A Beguiling Film About the Downsides of Pop Stardom
Mother Mary begins with a straightforward problem: The titular character, a pop star played by Anne Hathaway, is looking for a showstopper of a dress. But the complications quickly stack up. Mary needs it made over the weekend; she needs it to serve as the centerpiece of her career relaunch after a long and mysterious absence from the public eye; most crucially, she needs it designed by her former collaborator Sam Anselm (played by Michaela Coel), from whom she’s been estranged for years. When Mary storms into Sam’s office with her demand, Sam calmly replies that it’s impossible, unless the singer is somehow able to stop time. Mary raises her hand, snaps her fingers in the air, and pronounces it done.
If only it were so simple—but Mary, the viewer understands, is someone who has spent most of her adulthood defying the laws of reality. How else to define the life of a superstar, someone who bends everyone else’s needs around her own in order to satisfy the millions of fans awaiting her next move? David Lowery’s beguiling new film tackles the majesty and toxicity of that kind of fame, pitting a now-needy Mary against Sam, a former friend who has renounced the stress of being in Mary’s orbit. That interplay is juicy enough, but Lowery stirs something supernatural into the mix, creating a story that is both deeply sincere and quite surreal.
Mother Mary is also, coincidentally, the second film in two weeks starring Coel that stages a clash of wills between two very different creative types. But whereas Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers has a small-scale approach to its depicted rivalry, Lowery’s film feels comparatively epic. The Christophers could probably be turned into a play with some minor adjustments, but Mother Mary could only be a movie. The film is a definite oddity and a worthwhile viewing experience, as its initial hostility settles into a sweet, if scary, story.
That hostility is exemplified mostly by Sam, whose force fields are deployed to maximum when the film begins. It’s not clear why Mary and Sam stopped collaborating, but it is obvious that Sam views Mary with both fear and disdain. Mary, who is first introduced performing onstage (the film’s thumping, gothy pop songs are by Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX, and FKA Twigs), comes across as wounded in private, nursing some inexplicable psychic injury. Much of the drama of Mother Mary comes from watching the wall between the two lead characters slowly crumble.
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The two performances contrast jarringly. Hathaway is trembly, tearful, and seemingly on the precipice of a total breakdown; Coel is icy, sarcastic, and sharply ruthless whenever Mary makes a plea for help. Lowery draws out great tension from the frosty, often uncomfortable dynamic and the newly upside-down nature of their relationship: Mary has clearly never had to beg Sam. Sam’s resentment of Mary’s imperious fame, and of the thanklessness of being an artist working behind the scenes in service of that fame, is understandable.
Just as the audience’s understanding of what drove the two apart in the first place becomes clearer, the plot starts to swerve into paranormal territory. This twist is where Mother Mary may lose some viewers; that said, it’s what really sold me on the movie. The psychological duel between Hathaway and Coel is interesting to behold, but I admire Lowery’s boldness in finding a cinematic way to portray their battle as something mystical and uncanny.
A Ghost Story, one of Lowery’s best efforts in an unorthodox and varied career, has the same sort of grounded magical realism achieved by lo-fi but unforgettable special effects. In that movie, the lead character dies and becomes a ghost; he spends the rest of the film with a sheet over his head, silently watching lives go by in the house where he lived. Mother Mary takes a story that could be ripped from the gossip pages and transmutes it into a spooky campfire tale. It’s the furthest thing from the kind of mainstream-pop fame Mary seems to represent, but that dissonance is what makes Lowery’s storytelling so unique.