Mother

Poignant and absurd in equal measure, Albert Brooks taps into the conflicted push-and-pull at the heart of parent/child relationships. Vulnerable, pleading, and anxious in an equilibrium that’s daring to watch, Mother finds Brooks going full Oedipal complex as a man reexamining his life choices, mainly his unlucky love life, through the prism of his mother. He moves back in with her and launches “The Experiment,” essentially trying to find the source of her passive-aggressive treatment of him and how it’s wormed its way into his life by moving back in with her.

Before you assume “that sounds infantilism and a bit like a hoary sitcom,” just remember that this is Albert Brooks, so the jokes come about in circular ways and the destinations of scenes aren’t immediately obvious. Brooks often keeps his camera setups simplistic and watches as two characters in medium shots talk at each other yet never seem to grow closer together. That medium shot begins to feel like CinemaScope after a while.

It also helps that the titular mother is played by Debbie Reynolds, one of cinema’s original virginal nice girls that contained more spunk and vinegar than the sugary exterior let on. Her performance is a transcendent thing, a creation of sweet, polite aggression that almost makes you wonder if she knows what she’s doing at the time. She appears so daffy at first that you don’t realize just how keen a mind is hidden underneath it all. It’s a mesmerizing piece of work from an undervalued actress.

Think of the scene where she tries to feed him food that’s been kept in her freezer since, I don’t know, 1987? She seems so nurturing and lovable at first, a little quirky but don’t we all view our parents as being slightly quirky after a certain age, that we barely notice the deeper truth going on here. She’s trying to nurture him with frozen objects, and this is a scene that examines the larger truth about improper parenting reflecting into our adult lives in various ways. Reynolds is also sly and gifted a comedienne that we barely notice she’s tasked with helping set-up a huge symbolic microcosm of the film’s wider thesis.

That’s the great thing about Mother – there’s a certain wry knowingness to the complexity of family dynamics that springs forth from the humor. It’s not always laugh-out-loud funny, but it is funny for its precision and relatability. Sure, the ending is a little bit too neat and tidy, but that’s no reason to write it off. There are many uncomfortable truths in Mother, and just as many humorous bits.