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After the opening credits of Netflix's, I Am Mother1 - from which it is made clear that humans are now extinct - we observe a short montage where a robotic Mother (voiced by Rose Bryne and performed by Luke Hawker) selects an embryo and subsequently raises a young girl, named Daughter (Clara Rugaard). From these opening sequences, we watch Mother cradle the baby as well as coaxing Daughter to sleep by singing the lullaby, Baby Mine (originally used in Disney's Dumbo2) and we observe the child learn to walk, with later scenes displaying Daughter's interest in ballet. It is clear, from the on-screen affections between robot and human, that we are watching a loving mother-daughter relation. After the opening sequences, the girl, now a teenager, continues to live alone with Mother in a bunker, cut-off from the outside world. She's told never to go outside due to contamination.
Notably, the film touches upon a number of significant topics, including technological advancement, performed through the threat of artificial intelligence; potential ecological disaster, while referred to as the ‘wasteland’ it is clear that the world outside the bunker has suffered some form of ecological catastrophe; and, an underlying nature-nurture contention, played-out in Daughter's sheltered upbringing. In fact, while Daughter is clearly well-cared for in the bunker, over the course of the film she is regularly subjected to exams by Mother, who also serves as her educational tutor. These exams test Daughter's cognitive development as well as Mother's ‘mothering’ ability. Nevertheless, it is set against the aforementioned debates, most notably, the potential benefits that artificial intelligence can bring to our current ecological predicaments, that the importance of Lacan's notion of the big Other and its relation to the subject can be used to shed light on the film's ambiguous ending.3
Indeed, this ambiguity is brought to bear when the family arrangement between Mother and