"Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother" Fantastic In Every Sense

 

    Legitimately such a beautiful film. I had very high expectations for this film coming in, and it did not disappoint in any sense. I don't think it's for everyone, that's for sure, but for me personally I love everything this film tried to tackle, specifically shining a modern lens on religion and family. It had less action than I thought it would, and this film was significantly funnier than I thought it was going to be, but I think Tariq and Co. still made it work. Let's talk about it.

    I do not think this film is for everybody. I was looking through comments on Reddit, which I do sometimes before I'm writing reviews to see how my consensus matches up with other people and I was surprised. I will say, I do come from a fairly religious background, I'm not Muslim, but my parents are quite religious so the story about grappling with ones own faith in the face of adversity appealed to me. I think if you have a very hardline stance on religion, or are just unwilling to engage in discussions around it with any sort of flexibility you probably will get significantly less out of this film. I mean this in both directions by the way, if you're very defensive about religion in general you'll probably be annoyed with how either Christianity or Islam are depicted in this film, but if your only ideas about religion are "people shouldn't be religious/believe in it," then you're unlikely to enjoy this film.

    I thought it was pretty open and honest about questioning religion though. Latif says all of the right things and tries to raise his kids in a hyper-religious manner, yet they're slipping from him, and how could they not? He disappears for long periods of time, his daughter basically all but already knows he's a hitman at the start of the film, and he directly works with "fake" Muslims he clearly looks down on for being less pious than he is. He's no perfect man by any means, it's hard to argue if he's even a good man considering his profession. But that's what this film is about, a hurt, broken man who must reconcile with the hypocrisies in his life, especially now that his wife, the source of life (the film makes this very obvious with the emphasis on breast milk), is gone.

    This is just a very powerful and poignant film. I saw some people complain they couldn't understand the audio properly but when I watched it in theatres I had none of this issue so that confused me a bit. I thought the soundtrack by Son Lux was fantastic, it fit right in with the spiritual atmosphere of the film. The climax in which his children begin discussing their father openly, and his role now that their mother is gone, combined with both him and his daughter prostrating themselves was quite moving. I am not a father but I appreciated the themes of trying to instill your own culture and beliefs onto your own children in a world that is clearly moving away from it.

    The side characters were fantastic too, I loved Giancarlo Esposito, John Cho as this oddball antagonist was great too, and Adia did an amazing job as Mahershala's daughter. I will say, staying on the topic of John Cho's character, I know a lot of people found characters like him and Hatty too over the top and not fitting in with the overall tone of the film. I didn't mind it though. I wasn't really taken aback or taken out of this film at any moment. I think Tariq does such a wonderful job building up tension that I never once dropped my suspension of disbelief. I mean this film is about a religious hitman after all, you kind of have to take at least a bit of that leap of faith.

    That's why I was surprised with the ending but really had no qualms. The entire time I was really wondering how he was going to get out of this one. There were simply too many people with guns for him to slash them down with his machete, though I was impressed he still managed to take so many of them down. I thought it was interesting choice that ultimately it was his daughters reignited faith, sort of as a way to both reconnect and come to terms with her father was an interesting choice. I quite liked what the director said in an AMA, where the ending was about killing every man he was so he could become the man his children needed. If he came back to life and then killed everyone I would have been a little disappointed, but the fact he simply stood up, and walked away, almost as if he was a man marked by Allah to never be touched again was an interesting choice.

Final Score: 90/100

    This is also a very beautifully shot film. It was oddly colourful at times, especially with characters like Hatty, but they managed to make it work, I did not expect a reference to furries in this film at all. I will say I see a lot of people saying but Latif is a bad father, but that's kind of the point? At the beginning he's hardly there for them, and uses his religion as a shield to justify his actions to everyone, whether it be his children or other figures in his life like his brother-in-law or the religious leader. Like Mike calls him his brother in this crusade, and you can see all the destruction its caused, where this crusade has led Latif, regardless of whether or not he began this with "noble" intentions. Like even with the Pastor he probably makes a good point about targeting Hatty for taking advantage of women in his pursuit to spit in the face of religion, but he also hides behind the shield of religion to justify his violence against the mosque and many other innocents. This film just gives you a lot to chew on, I just think you need to be willing to believe in it.