Friendships that end abruptly are the ones that leave the deepest scars. Never fading, they take an irreplaceable piece of you. As much as we all think of ourselves as individuals who create our own personalities independently, those around us shape us. Mother Mary is a spellbinding pop drama that views the price of fame through couture glasses.
Director David Lowery creates two women who are cut from the same cloth, connected in a haunted way, stalked by the same spirits. His newest film, Mother Mary, explores their once-obsessive friendship and how it fractures as the cost of fame increases. Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) is a transcendent pop star cloaked in grandiose costumes and adorned with elaborate headdresses, a look sketched and stitched by the hands of Sam Anslem (Michaela Coel). Mary and Sam are more than just a pop star and a designer, more than a severed friendship; they are connected on a spiritual plane.
The film opens with a horrific scene, and grainy footage shows a woman hanging from a significant height, with distorted pop music composed by Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff, and Daniel Hart playing in the background. “Burial” undoubtedly is the film’s best original song, a mixture of drama and spirituality. Lowery evokes a deep sense of gloom, a hazy few seconds that is immediately effective. As glamorous as the figure appears, it’s hard to shake the image for the remainder of Mother Mary.
Mary is desperate for her return to the stage, even after videos flood the internet of the darkest point in her life. Much like any star, she’s constantly surrounded by people pulling at her in every direction, making choices for someone they only know as an entertainer, not noticing, or rather not caring, when cracks begin to show, covering up her exhaustion with IV treatments and a painted face.
When planning her comeback, her costuming is the aspect causing her a tremendous amount of anguish. Wearing larger-than-life costumes isn’t new to Mary, but each piece that she puts on just feels off. Nothing feels like her, or who she thought she was. Seeking clarity in what she wants to express through fabrics, Mary sulks her way to an old friend.
With only a few days before her much-lauded return to pop music, Mary barges into Sam’s home, filled with her work for an upcoming fashion show. From our perspective, Sam’s first impression is that of someone highly sought after in the fashion world. With a team of seamstresses at her command, and with her assistant Hilda (Hunter Schafer), her home is a sprawling network built out of necessity. The reunion between Mary and Sam is filled with resentment and snide remarks rather than a warm embrace.
There are unresolved issues between them, so many that when Mary gives a simple sorry to Sam, it’s unclear what it’s even about. When Mary is successful in acquiring the help of an old friend and costume designer, she must submit all say in what is worn to what Sam envisions. Mother Mary truly hits its ethereal transcendence when both women open up about the time that has passed them and how they dealt with missing each other in their lives.
Lowery shows Mary as a tortured talent; her work asks a lot from her, but she has nothing else to give to the world. Her shows entertain thousands upon thousands each night, but she was once a smaller artist with a smaller team that included her friend Sam. With her, Mary’s sense of self felt defined. Sam sadly doesn’t get the credit she deserves for the visual language of Mary. Now, Mary has a fractured view of herself, making even the costumes she wears less of an expression of her pop persona and more an imitation of a shared vision.
Fame has changed Mary, and subsequently Sam as well, with both having successful careers outside of one another. A double-edged sword that Lowery throws into Mother Mary. The increasing demand to rise to a global sensation is what split their connection, but that same demand put a spotlight on Sam’s stunning designs. It’s the film’s central paradox: the very thing that severs their bond is what allows each of them to thrive without the other.
Where Mother Mary plays into these women’s spiritual connection, which teeters on the supernatural, their love and hatred for one another are moving and show how closely the two emotions are intertwined. Lowery goes fully into his bag during the film’s latter act, writing a ghost of red flowing fabric that haunts both women, presenting itself to both in different forms. It is a manifestation of the energy created from their unresolved trauma.
Much of Mother Mary hinges on flashbacks or dream-like recreations of Mary and Sam’s memories. Cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo utilizes stillness for the majority of the film’s runtime, focusing on faces and their reactions to hearing that someone who once worshipped you now claims to hate you. On the flip side of Mary, her packed crowds of fans are almost entirely faceless, there to bask in Mary’s stardom. Stadium shots are done by cinematographer Rina Yang. Often, their work makes Mary and Sam feel like the only two people that exist in this world Lowery has created.
Coel and Hathaway are working in the same realm as Natalie Portman in Black Swan, showing pain through their art, suffering to create. Though Hathaway has the more physical performance, losing herself in a dance routine for a new song, she begins to sound possessed. She speaks in meek, hushed tones, often barely able to talk through tears. Coel, on the other hand, is more combative with her performance, almost egging on the anguish Mary feels, going from a kind, welcoming approach to an old friend to a cold annoyance at her presence.
Thankfully for audiences, Lowery is at his best in Mother Mary, crafting a film that stuns from its opening scene to the final shot of a skull with the title card appearing. Mother Mary becomes less about fame itself and more about what is lost in the process of becoming something larger than yourself.
