Episode 190: Film Analysis: "mother!"
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
Mark Linsenmayer
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2018
⏱️ 85 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Darren Aronofsky's philosophical 2017 film about humanity's relationship to nature. We discuss the philosophical content of the film (Gnosticism, anyone?) and explore the relation between meaning and the sensuous aspects of an artwork. Can a work be both allegorical and yet have fully fleshed out characters and the other elements that make a film feel real? This was a very polarizing film; how do the circumstances of viewing affect reception? With guest Tim Nicholas.
End song: "The Day of Wrath, That Day," by Sarah McQuaid, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #72.
Please support PEL! Citizens and $5 Patreon supporters will get access to a bonus discussion on identity politics this week.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey folks, this is a film analysis episode which we're doing now in light of our |
| 0:04.1 | authorial intent episode to actually give some concrete practice to the theoretical |
| 0:09.2 | discussions of interpretation we had last time. I had anticipated that as with our previous |
| 0:13.9 | movie episodes, the second part of it would be available only to partially examined life supporters. |
| 0:19.2 | But this discussion ended up being short enough that I'm very happy to be able to present the |
| 0:23.2 | thing in full right here for you now. However, there is plenty of other full episode quality |
| 0:28.4 | discussion material recently recorded available only at partially examined life.com with a membership |
| 0:34.7 | or at patreon.com at the five dollar level, including both the follow-up discussion to our previous |
| 0:39.5 | episode on authorial intent and within the week after this goes up there will be a supporter only |
| 0:44.6 | discussion. Wes and I had about identity politics, so you might want to consider supporting us if |
| 0:48.8 | you can afford to do so. Thanks! |
| 0:58.4 | You're listening to the partially examined life, a podcast by some guys who are at one point |
| 1:01.9 | set on doing philosophy for living, but then thought better of it. Our question for episode 190 |
| 1:06.8 | is does letting the world into your private life inevitably screw things up? |
| 1:10.9 | And we're talking about Darren Aronovsky's 2017 film Mother. |
| 1:14.6 | More information please check out partiallyexaminedlife.com. |
| 1:17.6 | This is Mark Linson Meyer, loving how much you love me in Madison, Wisconsin. |
| 1:21.7 | This is Wes Allen being a bad house guest to the nanny state that is Cambridge. |
| 1:27.6 | And this is Tim Nicholas sitting on an unbraced sink in Los Angeles, California. |
| 1:32.1 | Tim, welcome. |
| 1:33.3 | Hi, this was a rather last-minute idea and I put out a call for who among our listenership had some |
| 1:39.3 | experience doing film reviews and things. Tell us a little about your background, Tim. |
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