Mother of Tears – Koch Films (Blu-ray)

Theatrical Release Date: Italy, 2007
Director: Dario Argento
Writers: Jace Anderson, Dario Argento, Walter Fasano, Adam Gierasch, Simona Simonetti
Cast: Asia Argento, Cristian Solimeno, Adam James, Moran Atias, Valeria Cavalli, Philippe Leroy, Daria Nicolodi, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, Udo Kier, Robert Madison, Jun Ichikawa

Release Date: April 23rd, 2021
Approximate running time: 101 Minutes 38 Seconds
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Widescreen / 1080 Progressive / MPEG-4 AVC
Rating: NR
Sound: DTS-HD 5.1 English, DTS-HD 5.1 German
Subtitles: English, German
Region Coding: Region B
Retail Price: 17,99 Euro (Germany)

"Her awakening is all the more cruel. The bones of the Mater Lacrimarum, the mother of tears, are found in a cemetery. As one of three mythical witches, she has the power to wreak havoc on the world. As a young archaeologist examines the artifacts from the tomb, dark forces pour into Rome. Violence and suicides are on the rise. chaos reigns. In the underground of the eternal city, the mother has built a nest. There she prepares the end of the world. The third mother has awakened. And nobody can stop them." - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 4.25/5

Mother of Tears comes on a 25 GB single layer Blu-ray.

Disc Size: 22.5 GB

Feature: 17.5 GB

The source used for this transfer looks great. Colors and flesh tones look correct, and black levels and compression are very good. That said, this transfer is a marked improvement over Dimension Extreme’s region 1 DVD.

Audio: 4.5/5 (DTS-HD 5.1 English, DTS-HD 5.1 German)

This release comes with two audio options, a DTS-HD 5.1 mix in English and a DTS-HD 5.1 mix in German. Both audio mixes are in great shape, dialog comes through clearly, and everything sounds balanced and robust when it should. There are removable English and German subtitles included. It's worth noting that the English subtitles are a literal translation of the English language track.

Extras:

Extras for this release include an image gallery with music from the film playing in the background, Italian teaser trailer (1 minute 7 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo Italian, no subtitles), U.S. theatrical trailer (2 minutes 8 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo English, no subtitles), German theatrical trailer (2 minutes 9 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo German, no subtitles), Special Cinestrange Festival (30 minutes 33 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo German/Italian, no subtitles), and a Making Of featurette (33 minutes 19 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo Italian with removable German subtitles).

Summary:

Mother of Tears is the third installment in a trilogy of films directed by Dario Argento, with the first two installments being Suspiria in 1977 and Inferno three years later in 1980. Twenty-seven years in the making, Mother of Tears has some large shoes to fill as it is constantly going to be compared to Suspiria and Inferno and the ever-present legacy that follows them. Mother of Tears also carries the heavy burden of pleasing fans who desperately want Dario Argento to return to the style that graces his golden era of films (Deep Red through Opera).

Mother of Tears' narrative, like its predecessors (Suspiria and Inferno), is simplistic almost to a fault. Some of the more supernatural moments are not as effective as they seem. The characters are never really defined, which makes caring for them impossible. The pacing is excellent, with few scenes that drag or feel out of place. Dario Argento’s direction shows signs of his unique artistic style. 

The death scenes are crude, bloody, and the most brutal since opera. The special effects, which are once again handled by Sergio Stivaletti, are not that convincing and come off as looking cheap. The score was composed by Claudio Simonetti, whose scores with Goblin or by himself have helped define many of Dario Argento’s films. My favorite musical motif in Mother of Tears is the music that plays while Sarah and Mandy are being chased on the train.

The cast for Mother of Tears features many performers who have worked with Dario Argento on previous films. In the lead role of Sarah Mandy is Dario’s daughter Asia, who has previously worked with her father four other times (in Trauma, The Stendhal Syndrome, Phantom of the Opera, and Dark Glasses). Asia’s performance, while good, is her weakest out of the five films she has done with her father.

Three supporting performances of note are those of Udo Kier as Padre Johannes, Philippe Leroy as Guglielmo De Witt, and Daria Nicolodi as Elisa Mandy. Despite only having secondary roles, all three performers are very strong in their respective roles. One of the more memorable performances is that of Jun Ichikawa as Katerina, the leader of goth-looking witches. That said, the performances vary in quality, with most of the cast convincingly pulling off the characters they play.

Is Mother of Tears as good as or better than its predecessors, Suspiria and Inferno? I would have to say no, and not because it lacks the style that we have come to expect from Dario Argento. Each film in a series of films should be equal to or better than the last, or you risk alienating the core audience. The expectations for Mother of Tears were set so high that no matter what Dario Argento decided to do style- and story-wise, it would have been a letdown to his core audience. The one thing that hurts Mother of Tears more than anything else is its anticlimactic ending. It is disappointing that a film that took as long as Mother of Tears to formulate in its creator's mind would end up disjointed and unresolved. While many will argue that Dario Argento has lost his touch, the end result, however flawed, is one of the goriest and most entertaining horror films to be released in a long time.

Mother of Tears gets a strong audio/video presentation from Koch Films, recommended.

Written by Michael Den Boer