Mother of Tears (2007) Starring Asia Argento, Cristian Solimeno & Adam James Directed by Dario Argento Written by Jace Anderson, Dario Argento, Walter Fasano, Adam Gierasch & Simona Simonetti [wtf? - jamie]

Finally, 27 years later, the third in the Suspiria trilogy.

For full details on the first two installments, look in the archives of issue #2. In brief, the story thus far has been about a coven of witches, three sisters who control the world through their black magic. In Suspiria, the first sister used her home as a dance studio as a cover for her to… well, we don’t really know what, but we’re told it was evil. One of the students overpowered and killed her, along with all her followers.

Inferno, the second film, took us to Rome, and then New York, as a man investigates the death of his sister, and finds that the second, youngest, and cruelest sister murdered her. Through a twist of good fortune, the brother lives, and the stateside coven is burned to the ground.

Now the conclusion…

The film opens in modern day Rome where an unmarked grave in cracked open outside of the Vatican; inside of the coffin is an urn marked with strange symbols. The grave is quickly re-consecrated, but the urn is given to church officials, then a museum crew, to examine. Of note on this crew is a young student, Sarah Mandy, played by the director’s daughter (and an accomplished director herself) Asia Argento. The urn is cracked open to reveal a set of three monstrous little figurines, and a tabard, with more strange symbols embroidered into it. Sarah leaves the room to get some tools, and just in time, for as she leaves, the figures become full-sized monsters, and her boss is brutally murdered.

This is brutal in the way only Argento can bring. There are torture tools, blades, beatings, and ultimately, the poor woman is strangled to death with her own intestines. How often do you get to see that, really? For a moment, I had to wonder where the monsters pulled these torture devices from…until I realized that it was an Argento film, and these things just kind of happen. Again, it’s the dream-state from which he pulls many of his ideas.

Sarah escapes the creatures and their Sudden Monkey. (Sudden Monkey, as I have named him, appears in the film every now and again and throws you off if you think too much about it. Just assume he’s the witch’s familiar, it was good enough for me.) Sarah’s escape is only possible because of the timely aid of a haunting voice in the air, which opens doors in her path and guides her mysteriously to safety. More on this seemingly divine intervention is revealed as the film progresses.

But pause for a moment, as Sarah traverses across Rome and its surrounding countryside, seeking aid, to explore the new mythos of the film. A knight of the crusades once destroyed Mother Lachrymarum, but her soul was trapped in a tabard (think The One Ring). The knight traveled to the Vatican, hoping they would seal and destroy her powers forever, having trapped the tabard and the Mother’s shadow servants in an urn. Every city that helped the knight was subsequently destroyed by hordes of beasts and disease, and in turn no further cities would aid the knight. He made it to Rome, dying and completely mad. It is his grave, raised from the consecrated Earth that they found in the beginning of the movie. Removing the urn from it has allowed Lachrymarum to return to power.

This is an unexpectedly badass and deep plot for an Argento film. Love it.

Lachrymarum’s ultimate goal is the destruction of Rome and the Vatican for her imprisonment so many years ago, and to that end she calls upon every witch in the world to come to her aid, so they might conquer the Earth again. Her influence is seen immediately, as people in the streets start tearing each other apart in inexplicable rages, people become ill or are driven mad with no previous symptoms, and mothers destroy their own children.

But the first order of business is the destruction of Sarah. Rather coincidentally, she’s the daughter of a powerful white witch (Daria Nicolodi, in a different role than her turn in Inferno) that once battled and severely weakened Mother Suspiriorum. It is worried that Sarah’s powers might surface, allowing her to confront the new coven, and so, Sudden Monkey and a horde of demonic followers scour the night looking for her, as the battle for Rome begins.

God, I make this movie sound good. I wish it were as good as I make it sound.

Okay, that’s pretty harsh. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Mother of Tears, I really did. There’s a lot of really negative criticism out there on the net, some of it earned, some not. Before I start nitpicking, just allow me to say that this is a good movie, and worth the watch. But it has to be examined on two levels: how does it work on its own as a horror movie, and how does it work as the closing chapter to a cult-classic trilogy.

Weaknesses before the strengths…

A common complaint I hear about this movie, and sadly I can’t argue the point, is that the witches are dumb. Not just that they act dumb, but that they also look and sound dumb. Just ridiculous. When Sarah is in the train station, trying to find the best escape route from maniacal Rome, she is confronted and chased by a group of six or seven witches. For a moment, I thought the WB had remade Hocus Pocus. The witches (and you’ll see a couple groups like this, so I guess they must all be this way) are gaggles of vapid, cackling twenty-somethings that wear make-up and hair like a Twisted Sister music video. I’m all for the witches looking like misfits of society, I guess, but only the Japanese witch should be dressed in Japanese Goth-Lolita style. These hooting MTV rejects absolutely ruin every scene they’re in; I’ve yet to hear a single voice come to their defense, and they really should have remained on the cutting room floor, as they make the covens seem insanely stupid, as opposed to the cold villainy of the house mistresses in the Suspiria film.

In general, the ending is weak. Really weak. This is true of the prior two installments, so I guess I should have seen it coming, but I was really hoping for more.

So, what was up with the magic voice that was helping Sarah out earlier in the film? Its Sarah’s mom, that witch I mentioned before. It seems she’s been coming back as… well like a Force Spirit or something. The acting in these scenes is really well done. The mother/daughter chemistry is very strong between Asia and Daria, and using them for the two parts was very inspired. I only wish I could say the same for the writing in these sequences. Ghost Mom is a pretty tired plot device at this point, and while it still could have been used to great effect, the battle her mother fights about 3/4 through the film is incredibly cheesy…and really kind of a waste. I’m pretty sure Sarah could just outrun the monster she’s saved from in this scene… I mean, his head his half-off and he’s on fire…

One pretty glaring mistake ruins an otherwise very potent scene. Lachrymarum’s power has infected the city, a mother turns to throw her baby off of a bridge, having lost control of herself. She does, the baby strikes the side of the bridge as it plummets…. and its arm comes out of its socket, revealing it to be a plastic doll… this was such a good scene otherwise, I really wish someone in editing would have caught that…

Okay, so there are errors. But every film’s got ‘em, and don’t tell me they don’t. What’s awesome here that made me enjoy the film?

For starters, I enjoy the cast. The cast is a conglomeration of actors from Dario’s other works. Asia is our star, beautiful as always, and though this isn’t her strongest performance, I’d say it’s more than adequate. Her mother, though I don’t like the part she plays, also does well. Highlighting the bill also is Udo Kier, who finally gets a roll with some meat on it, a chance to not only deliver the film’s plot exposition, but to have a pretty sweet death scene.

This is a horror film, right? And true to form, Dario delivers chills, jumps, and some brutally disturbing images that stay with you well after the film’s close. A jaw breaking, stomach opening, intestine strangling, Sudden Monkeying, eye-gouging, vagina stabbing, baby-eating, arm-chopping, thorn-dry-humping charnel pit of depravity awaits you within, a slow, tense build to…okay, so the climax isn’t much, but the ride is pretty good.

And beyond that, the quality of the film production is just light-years away from a lot of what has been brought out in the last few years. There’s a lot of style in horror today, something that was lacking when Dario first started this trilogy (and part of what eventually made it so popular). But so much of it is repetitive, just building on either Saw (itself pretty derivative of Se7en), or the Ring, full of muted colors and creepy little girls. Dario delivers another well-shot film, with excellent uses of color and space, and it just plain looks good while remaining unique in form and style. The effects look convincingly gory and the story is well told through the pacing and visuals. Maybe its just because this film followed the mediocre Wizard of Gore and Never Cry Werewolf on my viewing slate this month, but this film looked very good to me.

That said though, visually, it does not fit in with Suspiria or Inferno. Both of those films had very rich color palettes, and a lot of very strange, unique textures on every surface. Everywhere your eyes wandered, they were dazzled. A lot of that is absent in this film. Not to say its not still very well shot, but the particular colors and qualities that were the staples of the preceding films are left behind for a more realistic touch. We really don’t see the use of Dario’s more traditional colors and textures until Sarah enters the witch’s den at the end of the film… this may have been done intentionally, to illustrate the proximity of the witch, ever present in the prior films, but if so it succeeds more in isolating the installment from the previous works.

And that, I think, is where a majority of the Internet community’s complaints come from. I can overlook an anti-climax. I can overlook a cheesy Jedi Daria. I can even overlook (re: fast-forward) the Hocus Pocus witches. I think most people can. But if it doesn’t fit in with the established feel of the beloved movies that preceded it, people are going to have problems.

Suspiria and Inferno were both films that were typically made with style over substance. Even if the story didn’t quite make sense, or the acting was a little weak, you could always look at how totally amazing the scenes look, how creative the framework, how harrowing the chills, and think “Yeah, this is quality film making.” That quality is present in Mother of Tears, but not the same extent. It’s certainly subtler, and tonally quite different. This isn’t helped by the appalling lack of a soundtrack by Goblin. So if you didn’t like the plot, and the acting doesn’t wow you, what happens if you also aren’t gripped by the style of it all? For many audience members looking for the style of the previous films, they won’t find it here, and to them it’s going to feel flat.

I think that something else people have trouble reconciling is the stronger magical presence in this movie. Suspiria and Inferno were both about magic and witches, yes, but you never really saw the use of much magic. The tricks they used were subtle. A magic hand came out with a knife. Maybe a bunch of rats attacked some dude. Mother Suspiriorum hid under her invisibility cloak, or whatever. Here, you’ve got demons attacking people, ghosts battling flaming zombies, Rome tearing itself apart, and Sudden Monkeys. The elements are more fantastic than ever, and while that may appeal to some people, they certainly don’t always mesh with the subtlety of the original.

Though the movie does take a moment to explain some inconsistencies of the previous films (such as why the witches had been so easy to destroy; they had been weakened fighting and killing Sarah’s mother) the mythos as a whole is just a little off from the previous installment, as Dario seeks to explore it further. Sister Lachrymarum is now the cruelest of the sisters, according to the Alchemist’s book, replacing her sister who was deemed so in the last chapter. We can only assume the alteration was made to make the film seem more dramatic. We find that the sisters are not just looking for money, as Suspiria claimed, but looking to rule the world, sowing death in their wake. We find that there are white witches, when Suspiria claimed there were only evil. These little alterations might have just been made because, hell, 27 years is a long wait to continue a story, and it’s hard to remember the details…or maybe Dario had a specific purpose in mind.

What results is a far deeper allegory and further reaching plot than either of the previous films had ever suggested, with the Three Mothers standing in for the three crones, the three fates, the three heads of Cerberus, and all the malicious trinity figures that have existed in mythology…making them as old as man itself. The Mothers are the antithesis of what a mother would normally be, they are the bringers of death where a mother should bring life. They are the afterbirth of chaos; the enemy of all ‘natural order’ in the world, and it is all too fitting that a mother/daughter combination be the one to finally destroy the unholy triad.

So, all you Internet critics saying this movie has no plot, give it a rest! Compared to ‘a witch wants money so she opens a dance school for girls’ this movie has plot out the ass.

So, ultimately, as a sequel to Suspiria and Inferno, I enjoyed it but others certainly say it fails. I know I’m not alone in seeing how it links up with the other two films, but the extreme stylistic changes make it too far removed for some audiences to connect the two. I don’t think that’s a failing in production, but just a matter of taste and perspective. I would certainly agree, regardless, that it’s the weakest of the trilogy, just because it does have a larger share of goofy moments; and you can’t explain those away by ‘it’s the 70’s / 80’s’ anymore. It took a decade for Suspiria fans to accept Inferno; this one might be the same.

On its own, Mother of Tears is a good movie, one I’m glad to have in my collection. Whether or not you agree with me that it holds up as part of the trilogy, it shouldn’t be overlooked as a film. There are some major flaws, such as the Hocus Pocus witches, but the strengths found within are the points worth focusing on here. Not the classic Suspiria was, but a worthwhile film, nevertheless, marking the end of an era.

Sudden Monkey.