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Friday, November 11, 2011

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)


To watch Sean Durkin’s masterful Martha Marcy May Marlene is to be taken on a journey of endless ambiguity. We, the audience, are never entirely sure what is happening in the present, nor is it made clear precisely what has happened in the past, and lord only knows what lies in the future. Here is a film that ostensibly bounces between as many realities as Inception; though it seems more grounded in reality, it is never made clear what reality is. And—since nothing terrifies audiences like uncertainty—Martha Marcy May Marlene turns into one of the most genuinely terrifying and haunting cinematic experiences one can buy. It’s a film with few (if any) jump scares and an incredibly low body count, but it’s also the kind of movie that has you watching every corner of the frame, looking for something, anything that might pose a threat. Yet the most frightening prospect of all may be that everything is perfectly fine.


The film centers on Martha (Elizabeth Olsen), who has spent a couple years living with a cult led by John Hawkes, which should really be a red flag right there. She eventually decides to run away, and she seeks refuge with her older sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy). Director Durkin then spends the rest of the film sending the audience back and forth through time, as the true nature of Hawkes’ cult is revealed, and we see the impact it is having on Martha’s life in the outside world. She can no longer handle real-world social situations, and she constantly lives in fear that Hawkes and the rest of the cult are on their way to take her back. Perhaps she’s paranoid. Perhaps her anxiety is justified. Martha Marcy May Marlene never explains this question, but that only adds to its eerie impact. As an audience we always expect answers from our movies, and the brilliance of this film is its willingness to withhold them.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is almost dangerously reliant on the actress in the lead, for if the performance was anything less than great the entire project would have fallen apart at the seams. As a result, Olsen’s work as Martha is a minor miracle. The younger sister of a certain Mary-Kate and Ashley, Elizabeth Olsen is essentially forced to play two characters… three if you count the names in the (admittedly awkward) title. One is the confident “teacher and a leader” that is a rising star in Hawkes’ cult, while the other is a messed-up girl who suddenly finds herself out of place in modern society. Olsen wisely plays Martha right down the middle; never making her seem unmistakably insane, but also making it blatantly obvious that there are things that just aren’t right about this girl. In any given scene, we are unsure of the character we’re going to see. While there are some serious moral problems with the cult, isn’t that where she truly belongs now? Olsen had to juggle a million balls at once to pull this off, and the result is a breakout performance akin to Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone. (Not similar performances, just similar potential career impact.) If she is not a star in the next five years, there is no justice.

The rest of the gang here is solid as well, even if they are not asked to do half as much heavy lifting as is required of Olsen in every scene. If there’s another shining star here, it is Durkin, who had a great idea and executed it about as well as anyone could have anticipated. The direction here is—like the rest of the film—almost maddeningly deliberate, as the average shot goes on for an eternity, forcing the audience to examine every inch of the screen and the actors’ performances. Things become more hectic in the second half, when the leaps through time (and reality) happen so frequently that it’s tough to keep track of where you are. Yet complaining about any confusion would be off-base: that’s actually the point of this film, and the time jumps are never a problem to the point of incomprehensibility. The whole idea is that Martha never knows who or where she is, so why should we? Perhaps, perhaps Durkin is a little too clever at points, but I’ll admit it: I like clever things. If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I love ambiguous, dense, ambitious films like this to death, and I’m always willing to go along in the director’s ride so long as it remains interesting. Martha Marcy May Marlene poses many questions to the audience, including the very question of identity and what exactly defines a home. But once again, it provides no answers. Durkin doesn’t like to give us much information, but it’s enough to let us fill in the blanks for ourselves. (Though it’s likely that no two people will fill in the blanks identically.)

There is a scene in Martha Marcy May Marlene when Hawkes’ character sits down with Martha and philosophizes about how death is the most beautiful moment in a person’s life. His justification: in our moment of death, we become fearful. When we experience fear, we enter a state—as he puts it—of “total awareness.” This is also an apt description of the viewing experience; Martha Marcy May Marlene is a slow boil that slowly creates a sense of fear and dread, and thus a state of hyperawareness in the audience. As the film goes on, we keep waiting for the danger to come. In many ways, we’re actively seeking it out. Yet Durkin pulls of the neat trick of making the waiting game simultaneously frustrating and thrilling. We sympathize with Olsen’s plight, and we wait for something, anything to validate her erratic behavior. It’s a question that hangs over the movie right down to the final shot, which—depending on the kind of filmgoer you are—has the potential to either infuriate or fascinate. Martha Marcy May Marlene is as deliberate and ambiguous as films get; a provoking discussion-starter that keeps the plates spinning well after the credits have rolled.

Grade: A

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