The Moms Are Alright

Subverting Motherhood in Crisis in Night Raiders, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

Abstract

Present yet often relegated to the margins of the image or narrative (or both), the cinematic mother is historically a site of crisis (Fischer 30). In North American cinema, she is also historically a heterosexual white woman. The films Night Raiders (Danis Goulet, 2021), Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022), and All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson, 2023) transform the cinematic mother figure from an absent presence to a central and visible element of their stories. They also destabilize the white supremacy of the cinematic mother figure by presenting matrifocal narratives of a Cree mother (Niska, Night Raiders), a Chinese American immigrant mother (Evelyn, Everything Everywhere All at Once), and African American mothers (Mack and Evelyn, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt). These films subvert the cinematic tradition of representing motherhood in crisis by locating the crisis outside of motherhood (Night Raiders), presenting crisis as something experienced by a mother rather than solely her children (Everything Everywhere All at Once), and rejecting crisis in favour of a meditative, poetic approach to motherhood (All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt). By employing a matrifocal approach to narrative, cinematography, and editing, each film pushes against monstrous mother tropes that are pervasive in North American cinema. Finally, by presenting positive images of mothers that deviate from normative motherhood, both in identity and in practices, the films also render visible the absurdity and impossibility of the institution of motherhood as defined by Adrienne Rich.