I Am Mother: Film Review
The story of a robot that is a mother, this is how the premise of I Am Mother (2019) can be summarized, a feature film of Australian origin that mixes drama and suspense to address the fragile behaviors of human nature. The film investigates perfection and imperfection, questioning and doubt, those themes that we hear since we were children and they told us that Eva bit the apple. In 115 minutes we will investigate the why and how, and if we can trust that snake that suddenly appears to make us doubt our own creator.
The film tells the story of Mother and Daughter, an android and a girl who live safely in a world in ruins in a bunker laboratory. Daughter was conceived under an artificial process in a sphere that replaces a woman's womb, and she is the only human that exists after a great infection and catastrophe that devastated existence, or at least that is what Mother tells her.
Daughter receives education, affection and a lot of love from Mother, and everything seems to be going well until Daughter begins to have reason to doubt what Mother says about the extension of life. Everything gets worse when a woman asks for help outside the bunker, so now, after learning that she is not the only human on the face of the earth, Daughter will be caught in the dilemma of believing in Mother, the android with the one who shared years of life, or to trust the stranger, who insists that Mother is really the culprit of the extinction of humanity.
This story is about a family, or rather the atypical construction of one. We see a robot following the pattern of a mother who breaks with the complexity of programming. Again we witness that battle between artificial intelligence and free will, with the weapons that human nature and robotics put on the table. The funny thing about this movie is that these themes seem to merge, and in a short time the viewer sees more than an android of cables, algorithms and censors.
Daughter and Mother, machine and human, a relationship in which the differences by wires and blood matter little. A girl is raised by a robot, a girl who always showed an interest in curiosity and compassion. She, like all infants, was afraid before falling asleep at night. But Mother was there to protect her and take care of her. That armored skeleton with sensors and colored lights is more than a CPU: it is someone who also has desires. Someone who protects, who loves and would give everything for her little girl.
It's interesting how I Am Mhoter shows us the concept of perfection. Humans are born imperfect, robots are created to correct those imperfections. Who is better? The man or the machine? This story invites us to reflect on the correct answer, to question how fragile we can be, and above all to analyze the curious character with which we come from the first time we open our eyes.
The setting of the film goes beyond a post-apocalypse. We look again at the genesis, and the three figures with whom it all began: the creator, the woman and the serpent, this time personified as an android, a daughter and a stranger. The triangle repeats itself and disobedience paints the drama. In this film, it is not the machine that reveals itself to man, it is the man who will reveal himself to the machine. The ability to trust is tested, as well as consistency and common sense. I Am Mhoter is a test from start to finish, an exam where the questions seem complex but the answers are simple if you analyze them well.
Director Grant Sputore bet on something big and different. Perhaps this concept fell a bit short on the road, but the Australian origin story follows that stream of Western films that are entering the film career. The feature film served for actresses like Clara Rugaard to see the light after a long journey through the television series for adolescents.
The soundtrack seeks to familiarize the viewer with the context of the events. We hear Baby Mine sound as we watch Mother warm her daughter with a hug from warm censors. This is beautiful and moving, something that the musicalization achieves successfully throughout the scenes.
The I Am Mother bet managed to overcome the gap of the popcorn movies, however, the general conception of the film, worthy of praise in some aspects such as the soundtrack, the premise and the turning points, will not be left to mark the milestone in the field of science fiction. You will like this story if you love apocalyptic worlds, suspense, mystery and drama. In the end, you will know the great value that a family has, and above all, the intuition and instinct of a true mother.
