David Lowery does not make comfortable films. From the Malick-infused outlaw romance of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints to the quiet devastation of A Ghost Story and the hallucinatory medieval quest of The Green Knight to his latest Mother Mary, his work exists in the space between waking and dreaming. Audiences who demand tidy resolutions have long since abandoned him.
Those who remain understand that a Lowery picture functions less as traditional narrative and more as a prolonged emotional state, a tone poem rendered in breathtaking images and weighted silence. His preoccupations are consistent: the passage of time, the nature of legacy, the unbearable heaviness of grief. Yet each film finds a new visual language to explore these ideas, and none has felt quite like his latest experiment.
Mother Mary arrives draped in the trappings of a music industry psychological drama, the kind that might slot neatly alongside recent art house horror entries examining the corrosive effects of fame. Think less jump scares, more existential dread. Think The Neon Demon without the cannibalism, Black Swan without the body horror, but with all the suffocating pressure of a persona that has devoured the person beneath it. Lowery positions his camera at the intersection of creativity and exploitation, asking questions that have haunted pop culture since the first star burned out under the spotlight.
The film marks a continuation of Lowery’s collaboration with cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo, and the visual language they develop here, silks and sequins against rough-hewn wood, sweat and tears under stage lights, suggests a filmmaker reaching for something genuinely new within a genre often satisfied with hollow spectacle. If A Ghost Story pondered what remains after death, Mother Mary wonders what remains when the performance never ends. This is filmmaking that demands patience and rewards those willing to sit in discomfort. And the rewards here are considerable.
“Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel share a wounded, seeking chemistry that Lowery refuses to neatly resolve. Bold, vulnerable, and genuinely unlike anything else this year.”
Mother Mary Review: David Lowery’s Pop Star Fever Dream Is a Gorgeous Act of Defiance
A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden
Whatever it is director David Lowery is making, I’m watching. Not every film lands but he always delivers something thought provoking, and his best films are unlike anything else you’ll see.
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, A Ghost Story, and The Green Knight were cinematic wonders. His latest, Mother Mary, is as tough to pin down as any of these, and just as gorgeous.
Anne Hathaway is Mother Mary, a Lady Gaga styled music icon and diva in the midst of some kind of prolonged torment who seeks the aid of an old friend. Michaela Coel is Sam, Mother Mary’s oldest confidant and the designer who created the pop star’s legendary look. Ostensibly, Mother Mary needs a gown. In reality, both women are open wounds who need the other, either to heal or to die.
Essentially a chamber piece—more than half of the film takes place in Sam’s barnlike studio—Mother Mary is as poetic and dramatic as a pop song. Lowery, who also writes, seems genuinely empathetic of the isolating nature of superstardom, particularly for those vulnerable souls who create their own art.
Lowery’s vision benefits immeasurably from two outstanding performances. Hathaway seems equally comfortable in semi-surreal concert footage as she does with the raw, constant verge-of-tears intimate drama. And Coel may be the one person who cuts so fascinating a figure that she makes Hathaway look ordinary.
Their fraught back and forth, though occasionally overwritten, feels lived in and wounded but seeking. What they ask of each other allows the filmmaker to pose, but not answer, questions about connection, authenticity, superficiality, fame, creativity, and who ultimately owns the artist and their art.
It’s a heady piece wrapped in silks and sequins, and it won’t be for everybody. But Lowery and his small cast make bold, risky choices. It works because the actors are fully committed and taking those risks themselves, some of which don’t pay off. But Cole and Hathaway bring their vulnerability, buoyed by tremendous talent. The result is a film that feels quite unlike anything else, and for any piece of art, sometimes that’s accomplishment enough.
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