Mother Land by Alexandre Aja has a plot that is devious to say the least. And that’s what makes it so good, as the director himself points out when we ask him to explain the ending. Warning, spoilers!
Director of Haute Tension et The Hill has eyes (among others!), Frenchman Alexandre Aja had recently made a name for himself thanks to a tense crocodile B series (Crawl), as well as a science fiction behind closed doors (Oxygen). In Mother Landa horror post-apocalypse, it features a much more twisted scenario, by Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby, which seems to have a series of twists, but in fact refuses to put the viewer on a specific track.
An ambiguity which was not unanimous, but which for us makes the feature film interesting. An ambiguity which also does not please the sites enslaved by the ogre Google, which demands “explanations” for all mainstream films in the form of demonstrative articles. GAFAM don’t like mystery. The case of Mother Land is therefore interesting, sinceall he has left are symbols to explain.
Mother Land, Mother Death
Allocinated did not fail to ask the director for an explanation of the end of Mother Landwhich confirms both the existence of “evil” and the fact that the world has not been destroyed, as claimed by the mother played by Halle Berry.
« When I arrived on the film, I had a very clear reading of what the story was about. But I realized that, ultimately, other people had a very different reading. At first, this unsettled me a little. However, I said to myself: maybe this is an opportunity to confront different points of view, like in certain stories where there is a supernatural explanation and a realistic explanation.«
He added:
« It reminds me of films like The Shining or Onibaba, where several interpretations are possible. This is also the case in certain classic horror tales, such as “Hansel and Gretel” or “Tom Thumb”, where different explanations can coexist. I found it interesting to maintain this ambiguity. However, my vision has never changed. Normally, I don’t like to share it, because I prefer to leave everyone free to their own interpretation. »
Everyone is free to interpret themselves and for good reason: the aim of Mother Land is indeed to lose the spectator, to keep him in an in-between where realism and the supernatural remain possible. Thus, he puts him in the shoes of the two brotherswho must understand that evil does indeed exist in our world, but that does not mean their mother is right, obviously raised in a very religious environment and with a troubled past.
Mother Land, Kids Kingdom
By validating the two main hypotheses, it tells of the emancipation of adolescents on the verge of coming clean and – literally – cutting the family cord, which is bad for their health. Unfortunately, the two brothers fail to accomplish this effort. The only thing to really explain about the ending is their psychological state, fundamentally different since the death of their mother.
« At the end of the film, one of the children manages to accept the dark side of his mother, cut ties and free himself, while the other will remain forever a prisoner of the trauma transmitted by the mother. The photo that we see at the end, where evil places its hand on Samuel’s shoulder, symbolizes for me the fact that Samuel will never recover from it, that he will always be contaminated by this evil, while Nolan will be free. »
Mother Land therefore evokes through its ambivalence all the cruelty and trauma of psychological violence inflicted on children. Symbols which were considered a bit heavy for the press, but which make all the singularity of a horror film not content with chaining twists, no offense to Google.
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