresses it before a full stadium versus in private conversation with her artistic collaborator. Sam, as played by Michaela Coel, is like a bird with a broken wing, but a bird of prey with eyes that miss nothing and a deadly beak. She takes delight in the return of her muse, but can’t just shake off the years of hurt. This creation is going to be personally costly for both of them.
I often say on this blog that the best stories are those about stories. Mother Mary is something very close: art about art—barely a story, more a portrait that’s being painted as you watch. The emotional bond between Mary and Sam is kept tight, on the verge of snapping, under looks of compassion that shoot daggers and poisoned recriminations coated with sweetness. Mother Mary isn’t trying to convince you that artistic creation has to hurt; it just assumes that it already does. So it’s fitting that Mary shows up on a Thursday to request a dress for the Sunday: the exact timeframe for a full Via Crucis and resurrection.
In a film like this, filled to the brim with Catholic imagery, the fashion designer’s name, Sam Anselm, has to be read as an allusion to the 11th-century Burgundian monk and philosopher St. Anselm, whose method of theology put faith before reason: in his system, you first assent to the revealed truth and then seek to understand it. That’s how you’re meant to experience a film like Mother Mary. It defies logical analysis unless you first accept it on its terms. Instead of arguing for a point, what it’s doing is push out a raw feeling through a scream drowned in sobs.
The connections between the religious experience and the mass ecstasy of pop music have been noticed since before “Madonna” became a stage name. In keeping with the theme of death coming before resurrection, Mother Mary links the act of creation to a demand for bloody sacrifice, an interchange of equally sincere love and hate (think Black Swan, Farinelli, Amadeus). This pain is physically inscribed on the two protagonists: when she’s not performing, Mary is shown with plain, shoulder-length hair, evoking the image of a suffering Jesus, while Sam wears her hair in rigid, pointed locks, arranged like a crown of thorns. The turning point of clarity, when the nature and shape of the new dress is revealed, arrives by a succession of stigmata, confession, forgiveness, and angelic visitation. The film opens with a song about a burial and closes with a song about a cradle, in a moment marked visually on the screen by a line that literally goes full circle.
But then, the end credits conclude with a puzzling statement: a shot of a human skull on a shelf, a common motif in Western painting that retroactively casts the whole film as a vanitas piece. The traditional function of this motif is to remind the viewer that eternity outweighs worldly pursuits, and ultimately anything we build here turns to dust. And yet, Mother Mary exists. It’s a complete experience of rhythmic beats and color and dance moves and ritual and brightness, as if defying the verdict of time. All is dust, but some of that dust is glitter.
To the extent that Mother Mary is articulating someting, as opposed to inviting you to feel it, its verbalizable content is dressed in swirling, uncut drapes of black and crimson. Image here is paramount, which makes it easy for viewers more inclined toward tangible substance to dismiss this film as too enamored with its own aesthetic. Meanwhile, in the real world, Madonna has just released a new album, Confessions II, whose third song, “One Step Away,” contains this spoken monologue:
People think that dance music is superficial. But they’ve got it all wrong.
The dance floor is not just a place. It’s a threshold,
a ritualistic space where movement replaces language.
So go into Mother Mary as you go into a holy ceremony. You have my blessing.
Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
