“Boy, you must be upset. Look, we’re actually using the living room.”
Albert Brooks recently confirmed that when it came to casting the title role for his 1996 comedy Mother, the first person he had in mind was Doris Day. Brooks had written the part of the Northern California mother of two adult men for the legendary actress. But Day had long since retired from showbusiness and, following an awkward meeting between her and Brooks in the actress’ Carmel home, flat out told the writer/director that she would never make another film again. Cut to a chance encounter some time later between Brooks and old friend Carrie Fisher who suggested her mother Debbie Reynolds (another legend) for the part. It was an exercise in kismet; the former studio darling enjoyed one last great movie role and Brooks ended up with one of the funniest movies of the late ’90s.
In Mother, Brooks stars as John, a middling author who is suffering a personal and professional block after just having gotten divorced. In an effort to find out where things went wrong for him, he decides to pay his mother Beatrice (Reynolds) a visit. The following few days will bring great revelations for John as he tries to co-exist with the one person who drives him crazy like no one else can.
It’s a real shame that the pitch-perfect screenplay for Mother didn’t take Brooks all the way to the Oscars, despite winning the New York Film Critics and National Board of Review awards. The script for the comedy is chock full of classic Brooks dialogue, all of which pull double duty by providing a steady stream of Brooks-isms while also giving us a comedic glimpse into John’s troubled world. This begins with the first scene in which a divorce lawyer (Paul Collins) is instructing his soon-to-be ex-wife (Laura Weekes) not to leave the state. “She left me,” he clarifies, “she had nothing against the land.” The winning dialogue is only amplified once John and Beatrice reunite, particularly whenever the two find themselves in the kitchen. When Beatrice tries to slice up an enormously large block of cheese, John states: “I like my cheese in ounces. When they start weighing as much as a Fiat, I get worried.” Another kitchen scene the following day sees Beatrice doting on her son by bringing out a parade of snacks. When this eventually becomes too much, an exasperated John declares: “No more food! It’s like Fantasia!” Even Mother‘s moments of tenderness come with a slight wit that grounds the scenes and makes things relatable such as when Beatrice tells John she loves him to which he lovingly replies: “I know you think you do, Mother.”
Mother was scheduled as a Christmastime release, an appropriate move as that was the time when most of the film’s target demographic would have found themselves around their mothers, allowing the themes of the film to shit right where they were supposed to. Brooks foregoes any mean-spiritedness in his attempts to show how crazy adult children (sons in particular) can be driven by their mothers. That being said, unexpected moments of bonding, such as John teaching Beatrice how to use a computer (a tender and touching scene), occur now and again in Mother and play out the way they do for so many of us in real life. Still, the way simple comments can snowball, the presumably easy act of communicating with your mother without her understanding anything you’re saying makes up the bulk of the film. Through it all, Brooks’ film explores the intricacies and aims to get to the cause of such moments even though the filmmaker knows there’s nothing he can create that can remedy the nature of a mother’s relationship with her adult son. What Brooks does manage to do is illuminate the inevitability of a relationship like John and Beatrice’s by showing how hard it is for parents and their children to ever fully see each other as people, apart from who they’ve been to each other for so long. It’s not a solution, but it does provide some unexpected comfort.
The moniker of “the West Coast Woody Allen” is one that Brooks found himself saddled with the minute he became a name in the 1970s. But Brooks cannot be categorized as just another version of someone who came before him. The actor/writer/director is an underrated filmmaker whose comedy genius and penchant for laughter doesn’t just lie in the maddening minutiae of the world around him, but rather in the humanity that drives his characters’ reactions to it. It’s hard not to root for an Albert Brooks character and even harder not to see shades of ourselves in the flawed humans he creates. Criterion has recognized this through stellar releases of this and other Brooks classics, including Lost in America and Defending Your Life. Well done, Criterion. Now do The Muse.
Mother is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection.
