David Lowery, he filmmaker behind such ambient tone pieces as The Green Knight and A Ghost Story, doesn’t seem to know what the upcoming Mother Mary is… apart from being a “weird, weird film”.
As well as making franchise staples such as Pete’s Dragon and Peter Pan and Wendy, David Lowery loves to make arthouse films that are as much about texture and tone as they are anything else. A Ghost Story and The Green Knight spring to mind, weirdly compelling cinematic meditations on what it is to be human, perhaps.
We say ‘perhaps’ because we don’t really know and when it comes to Lowery’s latest offering in his trademark style, it seems that he doesn’t really know either. Speaking to an audience at the Melbourne International Film Festival (via IndieWire) the filmmaker talked about his eighth film, apparently in a state of bafflement about what the project is, even as he works on editing it together.
The film stars Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel. Here’s what we know so far:
Mother Mary is described as a ‘pop epic’ with the story ‘following a fictional musician and her relationship with an iconic fashion designer.” Given that music is going to be a key element of the film, there’s some heavyweight talent lined up in that area too. The Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff, who has co-written some of Taylor Swift’s biggest hits, is on board, as is Charli XCX. Both will ‘write and produce original songs for the project.’ As for the original score, that will be composed by Lowery’s regular collaborator, Daniel Hart.
Speaking about the project, Lowery is said to have sighed ‘very deeply’ before stating that it is “a weird, weird film”. The filmmaker has previously talked about not being sure of what the film is, apart from being rather provocative but he added that, “I wrote the first 20 pages when I was shooting Pan and Wendy and it’s been percolating ever since. I decided I’m just going to do something simple. I need to do a movie with just two actors in a room having a long heart to heart … a really gentle filmmaking experience. But then I thought, ‘What if one of those characters is a pop star? And what if we started at a stadium?’ Then it got bigger. And, it wound up being the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
It seems like Lowery is just following his nose on this one and that sounds promising indeed. The general expectation is that A24 will release this film in 2025 and when it does arrive, we’ll see where Lowery’s instincts have taken him (and us). We’ll bring you more details on Mother Mary as we hear them.
