Adia as Fatiha, Mahershala Ali as Latif, and Jahleel Kamara as Qadir in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. Photograph: Jaclyn Martinez / Amazon MGM Studios.
I want to spend more time celebrating artists who make something new. Bassam Tariq and Mahershala Ali have done that with Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, bringing together an action film, a family’s grief, the demands of parenthood, and the experience of trying to live according to a faith. The combination gives familiar elements a different emotional life. I left thinking about what they had attempted, what they had accomplished, and a scene between a father and daughter that made the whole undertaking feel worthwhile.
I’ve already written about Ali’s use of Ka’s Honor Killed the Samurai while developing his character. Ali has described the record as helping him find Latif’s deliberate pace and particular energy. Music became a way into the man he would portray: a sense of how he moves through the world and carries what is happening inside him.
Tariq has also spoken about the importance of Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. He recognized something in its protagonist’s attempt to carry an old code through contemporary life, connecting that experience to his own understanding of being Muslim. Tariq particularly admired the scenes of Forest Whitaker training with a sword and wished the character had used it. Latif’s sword carries that possibility into this film.
Those influences give us a useful way to understand the choices behind Your Mother 3x. The achievement is what Tariq, Ali, and their collaborators build from them. Latif has children who need him, a wife whose death he and his family must somehow absorb, and the immediate responsibilities that continue while he grieves. His code encounters demands that conviction alone cannot resolve. The film brings its influences into that particular life, where they acquire different consequences. It puts belief under an overwhelming and relatable strain.
One of the things I appreciate most is how much room it gives its Muslim characters to have interior lives. Their faith exists alongside exhaustion, frustration, affection, grief, and the pressure of caring for other people. Piety is mocked, and we get glimpses of what a practical faith might look like for some in a secular world.
Ali has spoken about wanting Black fathers and Black Muslim characters to have more of that dimensionality onscreen, and this film gives him space to pursue it: tenderness and force, responsibility and contradiction, all held within the same person.
Latif’s moral system is part of what makes him interesting. He has worked out principles that organize his behavior and give his actions meaning. We can feel how much he needs them. We can also consider what happens when a person’s account of himself is contradicted by the experience of the people closest to him.
Spoilers follow.
The scene I keep returning to is Latif’s reunion with his family. His daughter’s fear of losing him, and the relief that passes between them, bring the film’s ambitions into focus. Adia, who plays Fatiha, deserves particular credit alongside Ali for making that relationship matter and for being the emotional counterpoint to Latif’s code. She keeps him engaged in what the family needs. Their reunion carries the weight of another loss feared and, Alhamdulillah, averted.
The film’s turn toward magical realism gives that encounter another dimension. It’s a beautiful expression of what faith can do, what believing can do, and what it can mean to have someone believe in you. The scene also reaches toward a restoration of the soul: the possibility of returning to people who love you and finding that their belief can sustain you.
That is an ambitious thing to ask a film to convey. Tariq and the cast give the moment force through the family relationship they have developed. The fear is recognizable. So is the relief. The spiritual possibility grows out of emotions we can understand.
I have a few minor reservations, but they sit within a much greater appreciation for what Tariq, Ali, and their collaborators attempt and how much they accomplish. Bringing these influences, experiences, and forms together means discovering what this particular film can be. Where it doesn’t quite reach its ambition, I can still appreciate the attempt and the possibilities it reveals.
That is part of what makes this work worth celebrating. They have created a new character, given his family emotional weight, and brought action, music, faith, and grief into a story with a life of its own. That is an achievement all on its own.