My mother made me understand that every human society is a pyramid, and that some lives will always matter more than others. It’s better to accept this than to pretend it isn’t true.
requested by @marmolita
Tag: jupiter ascending
creeping on your mom AGAIN balem??
Jupiter Jones on a date
Jupiter: so what is your family like?
Balem: “whispers” i may or may not have choked my mother to death. she was really hot. you know, you look a lot like her.
Jupiter, shoving breadsticks into her purse: I’m sorry I have to go home right now immediately
A hot and sweaty Balem viciously attacks his reincarnated mother with a metal rod. This movie would break Sigmund Freud.
Bro all three of the kids have the hots for their reincarnated mother. The boyish one literally tries to marry her. The sweaty dude with a rod would be the least of Freud’s concerns.
I must disagree – of the three siblings, Balem is by far the most typically Freudian case. Titus is extremely transparent – he wants to marry Jupiter and would probably have no qualms about having sex with her before arranging her demise (this is the guy who dresses her in a sexy S&M outfit and remarks that she looks “ravishing”), but he’s completely open about all of this. These people are thousands of years old, and they probably lack our morality and our taboos.
Titus’s primary motive for marrying Jupiter is to become legal heir to the Earth; he is not deeply attached to her on any sort of level, and treats her similarities to his mother as sources of dry amusement. He toys with her, but he’s very cold and unfeeling about it. He’s by far the most clear-headed of the siblings, since he’s the only one who actively acknowledges that Seraphi and Jupiter are different people – he exploits their similarities only when they further his case (which is why he stresses Jupiter’s empathy and compassion to align her with Seraphi’s stance on harvesting). So while Titus can say “Honestly, I don’t believe my mother was ever as beautiful, or as gullible as you”, Kalique completely ignores Jupiter’s protestation that she is not her mother and Balem variously caresses her face, leers at her and calls her “Mother” in a sensual voice while attempting to murder her.
Freud comes in because Balem is heavily repressed and basically denies that he has any kind of inner life, focusing exclusively on his work until Jupiter appears on the scene. That’s why Balem loses it when he sees Jupiter – she forces him to confront the memories of what he did (his guilt) as well as the complex unresolved feelings he possesses concerning his mother. He isn’t just attacking Jupiter because she’s taken the Earth from him. He’s attacking her because he loved her and was (as he sees it) forced to kill her. He’s attacking her because he can’t bear to acknowledge what she represents, namely that his millennial existence has been founded on the fallacy that Earth-born humans are somehow inferior to Entitleds such as himself. He’s attacking her because she’s refusing to play along and accept his word as law, refusing to be the ‘good’ mother who taught him all he knew and who he could love freely.
In short, there’s not much psychological complexity to Titus. He’s basically out to have fun, screw with people and make some quick cash. There’s much more going on with Balem beneath the surface, which is why there’s far depth and complexity to his beating Jupiter with a pipe than there is to Titus attempting to marry Jupiter in a space cathedral.
Charming scenes of mother/son bonding. In all seriousness, the violence here is visceral, and, despite the absurd setting and context, you can buy that this is real combat between two untrained individuals. Every grab, strike and kick is tied to an emotion or instinct, and that makes this scene one of the best staged in the film. I find the way he pulls her up to look at her face as he rants at her interesting, since it speaks of his desire for proximity and recognition as much as it speaks of his need to inflict pain.
Eddie Redmayne explaining the confusing thought processes you have to go through when imagining that your mother is (a presumably eternally young) Mila Kunis.
Now in gif form because the Abrasax siblings simply don’t learn.
Here’s to happy and not-at-all twisted and fucked up mother-child relationships.
Balem staging one of his many personal space invasions. Jupiter ain’t having none of it. Someone needs to write an AU where Mr Night didn’t burst in after this – all sorts of crazy and twisted shit (and probable screeching and hitting each other) will have gone down, I’m sure.
No one understands this universe like you do.
This little moment is one of the more mysterious and intriguing parts of the film. A while ago I asked people what they though Balem meant with his words here, since I really had no idea. Upon reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that he convinced himself that Jupiter wouldn’t hurt him because he believes (or desperately wants to believe) that she’s his mother. In short, he’s not referring back to a specific incident where Seraphi refused to hurt him – he’s referring to her love for him, and how it would stop her from causing him harm. If you look very closely you’ll see that he’s smiling again as he says it (it’s not so apparent in the gif, but he is), going back to the old thread of his being overwhelmed by the thought of Jupiter as his mother – he can’t believe she will hurt him, because his mother (or, at least, the ‘good’ mother who didn’t change her mind and fight him) never would have. It’s a sincere and reflexive smile; he isn’t mocking her, and he means what he says.
But that’s my reading. Do you interpret this any differently?
shipcestuous3 