Perhaps the most devastating portrait of the 1990s is James Gray’s Little Odessa (1994), where a Jewish-Russian hitman, Joshua, visits his dying mother in Brighton Beach. Their scenes are agonizing: the mother knows her son is a killer, the son knows his mother is dying of cancer, and neither can speak the truth. They hold hands in silence, and that silence is louder than any scream. Gray’s film captures the immigrant mother-son bond—the guilt of the son who left, the disappointment of the mother who stayed—without a single melodramatic line.

As our culture redefines masculinity, as sons are encouraged to be vulnerable and mothers to be autonomous, the stories we tell about this relationship will continue to evolve. But one thing is certain: as long as there are mothers and sons, there will be artists compelled to untangle that unbreakable, beautiful, and terrible thread.

Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons (1988) gave us the Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close), a mother figure of pure Machiavellian intelligence. Though not biologically related to her protégé Valmont (John Malkovich), their relationship operates as a dark parody of maternal education. She shapes him, punishes him, and ultimately destroys him. Here, the mother-son dynamic is transposed onto equals: the older woman who nurtured the younger man’s ambition becomes his executioner.

In the 21st century, the archetype shattered into fragments of comedy, horror, and hyper-realism. HBO’s The Sopranos (1999-2007) gave us Livia Soprano, the mother as black hole. Tony Soprano’s panic attacks begin after a discussion with his mother; his therapy sessions are a forensic excavation of her emotional sadism. “I gave my life to my children on a silver platter,” Livia hisses, weaponizing maternal sacrifice. David Chase understood what Lawrence knew: the mother’s self-pity is the son’s original wound.

Florian Zeller’s The Father (2020) flips the script. Anthony Hopkins plays a man with dementia, but the film’s emotional core is his daughter’s care—yet the real subtext is the absent son. But other works, like Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters (2018), explore chosen maternal bonds. In Shoplifters , a young boy, Shota, discovers that the woman he calls “mother” (Nobuyo) is not his biological parent. Their relationship—built on stolen goods, lies, and fierce tenderness—suggests that biological destiny is less important than the daily, quiet choices of love.