David Lowery’s newest film, Mother Mary is a visual beauty with grief and loss woven through its fabric. Starring Anne Hathaway and Micaela Coel, the film follows two estranged friends and collaborators having a long, overdue conversation after a falling out. The film is simplistic in its setting with much of it taking place in the same room between dream and flashback sequences. The true relationship of the two women is never explicitly stated or revealed but is deeply felt through their dialogue, their dreams and the unspoken yet ever-present tension between them. Lowery delicately explores the feelings of grief we experience when we lose someone who is still alive, a loss that is so profound, it feels alive in itself.
Mother Mary (Hathaway), a famous pop singer, is getting ready to perform again after surviving an onstage accident during her concert. Feeling stressed about the comeback, Mary seeks out her disaffected stylist, Sam (Micaela Coel) to design her outfit. Sam is reluctant at first, upset with Mary over past grievances but she agrees to help Mary despite this. They awkwardly begin to catch up and it becomes clear there is more to Sam and Mary’s relationship than costume designer and singer. As the conversation takes a more personal turn and the sexual tension rises, the women both reveal they have been confronted by a ghost in the form of a deep red, billowy cloth. Together, Sam and Mary must exorcise the ghost that entered Mary’s body during her concert, ultimately causing her on-stage accident in order for both to fully heal and truly leave their shaky past behind.
The relationship between Sam and Mary feels so real – the entanglement, the codependency, and the definitiveness of it all. Much of the other’s identity (both as a popstar and as a designer) are engrossed in each other and although both women are successful, they are haunted by their past traumatic relationship. Their relationship is a gorgeous and true embodiment of grieving a past someone who still exists but differently now. Pieces of you can get lost with them, not feeling like your own anymore and it can feel impossible to move on from fully. Some people may call that a situationship but the emotions feel much deeper like soulmates with the word ‘friend’ written across it. The depth of their relationship reflected a situation many people have been in, having a “friendship” that has the emotional weight of a mountain.
Representing the loss of the relationship as not only a ghost but as a piece of gorgeous, flowing red fabric was powerful and moving. Not only did it encapsulate their relationship on a literal level, being costume designer and performer, but the choice in color, style and movement as a ghost personified the exact feeling of profound loss in a way rarely seen visually. Gazing at the fabric moving across the screen, the audience could feel the ghost of this friendship, along with ghosts of their own friendships. The ghost had an unthreatening presence but an all-consuming one, taking your breath away with each swift movement, momentarily suffocating you. I don’t think there was a more genius way to visualize the ghost of a past relationship and Lowery and the production team did a great job using practical effects to bring the ghost to life.
In much of the build-up to the film’s release the focus was on the stylistic choices for Anne Hathaway’s performances, the parallels with other pop singers and the music being helmed by CharliXCX and Jack Antonoff. While all of those elements were phenomenal,, what truly blew me away was the authenticity of the dialogue and the underlying and mostly unspoken hurt shown by the lead actresses, personified by the ghost. This film was a magnificent reconciliation and trauma story that anyone who has loved and lost can truly identify with.
