There’s something dark and sinister about the world of global pop superstars. It may not be something we see when we watch random real-life concert footage. But when staged in a film, with swooping cameras traveling through packed stadiums, ethereal vocals, and electronic music that is just a bit more apocalyptic than your average radio friendly hit, it comes across fully. The titanic figure at the middle of it, dressed outrageously but plausibly, is more than a god, and also, very likely damaged beyond repair.

That’s the perception we get of the title character, played by Anne Hathaway, in David Lowery’s Mother Mary. In her name alone, but also in her garb and her music, she’s meant to evoke Lady Gaga for a younger generation, Madonna for an older one. As she’s flanked by dancers and buffeted by a roaring crowd, marching through a set that’s almost alien in its strobing lights and harsh angles, we get a complete sense of the loneliness and sacrifices it must have taken to get to this spot. Sacrifices such as a friend who was with you from the start and clothed you in some of your most iconic outfits, but at some point seemed superfluous and was callously dropped.

These are the core elements of Mother Mary, as that friend is played by Michaela Coel with an astonishing and preternatural sense of confidence and composure that nonetheless never masks her deep hurt. They may be the core elements, and they may also be the only elements. After establishing a tone of high profundity, using montage and other visual tricks we would cheapen if we likened them to a music video, Lowery burrows deep into the fractured relationship between Mother Mary and her friend Sam – or rather, burrows into it for quite a long time. Regrettably, this burrowing is not deep. Although the film talks endlessly about perceived slights and betrayals, it never gets beyond a talky two-hander that feels mired in the present tense.

Mother Mary is at a crisis point in her career. Her popularity has not waned from its peak, but she’s cracking up a bit. She’s just staged a cry-for-help stunt that has been viewed on social media the world over, though this is only obliquely referenced at first. Set to count down the New Year and given a platform for the whole world to hear her sing one song, Mary can’t abide the costume her handlers have designed for her. So she impulsively sets off, without telling anyone where she’s going, for the country estate in rainy England of her one-time designer, Sam Anselm, who has succeeded wildly in her post-Mother Mary era, but still harbours quite the grudge.

Sam might make Mary the dress she’s seeking, even though she only has three days to do so. But first she’s going to torture her. Sam wants to extract an apology from Mary that Mary is certainly willing to give, but not with the sincerity Sam needs – at least, not yet. At the same time, Sam convinces Mary how little she needs or even thinks of Mary, and refuses to listen to Mary’s new song, saying it would break her streak of not listening to Mary’s music. Mary is hurt and unaccustomed to anyone saying no to her, but she also needs Sam a lot more than Sam needs her. So she has to play along with a game that might heal wounds for both of them, or might land them in a much worse place than when they started.

For a movie about music, Mother Mary does tend to hit the same notes over and over again. Because Lowery is a talented filmmaker, any individual moment in the film is interesting, a tribute both to his keen understanding of the power of visuals, and to his incredible pair of actors.

We have long been aware of the talents of Hathaway, who won an Oscar for her performance in Les Miserables in 2012, but Coel will be a newcomer for most viewers, despite smaller appearances in the last Star Wars movie and the last Black Panther movie. She is the film’s true distinguishing element, delivering Lowery’s caustic dialogue in a manner that’s so absorbing that you simply can’t take your eyes off her face. This dialogue is a perfect combination of semantic exactness, linguistic cleverness, justifiable sadism and naked honesty, while also rarely exceeding a tone of extreme calm. It establishes Sam as a figure of great power and self-actualisation, though she wouldn’t be saying any of these things if she weren’t still pining for the attention of a woman the whole world loves as much as she does.

Even though Lowery does introduce some interesting twists into their back-and-forth, not to mention thematic callbacks to his film A Ghost Story, you can’t escape the notion that this film is spinning its wheels. It’s a film that has everything on its side except a clear sense of momentum. And that, unfortunately, undoes some of the great design details and character work. We feel trapped in that mansion, wondering when things are going to shift to their next gear. They never do.

But let’s for a moment consider some of those design details. For us to believe Mother Mary as a real pop star, we have to believe her music, and thanks to singer FKA Twigs, who also appears in a smaller role, the music has credibility to spare. Adding to the credibility is that it is actually Hathaway belting out these bangers, which we can imagine being real pop songs if the world were ready for someone with Twigs’ temperament. Whenever the film does cut away from that mansion for scenes of Mary singing on stage – whether they are memories of past performances, or just fantasy sequences – we feel newly entranced by this personality, this music, the whole visual opera that Lowery has composed for us.

In the end, it’s not quite enough. And that doesn’t mean Mother Mary is not worth seeing. It’s just that it’s only scratching the surface of Lowery’s truly visionary films, like the aforementioned A Ghost Story and The Green Knight. It isn’t burrowing deep.

 

Mother Mary opened yesterday in Australian cinemas.