I AM MOTHER Explained: Intimate Science Fiction Drama

Humanity has gone extinct. We’ve been expecting this for quite some time, but filmmakers generally leave us greatly surprised by some monstrous cataclysm. Not this time. This time, we have a plan B in the form of an isolated shelter away from the contaminated environment, in which we have stored a certain number of frozen embryos. Along with them – a droid adapted to care for and raise children. I Am Mother.

The daughter (Clara Rugaard-Larsen) is such a child. Raised and shaped from the first moments by the droid (with a sweet, soothing voice by Rose Byrne), whom she calls Mother, she knows no life beyond the shelter. She diligently exercises her body and mind, trying with all her might to meet the demands set by Mother. She is obedient, grateful, empathetic. As a reward, from time to time, she may look at the other embryos waiting for their turn, the family.

Time passes, the girl grows, and goes through more tests. One day, however, chaos creeps into her orderly life. First, in the form of a tiny rat, mercilessly and without hesitation thrown by Mother into the incineration chamber, out of fear of contamination from the outside. A few days later, a wounded Woman knocks at the airlock door…

Grant Sputore’s film is, in fact, an intimate drama. It features: a growing child, alias a ticking time bomb, an indifferent droid, alias a semblance of a mother, and a woman from the outside, alias danger (in this role, two-time Oscar winner – Million Dollar Baby, Boys Don’t Cry – Hilary Swank). It seems that the roles are set, and from the first scenes, the viewer is convinced they know who is who. However, it is not so straightforward, and the creators, through subtle hints, mislead us. During conversations between Mother and Daughter about her potential siblings, a suspicion arises in the viewer’s mind that it is not the Daughter who is the subject of the experiment, but Mother. That it is not the human who is to become more perfect, but the machine that is to gain the necessary experience. The arrival of the Woman seems like a solid support, and the viewer, with satisfaction, concludes that Mother is the embodiment of evil, and indeed, for a moment, the plot goes in this direction. And just when we comfortably settle into the slippers of the scheme, the situation changes again.

Sputore places the viewer in front of questions that, in fact, have no answers. Why does the creator give the created the possibility of escaping from the enclosed area (isn’t this a clear allusion to paradise?) and the skills needed for it? Can a machine raise a human being into an empathetic and ethical unit – is it capable of understanding and absorbing these concepts better than us, who have learned them over millennia? Is there a possibility of improving the human species by properly shaping minds and bodies? What role does education and stimulation play in the final formation of personality, and what role does primal instinct?

The Daughter rebels against Mother – it is the natural course of things; driven by curiosity, further heightened by the sense of isolation and the sudden discovery that beyond the shelter’s doors lies an ocean of unlimited possibilities. Why didn’t the machine, with its experience and knowledge based on billions of GB of data, predict such an obvious thing? Or maybe it did? Maybe everything that happens on screen is a carefully planned experiment, and every action of the Daughter is simply another practical test?

Clara Rugaard-Larsen, in the role of a human awakening to life, carries the entire film on her slender shoulders. Her Daughter is archetypal, and Rugaard-Larsen skillfully guides the viewer through the character of a typical girl – from initial trust and absolute obedience to the standard change and rebellion against authority. Partnering with her, Swank, whose name I assume was meant to attract attention to the title, only achieves correctness. She doesn’t show anything we haven’t seen before, consciously agreeing to be a backdrop for the young actress. Even Rose Byrne, though she only plays with her voice, has more character than Swank.

Visually, I Am Mother offers us solutions as stereotypical as those for character creation. The shelter looks exactly like the hundreds of shelters or space stations before it. The world outside it also doesn’t capture the eye with any standout elements – perhaps only the artificiality of a container ship wrecked on the beach, which too obviously seems to be computer-generated. Similarly, the sound does not impose itself on the viewer, does not captivate, does not steal scenes. Sputore clearly made an effort to ensure that nothing distracted from the story he was presenting. You won’t find in I Am Mother any spectacular disaster scenes or action-packed fight scenes.

These simplifications, however, despite being deliberate, make the film have its flaws. Above all, they are small cracks in logic that annoy. Partly, they can be explained by the attempt to pose the questions mentioned above, but not entirely. Additionally, the stereotypical nature of the three main characters and the lack of a deeper psychological profile (though to some extent justified for both Mother and Daughter) make it difficult for the viewer to emotionally engage with the plot.

I Am Mother is an interesting attempt to go beyond narrow science fiction. The comparison to the overly intellectual HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey is almost inevitable, but the approach is somewhat different. Even here, however, we are not able to fully understand the motivations behind the machine’s actions when those actions start to go far beyond concern for the individual or the species.

The sight of a metal, heavy robot hand on the little child’s head evokes two types of unease. On one hand, the thought arises of how easily this hand could tighten around the fragile skull and crush it without sentiment. On the other hand, the question arises: could it be possible that this hand is enough? Is our, so to speak, childish faith in the power of maternal love built on such fragile foundations? Or maybe it has none at all…?