The Third Mother, a witch of unimaginable power, is unleashed upon Rome, and a woman with a mysterious past must find the courage to try and stop her.

It’s always difficult to disassemble and examine a Dario Argento film. Not unlike the riddles his characters encounter in his films, closer examination can reveal new insights and even the smallest newfound detail can affect your perception of his work. More than once I’ve revisited an Argento film and come away with an entirely different reaction from my first viewing. It’s why committing to a stance is so intimidating.

The conclusion to the Three Mothers trilogy is so completely unlike the other two installments, and the majority of Argento’s work, that at times it seems to be a reaction to those earlier films, if not outright parody. Perhaps the most noticable difference is in the attitude of the main character, Sarah. Gone are the plucky heroines and amateur sleuths of Argento’s early career, their curiosity replaced by indifference and outright cowardice. Sarah spends nearly the entire movie running away from her obstacles rather than facing them head-on. Where characters in Argento productions of the past willingly took a path through Hell to satisfy their curiosity, Sarah takes a cab.

So much of Argento’s work is about mysteries and secrets. In what seems to be a refutation of his earlier obsessions, Argento reveals everything in Mother of Tears, stripping the supernatural of its mystique. Where before Argento would build his themes upon visual cues and hope that his audience could keep up, here everything is laid out in lengthy scenes of exposition. Characters are carted out at regular intervals to reveal layers upon layers of backstory and mythology, almost all of which are useless to the heroes. The madness caused by The Third Mother is similarly underwhelming. We’re told that there’s a violent epidemic taking place, but with few exceptions the acts of carnage are almost mundane, with muggings and minor acts of vandalism being the most prominently displayed. Even the acts of heroism are almost an afterthought. It’s as if Argento spent his youth scratching away at the natural to find secrets and the supernatural underneath, only to dig even further in his later years and find his way back to the mundane. This is most strikingly apparent in the appearance of the Third Mother herself, who is clothed in allure and mystery for most of the film, only to disrobe at the climax into something far less satisfying than what we were originally presented.

The vaccuum created by this rejection of the fantastic is filled by copious amounts of nudity and gore. Most of the kills, if lacking the visual flare of his earlier set-pieces, are extremely effective in their execution. It’s the one aspect of the film that seems to have roots in decades past, containing the same unrestrained glee and passion that Argento is renowned for. One sequence in particular is loaded with such deviancy, brutality and ritual that it made half the theatre scream out loud.

Whether you would find the above appealing or not, and I can already see that this is going to be a divisive film, there were a few aspects of Mother Of Tears that rubbed me the wrong way. The aforementioned exposition is provided by at least five different people when only one or two would have been sufficient, and the protagonists spend a great deal of time travelling to and fro in order to gain this knowledge, so much so that there were times I thought I was watching a travelogue. The person sitting next to me actually fell asleep. No, really. She was snoring. Also the line delivery was deplorable for the majority of the film. This was especially pronounced when compared to those instances when purely physical acting was on display.

While I’m currently convinced that Argento deliberately set out to confound the expectations of his audience, glimmers of which could be seen in Phenomena and Opera, and that despite a few rough patches it’s a trip worth taking, ask me again tomorrow. I may have changed my mind.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 7:06 am and is filed under Movies, Foreign, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.