Media Event Post 1

I saw the new Darren Aronofsky film, Mother, this past weekend, and honestly I was a bit disappointed. I was extremely excited for this movie because not only am I a huge fan of Aronofsky, specifically Black Swan and The Wrestler, but this film had the most interesting marketing campaign that I had seen in a while.

The marketing behind this film was virtually non-existent. There was never a basic plot synopsis revealed. Neither the cast on their promotional touring or the trailer gave anymore insight into what the film was about other then it was directed by Aronofsky and stared Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem. I was mesmerized by this marketing, because in a society full of social media and easy access for marketers to reach their target audience, this film chose to not utilize any of it and decided instead to keep itself under tight secrecy. The film was kept in such secrecy until its premiere at Venice International Film Festival, which was only a little more then a week before the film opened nationwide.

After seeing the movie I now understand that there was no

other possible strategy to market this film other then complete secrecy because it not a film that is appealing to the masses. I found the pacing in the beginning of the film to be much too slow and as soon as I finally began to get into the first half of the film the dynamic shifted so drastically that I felt as if I was watching another movie. This was a film that took me a few days of deliberating over before I decided if I enjoyed it or not. I did not. My initial reaction was speechlessness and I stared at the screen long after the film faded out, the more I thought of it the film was not weird and wild in a way that can sometimes be advantageous to an avant-garde style film, instead the film seamed to be so crazy just for the sake of being crazy that any artistic nuance or message of the film either got lost in all the chaos or was so blatantly obvious it felt redundant.

I am happy I saw the film, however, I doubt that I will ever watch it again. As weird and unnatural as I found the lack of marketing for this film, it certainly was effective because it make me go and see it, and had I know anymore about the film then I did going into the screening I probably would not have gone to see it in the first place.