Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky has most definitely become the most hunted man in movie culture this last week. His controversial “mother!” has caused a volcanic stir in the mainstream by bewildering, provoking and flat-out infuriating movie audiences nationwide (and some media to boot) with its non-conventional narrative, shocking images and a frustrating loop of a story. That’s fine, adventurous moviegoers have, at the very least, mostly appreciated what Aronofsky went for with this film; it’s hard for any of us to really complain about a studio movie taking the kind of risks “mother!” does even if you think it subjectively fails.
Best of all the reviews, however, was Rex Reed's scathing pan of the movie, in which he proclaimed in his review for The Observer: “I hesitate to label it the ‘Worst movie of the year’ when ‘Worst movie of the century’ fits it even better." Yikes. Sadly, that's a sentiment that many mainstream audiences I've spoken to, more or less, agree with Rex on. Darren Aronofsky has however proclaimed that Reed's review was his favorite to read, which tells you so much about the man and how open-minded he really is. He clearly wanted this kind of reaction to his film and it worked. He wanted to polarize the masses and have them screaming at the screen from their comfy seats, here he is talking about Rex:
“I mean, my favorite on ‘mother!’ is Rex Reed called it the worst movie of the century,” Aronofsky said. “For me, [that] is a victory. I mean, finally I got to the top of the list. You know, he hated ‘Black Swan‘ [which] was an ugly duckling for him. I remember somebody telling me that. I don’t really read reviews. I try to avoid them. It’s very hard to avoid everything in this world. You hear the conversation because of all the different types of ways we get media in this world. But, I’m not that concerned about that stuff. The job of the filmmaker is to make the film, and put it out into the world the best way that is possible with the resources you have, and then whatever happens, happens. I don’t think you can ever predict, you know, for a long time, ‘The Fountain‘ was really, really hated and made fun of and stuff, and I think the fans of that one have been the biggest fans of any film that I have had. The passion that people feel for that film has been deeper than any feedback I ever get from just people I meet. So, you don’t know how things are going to work, and it definitely, you know, the story of films takes a long time, especially if the filmmaker has worked hard on them."
I’m seeing plenty of “worst of the year” mentions for “Ice Cream Man,” which doesn’t surprise me one bit. Roth has never been a critical darling and has only been more burdened by that with each passing film.