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| From http://stuffpoint.com/horror/image/ 209537-horror-the-mother-of-tears-poster.jpg |
Director: Dario Argento
Screenplay: Jace Anderson, Dario
Argento, Walter Fasano, Adam Gierasch, Simona Simonetti
Cast: Asia Argento (as Sarah
Mandy); Cristian Solimeno (as Detective Enzo Marchi); Adam James (as Michael
Pierce); Moran Atias (as Mater Lachrymarum); Valéria Cavalli (as Marta Colussi);
Philippe Leroy (as Guglielmo De Witt); Daria Nicolodi (as Elisa Mandy)
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #6
Kim Newman - the (rightly) acclaimed horror academic, film reviewer
and fiction/non-fiction author - stated that the wait for Mother of Tears, the final of supposed triptych of films by Dario Argento about the Three Mothers he
created in Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980), was like following up
the first two Lord of the Rings
films with Krull (1983). I find that
the experience of Mother of Tears is
significantly worse. Later Dario Argento
films are an issue that plagues fans of his classics, but for me there was
significantly less of a problem willing to accept their flaws as long as some
personality was alive in them. Baring the nineties1, and one or two
pieces from the seventies and noughts2, I've seen almost everything.
Sleepless (2001) for its flaws is
still strong, only the flatness of its look marring an interesting giallo. The Card Player (2004), in need of a
revisit, was a film that was utterly ludicrous and somehow made cinematography
master Benoît Debie create a flat
looking palette, but it was certainly not the train wreck it's been described
as. Giallo (2009), while laughably
bad and clichéd to an extreme level, was
fun and had a great twist ending. It was only with Dracula (2012), for how entertaining I still found it, that I
showed any real palatable concern as Argento
not only made a silly film but sacrificed his trademarks on it. In hindsight
however it's a great film next to the
Mother of Tears, the last film I needed to see of the noughts which is the
black stain in his career, making even Giallo
look credible in quality.
The issue with Mother of Tears is that, even if it
wasn't connected to the Three Mothers films of before or even to Argento, it would be terrible. There is
a discrepancy to films after the Millennium where ultra schlocky, gory movies
can come off as tawdry, repulsive and tedious whilst the older films can be
charming and fun unless they are diabolically bad; but a lot of it here is to
do with how lifeless and bleak the result is in the newer films like this. Without
any of the hallucinatory look of Suspiria
and Inferno, without the fairy tale
and dream logic, this is a more straightforward story, about an outbreak of
murder and chaos in Rome when the Mother of Tears claims a mythical artefact
and gets her followers to create anarchy. With Rome becoming a pit of violence,
infanticide and mass rioting on the streets, archaeology student Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento) finds she is the only one
who can stop the Mother of Tears, her late mother Elisa Mandy (Daria Nicolodi) returning from the grave to inform her of latent abilities as
a white witch inherited from her parent. The entire execution of this
narrative, barring one or two moments, is terrible and is a completely style-less
dabbling into pondering exposition and ultra-violent gothic horror without any
grace to it.
Admittedly there are Italian
horror films (from the eighties especially) that can be accused of this, but
the layer of gloss and kitsch to them is lost here with the post-Millennial
look and realistic palette, squandering the Catholicism of Rome as a location
and the occult trappings of witchcraft. Instead the result looks cheap and delves
into the kind of Gothic symbolism that would embarrass Goths with any sort of
taste: the Mother of Tears is a model who lives in only her birthday suit and
the apocalyptic riots in Rome are partially signalled by what appears to be a
worldwide Goth conventional, people coming in on airplanes saying boo to the
people within the terminal buildings. The earlier films, even if they were tasteless
schlock, still had class even in poverty row in terms of style, this film meant
to have a grandeur to match the first Three Mothers films but instead looking like
a lot of bland American genre films from the same decade, Asia Argento looking lost as a protagonist while Nicolodi is re-enacting the ghost of Obi-Wan
Kenobi in green hued CGI.
The worst part is that in its
attempt to still be a competent horror film, it becomes the most violent film
in Argento's career but manages to
just be grim and too violence artistically for the tone. I would defend far
more violent and disturbing films that this (Baise-Moi (2000), Ichi The Killer (2001) etc.) but there are cases
of films that are far too violent for their tone, the result when they merely
become desensitising and numb me rather than cause me to feel shock, revulsion
or illicit laughter. The perfect spectrum for gore in horror is either in the
absurd camp (literally) of a Herschell
Gordon Lewis film or one that illicit shock and disgust; desentisiting
violence exists completely outside of this spectrum and illicit no emotion
whatsoever. CGI aided, it feels like Argento
is trying too hard here and is creates an off-putting work in terms of how it
was put together. Children are killed numerous times and it's not shocking,
merely crass, and the film also has the lowest point in Argento's career in a scene involving a lesbian couple and a pike
that is arguably misogynistic, not something to be debated like criticisms of
his older work but completely offensive in its place in the film, tone and how
the pike is involved. The result is disgusting but eye-rolling, this type of
violence ultimately pointless, neither transgressive in real revulsion or
ridiculous but merely a pointless escapade.
This entire tone can be felt
throughout the film, the sense Mother of
Tears was merely created to finish a triptych that really didn't need to
happen, the duo of Suspiria and Inferno perfect as they are by
themselves. As if to make things worse a terrible metal song scored by Claudio Simonetti, who should have known
better, plays over the end credits, reminding me of a bad Cradle of Filth knock-off only to realise Dani Filth of the band, he of some questionable decisions in terms
of films he's involved with, is actually singing the vocals. The ultimate
disgust I have with Mother of Tears,
when there's plenty of older Italian schlock I can still find entertainment in,
is that this is a colourless, characterless and cynical work to have been
created, less about continuing the Three Mothers trilogy but all the worst
aspects of gothic horror and the legacy of the first films, misinterpreted and abused,
dumped on screen. It neither feels tasteless in a fun way or something
ridiculous, merely an exercise. It feels less like a b-movie equivalent of the
first two films, to reference the opening Kim
Newman quote, but a dreadful c-level cash grab.
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| From http://www.horreur.net/sites/default/files/upload/motheroftearspic4.jpg |
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1 The films made in
the nineties is the huge gap in terms of his horror films for me barring seeing
Two Evil Eyes (1990) and The Stendhal Syndrome (1996). Revisiting
the two mentioned films and catching up the others will be an interesting
experience in lieu to what I think of his work in the noughties.
2Mainly the TV work. There
is also the one non-horror film in his career, the exceptionally rare
historical drama The Five Days (1973),
which I still need to see but the prospects of seeing it considering how
commercially unsuccessful it was will be difficult.
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