Mother iskind of close to a Hitchcock film. It’s just so taut and economical in its storytelling and this role of the mother she plays is that you think she’s one thing, a tightly strung over worried mam, but then what lies beneath that in the hidden reserves that she has to draw upon and make some choices for the best of her boy. She doesn’t always make the choice you might necessarily expect and so it takes the film off to the left and it just keeps veering off. It’s a really, really good piece of work. The thing about Mother is that the plotting is just so tight. There’s not these big tonal shifts like in his other films but there is a kind of moral fogginess. And I love that. Usually, we might arrive at those things through cinematography, lighting, set design, or the editing, but somehow he manages to make something that appears completely crisp, but actually, when you reflect afterwards, it’s like, oh my god, what did I think of what that person did?
