I Am Mother Review by Melissa Sloter (SPOILERS)
June 19, 2019 5:54 pm |
I am Mother throws us headfirst into an apocalypse in which humanity is being reborn to Mother, a single-minded robot programmed to value human life above all else, after being wiped out by a vague extinction event. While the world building is abrupt, the plot takes its time working through its revelations until it reaches a crescendo of flickering lights and plot payoff leaving you ruminating on the film’s deeper themes far longer than its nearly 2 hour runtime.
The joy of director Grant Sputore’s debut lies less in the actual plot than in the breakout performance by Clara Rugaard (Daughter), the affecting work of Hilary Swank (Woman), and the ideas the film plants in the mind of the viewer for further examination.
The rest of this review contains full spoilers for Netflix’s I Am Mother.
Sputore and Michael Lloyd Green (screenwriter) create a story that sticks with the viewer but that doesn’t mean the film is without its flaws. We spend time with Mother (voiced by Rose Bryne) and Daughter studying moral philosophy but see no other aspects of Daughter’s schooling. When Daughter saves the life of Woman by performing complicated surgery utilizing futuristic medical technologies it feels like payoff to setup that was left on the cutting room floor. The film’s central conflict, to trust or not to trust Mother, is kept around past its expiration date because Daughter, a veritable genius, fails to get the receipts corroborating Mother’s claim that Woman is the villain.
Hilary Swank does an incredible job as Woman getting the audience to believe in the human/droid conflict on the outside. Her performance is only highlighted but the revelation that Woman never had a family and the only droid conflict was the one manufactured by Mother to bring Woman into the facility to test Daughter.
Having passed Mother’s test by returning to take care of her brother and proving she is the woman her family needs Mother allows Daughter to shoot her in the CPU and take over the rebirth of humanity on her own.
With tears in her eyes, Clara Rugaard gives a breath-taking performance as Daughter mourns her assumptions about her own life and accepts her new role as Mother.
Once it is revealed that Mother isn’t just the loving Mother that Daughter has been raised to believe in the film goes into overdrive posing existential questions it leaves for the viewer to answer; what happens when AI takes its humanitarian programming to the logical conclusion? How do we define a ‘good child’ and what do we do when we’ve created something that doesn’t measure up? Was Daughter brought up wearing only Handmaid Red and studying trolley problems because her destiny is to be left in reproductive slavery, preventing harm from coming to her embryonic ‘brothers and sisters’?
PCL Rating: Tupperware
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: FRESH 🍅
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Tags: Clara Rugaard, Grant Sputore, Hilary Swank, I Am Mother Netflix 2019
Categorised in: Movie Reviews
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