Nate At The Movies

For the four years that I’ve had Letterboxd, Mother Mary has sat on my watchlist for three of them. From when the movie was announced, I was excited for Jack Antonoff to write songs for an Anne Hathaway-led music movie, and I had relatively high hopes for this one, too. I really enjoyed my first David Lowery movie, A Ghost Story, last month, so imagine my disappointment when this one didn’t really hit for me.

While there were certainly interesting points being made about unresolved conflicts and feelings in relationships, it was really difficult to connect with a lot of it. The biggest obstacles were the constant metaphors; I felt like the film spoke in riddles for most of its runtime, and instead of being able to engage with what it was saying, I spent so much time trying to figure out what exactly I was seeing. 90% of this movie taking place in one room between two people—and being one of those “talking movies” I have a hard time getting into—made it hard to engage as well. I was also grossed out a little bit by some of the imagery, but maybe I would’ve appreciated it more if I understood the messages sooner. Clearly, I can appreciate themes in icky moments—I loved The Substance!

Though the convoluted writing made it difficult to really connect with the story, I can’t argue that this movie was technically impressive and quite pretty. The visuals—even the grosser ones—looked great, and the performances possessed the gravitas befitting a superstar like Mother Mary. The music—both the songs and the score—were solid as well, with a couple standouts from Jack Antonoff and Charli XCX. I thought the performances were decent, but I actually enjoyed Michaela Coel more than I did Anne Hathaway, which was a surprise. Coel’s Sam felt much more grounded, while Hathaway’s Mary felt like she was, for lack of a better term, “profundity-farming”. She spoke in riddles more than anyone, and she was hard to follow.

I really, really wanted to like Mother Mary. Maybe there’s a world where I connect with it on a rewatch the way I had hoped to initially, but until that time comes, Mother Mary will remain the biggest “What If” of 2026 so far. It was a visually beautiful, high potential “What If”, but it couldn’t quite get the job done because it got too lost in its own sauce. Even at under two hours, I felt like I was clawing to get to the end, which is not what I wanted or expected. The year of Hathaway has gotten off to an underwhelming start, and I’m not sure what The Devil Wears Prada 2 will do to her trajectory. Maybe I’ll love it, maybe not. We will see on Friday!