Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

Mother! Man: and Then? God: Your Mother! Man: 3 times? And then who? God: Your father. This is one of the most interesting films i have seen which deconstructs the themes of Faith, Fatherhood, and importance of mother and her love in humanity. The title establishes that a mother holds three times the relational and spiritual weight of a father. And when Latif’s wife dies, his son Qadir explicitly remarks that their father is "cooked" because latif has an impossible task of filling the shoes of their mother. We see him taking care of two teenage children and running around for breast milk for his infant. Trying to balance his violence past and current situation of fatherhood while questioning the faith, where he in one scene says " you take everything from me, and ask me to bow down before you". Despite being a highly religious person, his action and deeds contradict his beliefs. Latif now must transition from the violent and dominant(masculine ) structures of religion (the logic of rules, warfare, and systems) into the structure of Mother ("feminine") realm of care, nurturing, community reliance, and accepting the emotional vulnerability. The movie heavily critiques the exploitation of organized religion. It contrasts the quiet, everyday communal rituals of the local Muslim community (who band together to support the grieving family) against the loud, chaotic, and heavily weaponized extremism of Pastor Hwan Yoon's (John Cho) Christian nationalist militia. I think this contrast was made deliberately ,because many in the west view islam as an extremist religion, but that exists in any organised religion, it has both sides. It does not try to show one religion in good light and another one as bad, it just highlights the hypocrisy and contradiction with what they preach and do is part of every religion. I love the relationship it tries to showcase between Violence and Protection, complete opposite, but also can be co-related. Here we don't see violence as a form of revenge, but he wants to protect his family and get rid of the past which he no longer recognises. Violence is used as a pathway of transformation. I really liked the idea of blending multiple genres, using tropes of action thriller, philosophy, spiritualism and adding emotional touch to it, makes it a really interesting film. And the way it shot, the music and action choreography also did very well. And my god, Mahershala Ali, what a performance. MCU really fucked up by not going ahead with BLADE project. But you will really see his training and skills coming to fruition in this film in the action sequences. But his portrayal of aching, deeply soulful emotionally vulnerable and grieving father, is the one which you will like the most. Definitely one of his best performances. You hardly see films which talk about faith in a rational manner, and that also resonate with the experiences of actual people when it comes to their duty towards their family, god and society, and explores their internal moral struggle, This film is not preachy and it is artistically expressive, innovative and very well executed with mashup of genres. Thats what makes it unique.