The surreal melodrama Mother Mary stars Anne Hathaway as a Gaga-esque pop star facing an existential crisis, and so she turns to her former costume designer and estranged friend, played by Michaela Cole, to find herself again.
The movie's tagline warns us that this is not a love story and it's not a ghost story.
There is some complicated love and there might be a ghost.
So what is it exactly?
I'm not sure about that, but at least there's one thing that's for sure.
This is a visual marvel to behold.
I'm Ayesha Harris, and today we're talking about Mother Mary on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
Joining me today is NPR producer Mark Rivers.
Hello, Mark.
Hey, Aisha.
Thanks for having me.
Great to have you.
And also with us is Sydney Madden.
She's a music and culture critic.
Welcome back, Sydney.
What's up, Aisha?
Thanks for having me.
Great to have you both.
So Anne Hathaway plays the titular Mother Mary, a highly theatrical pop star who's at a personal and artistic crossroads.
Just a few days away from a highly anticipated comeback performance, she shows up out of the blue on the doorstep of her former bestie and costume designer Sam, who she hasn't spoken to in years.
Sam's played by Michaela Cole.
Now she wants Sam to design her look for the show, something that will feel like herself.
Will you let me do whatever I like?
Yes.
Will you do exactly as I say?
Yes.
And will you wear what I make?
Yes.
The reunion resurfaces old wounds and forces them to confront the reasons for their fallout.
And then things get spooky and really weird.
And some would say maybe incomprehensible, but whatever.
There are a few big concert numbers here.
The songs were penned by Jack Antonoff, Charlie XCX.
She's everywhere in the movies lately.
And FKH Wigs, who has a small but notable role here.
David Lowery directed He Previously Made the Green Knight and A Ghost Story.
And Mother Mary is in theaters now.
Sydney, I'm going to start with you.
Especially curious to hear about your music thoughts.
But first...
Tell us how you felt about what this movie was doing, trying to do whatever this is.
I mean, trying to do is a lot.
It's a lot.
There's a lot going on in this movie.
Some of it is really great and some of it is.
Pretty mid, and I'm not even going to say extra and too much.
Some of it is just unnecessary, to be honest.
I haven't been torn over a movie like this in a minute because of all the competing narratives, to be quite honest.
It's too much neck to quita in a few key spots.
I went in personally thinking it was going to be a fashion and music film, which are psychological and cultural touch points that I'm always looking at.
But then when it switches, I understand it, but it doesn't entertain me, if that makes sense.
I want to get to the great parts first.
The great part is Michaela Cole and Anne Hathaway sparring, going back to back line for line, bar for bar in here.
The tension between them is just so magnetic and spine-tingling and funny that that really is what keeps you engaged for a very long time.
There's points when Michaela Cole playing Sam the designer you think she's going to start to forgive, and then she pulls all the way back.
And it's like you're getting an eye into the really deepest wounds and the deepest parts of their fight, even when they're kind of not even saying that much.
To be honest, they were doing a lot of not saying what these wounds were.
They were doing a lot of not saying, but the tight shots of them not saying and even the expression on their face, the emotiveness on their face and i think there was something in the press notes about how this actually started in david lowry's mind as just a static scene between two characters Yeah,
Yeah.
I get that hurts.
I get that's a betrayal, but that's also the business.
Like, get over it, right?
Yeah.
Well, so here's my thing.
It wasn't clear to me that Mother Mary had dropped Sam specifically.
What I thought happened is that they had a falling out.
Maybe she did drop her, but the impetus for that was the fact that Sam was not getting credit for her work with Mother Mary.
And to me that is a much thornier and sort of layered sort of betrayal than just dropping her, because when I think about at least the way in recent years, we're now suddenly inundated by these stylists who are working alongside Usually actresses, but also pop stars and whatever.
I think especially of Law Roach and Zendaya.
That was in the back of my mind a lot while watching this movie.
And when you add in the layer here that you have a white pop star who's being styled by a black woman.
And that black woman is not getting credit for her Vogue shoot.
She says at one point, like, you didn't give me credit.
And so that to me felt a little bit more like oh, I can understand why Stan would be really upset about this.
Like, Because there is this sense of like I made you or like it's not just you.
I have put you on the map.
Am I am I misreading?
Like, Mark, I'm curious.
Like, did you see that at all?
I think that's a totally reasonable read to take, because the movie to me just was giving you so little.
So you had to kind of, you had to kind of build it for yourself.
Take whatever kernel you could get and take something out of it.
I was really surprised at just how bored I was by a lot of it.
And this is a filmmaker that I've liked in the past.
I really liked The Green Knight from 2021 his kind of Middle Ages, 14th century Arthurian legend film.
And I liked that this is a person who doesn't seem to repeat himself.
Like you would not have guessed that the maker of 2013's Ain't Them Body Saints, which was this kind of Terrence Malick-inspired couple on the run film, you would not have guessed that that filmmaker would have made A Ghost Story or The Green Knight that he's kind of making this trip from the physical to the metaphysical realm, right.
But as far as where we wind up with Mother Mary, I don't know where we are in this movie.
It feels like some indeterminate, undefined space.
And I think he had said that he had screened like Amar Bergman films for his cast.
Laurie's film is missing the psychological probing, the deep psychological probing.
And he's missing.
You know the way the cinematography, or the way the movie is shot, almost makes psychological x-rays of the space and the characters.
I didn't know what they were trying to deal with here.
And I also just stopped caring because Cole and Hathor just kind of of shot-putting these vague generalities back and forth about doors closing and opening, and what did you do?
And you're going to do what you always do.
And at a certain point, I just wanted to say, say something specific, please.
Say something direct.
Stop with the metaphors.
At one point, I think Anne Hathaway's character says these metaphors are getting exhausting.
And I'm like, just because you're calling attention to the problem without solving it, it's still a problem, even if you're calling attention to this problem.
The tagline said it's not a ghost story.
I think there is sort of an exorcism story going on here.
But I didn't know what the film was exorcising.
I didn't know.
And by the end, I didn't really care.
Yeah.
I mean, it's so funny that they named it the Thailand.
This is not a ghost story.
This is not a love story.
But what is it?
What is it?
And that seems intentional.
It seems more cheeky than anything else.
But.
OK, so you had to get metaphysical to drive this point home and you had to force us to use our imagination so much more, because the real problem between the root of them is just how fickle and unjust this commodified creative space has been, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
There are.
A few things that I admire about this story that is being told, the performances and the sort of back and forth banter, the rat-a-tat between the two leads is really, for me, the meat of this.
It's the thing that I'm able to latch on to and take something from.
I also just think it's really visually interesting. stunning.
Like, I loved the way this looks.
I love the way the barn, it feels spooky.
It feels cold yet.
Like, there's a lot of tension in there, the way it's designed.
And I love the images of the ghost and how that is presented.
And there's a moment that kind of like.
As soon as I saw it I was like oh, this is giving me Get Out vibes.
It If you see it, you will know, you will understand what I mean.
I don't know if that inspired this, but it's very similar.
So I really liked that.
And I like the fact that this is a quote unquote movie about like a pop star, pop music, that artistry, but is not about what we usually see when we delve into this.
It's very intimate.
This is literally just a movie about beef.
Beef between two artists, but one artist who is meant to quote-unquote support the other artist.
And ways that they don't always get again.
I think it goes back to the credit and visibility and being seen.
There's an interesting racial dynamic there.
Yes.
Potentially, at least.
Yes.
Because imagine if the roles were reversed.
No, I could totally see it.
And so I admire all of that.
But at the same time I do kind of land in the same place that you two do, which is that I could admire all of that.
And I think even I could sort of take away a little bit more than maybe you, Mark.
But at the end of the day, would I ever go back and rewatch this movie?
I don't think so, because there's something about that opaqueness that can only take me so far in caring.
I can't necessarily call myself a fan of Lowry's previous work.
I haven't seen The Green Knight, but I did see A Ghost Story, and that was very tedious for me.
I was able to latch on more to this movie than I was A Ghost Story, but I feel like if you like Suspiria, if you like those sorts of films, you will probably dig this.
I also thought about Black Swan when watching this.
I thought about Under the Skin.
And I even thought about Beyonce's Lemonade.
You know, as far as like This kind of probing of the star, this probing of this person right,
And I feel like with Lemonade in particular, that work of art was reckoning with a variety of things.
It was reckoning with the traumas of generations of black women.
It was reckoning with the anger of a wronged woman.
It was reckoning with a trifling ass husband.
It was reckoning with all these things.
And the reckoning here, I'm like, what is really being reckoned with?
He said that the idea for this film also came from him, kind of struggling with what kind of filmmaker he thought of himself to be.
Like, you know, the filmmaker who can make The Green Knight but also can make a Peter Pan movie.
And this movie has that kind of self-indulgent sense of I'm having a debate with myself over something different, undefined within me, that I have to figure out.
But I didn't watch this movie getting a sense of what he felt about stardom beyond that being a kind of maybe inherent weirdness to being a star and the separation between who you are on the stage versus who you might be personally.
But I didn't get a sense of actually how he felt about this industry.
I didn't really get a sense of how he felt about art or creativity.
I thought Anne Hathaway was pretty miscast here, honestly.
I did not take her seriously as a pop superstar.
And it's not really to her detriment as a performer.
I think she's a very terrestrial actor.
She's burdened by earthly things, you know?
I think it makes her relatable.
And I think I think a thing about Lady Gaga figure, Madonna figure is kind of their unrelatability there, that they are kind of existing in some higher plane.
Even someone like FKA Twigs who shows up here, there's something a little bit removed.
Anna Hathaway, she's too relatable.
She's your friend.
And I just don't think that really worked well here.
Yo, I love that touch point because David Lowery and the actors they've said that they watched pop documentaries like Truth or Dare or Homecoming and the through line of those documentaries being very much not only the work ethic that goes behind, like this grand show that you see as a fan, but also how each act as a person handles being seen as a larger than life figure, as a deity, right like in, and that ties into catholicism element of this with, like mother mary and mary magdalene.
But no, that's a really good observation because that's i don't know that i would buy a ticket to a mother mary show.
To be honest, like from based on, based on the flashes that i've seen, i'm like i don't think this is actually a really.
I listened to the playlist and i was like yeah, the music for me.
And this is again.
This is a constant problem with any movie where there's supposed to be a pop star, a fictional pop star.
And then you hear their music and you're like, I don't know, man.
And there were some songs where I was definitely getting like, oh, this is sort of Charlie-esque.
And I love Charlie.
Like, this is certainly Charlie.
I also thought of Florence and the Machine sometimes.
Florence and the Machine.
And Ellie Goulding.
And Ellie Goulding.
Yeah.
And I was also getting a little bit of Robin as well.
And I think Larry also cited that as something he heard.
But then.
There is a funny moment where, you know, there's this elaborate dance scene.
And the whole time I was thinking, like, how is she going to sing this?
And then Michaela Cole's character, Sam, says that exact thing.
And I was like okay, at least we acknowledge that this doesn't actually.
This is like so you think you can dance, dancing.
This is like...
Not like I'm going to have the mic on, fully on, while singing.
There's no room for breath control and diaphragm in those moves that she was doing.
Yeah.
And at least in that scene that to me was the rare scene of where I kind of felt the physicality of the movie.
Like, she is exerting genuine, like, force.
Yeah.
And also like, on the point of that dance scene, the dress that sam ends up making for her.
There's no way she's gonna be able to do that dance in the dress.
No, what are we doing?
Yeah yeah no absolutely, i mean i, i did.
I did want to ask though like, even if you wouldn't go to that show, what do you think of the music itself?
Like, did it stick with you?
For me, there was maybe one song where it's like oh, i'm gonna go and try and find that song.
Does this feel credible, that Mother Mary would actually exist?
Well, going back to what we were saying before, it's fully dependent on who is delivering the song, who's performing the song.
Right.
Two big songs that were dropped before the film came out were Burial and My Mouth is Lonely for You.
And even though that's a wild title, that's not that wild if, like Charli XCX or FKA Twigs is actually performing it and behind it.
Then you think of the fact that it would be a music video with Anne Hathaway and you're like nah girl, that's not it.
It's giving karaoke.
Good karaoke, but also karaoke.
The vocals were also not necessarily in the way a lot of pop songs are, it's like it's hard to understand sometimes what they're actually saying, and so that also kind of kept me out of remove as like and that's, and that's the issue with pop songs right, and pop stardom, unless you have all this lore about who this person is and the brand.
Yeah, that is very true, but it's hard to come into a movie where you're having a fictional pop star and we don't know really what her brand is beyond Catholic iconography.
I mean, she's a cipher, right?
I mean, like we don't really know who Mother Mary is as a person.
And I think there's something to be said when an artist like Charlie XCX or FK Twigs You know eusexua, you know brat.
These are personal statements of sorts.
These are philosophical statements of how to live, you know, but they're coming directly from them.
There's something to be said about the difference between doing that and just saying here are a few songs for some archetypal figure in pop.
I think you lose a bit of that personality.
You lose a bit of the inspiration and imagination that might go into pop music making when you're just doing it for someone else.
I think it's a whole separate conversation about whether we need to take a break from Jack Antonoff-produced pop music.
When I think about the soundtrack as a whole, I go back to that, that Holy Spirit song.
And that, to me, is like the whole movie in a nutshell these vague general questions without answers and like, so lacking in context or like recognizable human feeling that you don't care about the answers anyway, whether they're going to give it to you or not.
You could say she's an amalgamation of a lot of people and she's biting a lot of people's teeth.
But there is actually a working gothic pop group called Mother Mary that have been active for, like I want to say, the last 10 years.
And it's formed by two twins, Lorena and Elise Nguyen.
And they grew up in Mormonism.
So a lot of their music has to do with subverting the religious rigidity of that faith.
And so a lot of people were getting confused that it was associated with this pop group and the pop group.
They actually came out and said no, we're trying to work with A24 to send like, have some clarity in this, because what it's going to do is create confusion in the market of does this film have anything to do with our pop group?
And it's kind of this is giving antebellum lady antebellum when they were when they were stitching over their names lady m, and then they changed it to lady m and then that's now stomping on the artistry and the whole career of another artist too.
So it's just so funny how, going back to asia, you're saying Part of the betrayal is not getting credit or not being given credit and the power dynamics there.
And this entire movie, this entire creation of the character, it's stomping on this pop duo that really exists and is trying to make music.
Well also, I think, before we even started taping, one of you said uh, said you know, maybe we should have seen FKH wigs in this role of mother Mary.
It does.
It does kind of make more sense because she is the pop star that I think mother Mary, the character in this movie, is supposed to kind of be, but instead she's kind of I hate to invoke this name, but like
Katy Perry-ish?
Not in like... Shots fired!
Not cringey, but going back to that idea of her as like this sort of relatable Anne Hathaway's very... There's something a little bit more down to earth or just like... It's like approachable.
Approachable.
Right.
As opposed to, yes, the weird sort of very theatrical...
Lady Gaga, Madonna persona, that sort of thing.
And even FKA Twigs who she is.
There's just something about her that just oozes like artist, weird hippie counterculture artists as opposed to like on a different frequency, exactly the way we're all struggling to like describe it.
It's like that is what you need.
Yes, it's ineffable.
It's ineffable, right.
It's like something uncanny, right overall.
To me, this film overflows with so much metaphor, so much music, But it actually ultimately dampens the movement of the piece.
Like it dampens the plot.
The fact that we all came out of it and you're like, so what is this?
You know, that's not a good sign.
Yeah.
Well look, maybe everyone else should not take our word for it, but go check it out and then ask yourself what.
What did I just watch?
So that brings us to the end of our show.
Sydney Madden, Mark Rivers, thanks so much for being here.
We didn't get any answers, but we did.
We did have a good time.
I had a good time.
Me too.
Thank you.
I had a great time.
Thanks, guys.
And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio, because you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free.
So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes.
This episode is produced by Liz Metzger, Hafsah Fathima and Mike Katziff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy.
Hello, Come In provides our theme music and thank you for listening to Pop Culture.
Happy Hour from NPR.
I'm Aisha Harris.
We'll see you all next time.
