Jennifer Lawrence gives middle finger to critics of ‘polarizing’ film ‘Mother!’

Actress Jennifer Lawrence used an appearance at the Museum of Modern Art on Thursday night to raise a middle finger to critics of her movie “Mother!”

Audiences across the nation have called director Darren Aronofsky’s “Mother!” a grotesque anti-Christian mess, but the star of the show says they simply don’t “get it.” Ms. Lawrence and Mr. Aronofsky sat down for a Q&A in New York City for the film when her gesture — likely a reaction to an “F” CinemaScore and a 44 percent “Rotten” audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes — occurred.

“We knew it was going to be polarizing,” the actress recently told reporters at Toronto International Film Festival, People magazine reported Friday. “So it’s just hilarious to see, you know, the people who love it, love it and they think it’s amazing and they get it. And then the people who don’t like it, absolutely despise it.”

Mr. Aronofsky, who also directed 2014’s “Noah” with actor Russell Crowe, is no stranger to controversies with Christian audiences. Moviegoers have complained that his latest offering was billed as a traditional horror movie, but it soon turns into an anti-Christian polemic that promotes left-wing environmental activism and depravity.

“Critics will no doubt enjoy calling the film, particularly its second half, ’subversive,’ ’brave,’ ’transgressive,’ etc., as though any satirical impulse were less risky than mocking Christian dogma,” wrote National Review’s Kyle Smith on Sept. 14. “Other defenders will protest that Aronofsky’s vision of ugliness and despair goes back to Hieronymous Bosch and beyond, joining a long tradition of purposefully lurid apocalyptic tales backed by a stern moralism — repent, ye sinners. But I don’t see any seriousness of purpose, just a Biblically-infused version of torture porn.”