Last night’s movie was Dario Argento’s “Mother of
Tears,” the third part of his Three Mothers trilogy, about three witches who
live in secret locations and use their evil powers to spread darkness and
sorrow throughout the world. The first
two films in the trilogy, “Suspira” (1977) and “Inferno” (1980), are two of my
favorite horror movies, but I had been avoiding watching “Mother of Tears” because
the quality of Argento’s recent work has been uneven at best. Since he had failed to complete
the trilogy in the 80s, I thought it was best left unfinished. This month seemed like a good time to give it
a chance, so I watched it with very low expectations. It’s not the steaming pile I feared it would
be, but overall it’s rather flat, not very good, not very bad, just an
ultimately forgettable horror movie.
In the earlier films, two of the mothers were
located and killed, the Mother of Sighs in Freiberg, Germany (“Suspiria”) and the
Mother of Darkness in New York (“Inferno”).
The Mother of Tears lives in Rome, and when a researcher at an art
museum reads aloud an Aramaic passage from a cloak that was recently unearthed
on the grounds of an old church, the Third Mother and her minions appear to
kill her and take the cloak. Sarah, a
friend and colleague of the murdered researcher, witnesses the murder, and then
flees to safety. When the police are
unable to find the killers, Sarah begins searching for them on her own.
Meanwhile, the Mother of Tears has begun to
unleash her evil on Rome, summoning witches from around the world to come spread
darkness throughout the city. Aware that
Sarah has learned that the Mother of Tears is active in Rome, the witches
want to kill her. Sarah’s search leads
her to an old bookstore where she meets a woman who was a student of Sarah’s
mother. Sarah never knew much about her
parents, who died when she was very young.
She learns that her mother was actually a powerful white witch who died
fighting the Mother of Sighs. She then
realizes that the voice she has been hearing in her head must be her mother
explaining to Sarah how to use her own powers.
When Sarah listens to this voice, she is able to make herself invisible
to her pursuers. She eventually meets an
alchemist who gives her more information about the Three Mothers and helps her
find the Mother of Tears’ secret home in Rome.
“Mother of Tears” works fairly well as a
supernatural detective story. For an
Argento movie, the narrative is surprisingly cohesive. Although “Inferno” is the second part of the
trilogy, it doesn’t really continue the narrative so much as it builds upon the
themes presented in “Suspiria.” By
contrast, Argento directly connects “Mother of Tears” with the first two parts
of the trilogy, particularly “Suspiria,” and thus gives the trilogy a more
unified story. Through Sarah’s research,
he also makes interesting connections between the Three Mothers and other
triads, for example the Graces and the Furies.
At times, his portrayal of the chaos that engulfs Rome is very
effective, for example, when a woman lovingly lifts her baby from a stroller
and is then compelled by the dark magic to drop it from a bridge and when an
old priest says he has received more requests for exorcisms in the past week
than in his entire career.
However, I would gladly trade the movie’s tighter
plot for more of the visual flair of Argento’s best work. Conspicuously absent are the elaborate set
piece murders for which he is so well known. Instead, we get one dull chase scene through a
bookstore in Rome’s train station and an even duller one through a train. Sarah is pursued by a Japanese witch who
looks likes a ComicCon attendee in an anime costume. In fact, most of the witches look like high
school girls in cheesy Halloween costumes.
More cheesiness comes from the scenes when Sarah communicates with the
spirit of her dead mother.Although it’s not terrible, “Mother of Tears” is a clear example of how much the quality of Argento’s work has declined since the 1980s. I would rather he had left the trilogy unfinished.
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