Michelle Pfeiffer: Mother!

Revisiting—or in a few cases, watching for the first time—and celebrating the work of Michelle Pfeiffer, the best actress of my lifetime.

Darren Aronofsky's Mother! might be the most polarizing film of 2017. It combines aspects of mythology, the Bible, and domestic discord into one potent allegorical stew that is addictively watchable one moment, then utterly revolting the next. In other words, it's a film that makes you feel things. Throughout, it puts both its star Jennifer Lawrence and its audience through the emotional ringer. At one point, you begin to wonder if watching the film might lead to increased risk of post-traumatic stress. Amidst this chaos and insanity, however, resides an actress who is completely at ease with the madness surrounding her: Michelle Pfeiffer.

Pfeiffer's performance is electrifying, full of white-hot intensity, yet tempered with an icy coolness and some of the film's best, and most snidely delivered lines. Pure kinetic energy every time she's on screen. As "the Woman," she's slinky, seductive, sardonic, and downright sinister. In a film packed tight with religious and mythological allegories, think of Pfeiffer's character as Eve or Lilith—original sin incarnate, or woman's wanton, insatiable desire. Yet even playing an archetype, Pfeiffer still exposes the Woman's very real humanity, including all of the messy and incompatible elements of the human existence. She's ferocious, sweet, petty, desirous, judgmental, droll, seeking, knowing, all of this and so much more.

Few performers are as good as Pfeiffer at utilizing their bodies in service of their acting. In Mother!, she conducts a master class in how movement and facial expressions can convey as much as, if not more than, dialogue. Pfeiffer turns something as mundane as walking across a room and sitting on a couch into an elegant and erotic experience, through her grace and fluidity of motion. The way she saunters provocatively, high heels clicking on hardwood floors, only to plop down on the sofa and curl her legs under her body, all in one motion, is simultaneously gracefully beautiful and terrifyingly malevolent. It's such a subtle, relaxed, and honest moment, revealing everything you need to know about the Woman's extreme confidence in her own body—and in herself.

It's no surprise her character is threatening to Lawrence's "Mother"—think Gaia, goddess of the earth—as she represents the sort of fierce and destructive force of nature that can demolish everything in Mother's delicately constructed world. Watching Pfeiffer toy with Lawrence is one of the film's great pleasures, partly because of how unsettling it is to watch. There are devastating moments between them—like when Mother expresses sympathies over the loss of the Woman's son, and Pfeiffer silently shoots daggers at Lawrence with her eyes, before turning away in disgust. It's such a delicately complex moment, and Pfeiffer wordlessly performs it with nothing but a withering glare, laced with contempt and loathing.

Michelle Pfeiffer has been mostly absent from movie screens for several years now, but 2017 is shaping up to be her comeback year, with stellar performances in a series of disparate roles and films: Where is Kyra?, The Wizard of Lies, and now Mother!, with Murder on the Orient Express set to open this fall. Not only is she back, she's back with a vengeance. Her work in Mother! is rightly being hailed as some of the best of her career, and she's finally being recognized for her enormous talent at bringing each character she plays to life, while doing so with ease, and without artifice. Watching Pfeiffer has always been a treat for fans of natural, non-performative acting: she simply inhabits her characters, making us believe in them as real, flesh and blood, people. That she can pull this off while playing an archetypal character such as the Woman, is nothing short of astounding.

Welcome back, Michelle. We've missed you, and we're excited for what is yet to come in your magnificent career.