Jessica Chastain has been a Southern Belle ostracized by society in Lawless and The Help. She was the caring mother than off-set Brad Pitt’s gruff father figure in Tree of Life, and she was the lead interrogator in the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty.
In Mama, she’s Annabel, an emo woman with a kick ass-looking half sleeve and a rocker boyfried. She’s also the temporary legal guardian of two young girls Victoria and Lilly. In truth, her boyfriend Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is given temporary custody when the children are found in a dilapidated cabin in the woods, the humble location where their father left them after going on a bit a killing spree that includes a few of his co-workers and his wife and mother of their girls. However, Annabel acquires this responsibility when Lucas experiences an eerie, painful fall in their home.
Strange occurrences tarnish Annabel and Lucas’ experience with the young girls. Symbolically, this is by design to test whether Annabel, whom we meet amidst the joy of finding out that she’s not pregnant, is a willing parent to these two girls as well as to test her mettle. Literally, the occurrences are effected by the presence of Mama, a mostly unseen ghost who watched over the young girls while they were stranded in the cabin.
Mama’s agenda is less about scaring the audience – in truth, it’s a pretty well done fairy tale rather than a horror film – and more about determining the qualities of motherhood. Is a mother one who is legally sane and quite attractive (Annabel), or is the better mother one who will persistently fight for her children despite her presumed mental handicap and distorted facial features (Mama)? And, in this exploration, Mama judges those who judge appearance.
When she was alive, Mama was disfigured and, presumably, was mentally handicapped, which made her socially disenfranchised. In a sense, she was no more than a vessel to carry an unborn child. But she was not considered a mother. Rather, she was incapable of being anything other than a creaky piece of furniture reserved for use at the last possible moment.
Similarly, we’re shown Annabel, a woman whose desire for children is nill, and her appearance suggests a closer association to drugs and alcohol than breast milk and diapers.
The primary question is whether this is a fair comparison considering that Annabel, despite her scare with a pregnancy test, is not trying to get pregnant and, presumably, is on some sort of birth control. She and Lucas appear to be a long-standing duo (or at least as long standing as unmarried relationships go), so they’re not mutual friends with benefits. On the other hand, Mama was most likely raped, which means the resulting pregnancy – while equally unplanned – stems from a wicked act.
Certainly, this doesn’t necessarily dilute the love that Mama feels for her eventual child, but there is a difference between a mother who wants a child (regardless of how conception came to be) and a potential mother who actively tries to avoid having children.
Perhaps the ultimate parallel between the love that Mama and Annabel have for the girls is meant to whitewash the faulty comparison, and perhaps the final scene is meant to repeat the notion that “the heart wants what it wants,” but it also convolutes the film far more than is necessary. Mama isn’t always sure if it wants to be a thriller, a horror film, a deep film, or a fairy tale. It doesn’t sketch any of these genres enough to be cohesive; and it doesn’t kindle enough interest in the characters to deliver the power that its crescendos portend.
