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Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

Director: Sean Durkin

Time Out rating

Average user rating

13 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

You could call this impressive and haunting American debut film ‘The Mystery of Martha Marcy May Marlene’: our questions begin with its tongue-twisting title and continue way beyond the credits.

Writer-director Sean Durkin gives us Martha (Elizabeth Olsen), a startled, baby-faced young woman who runs away from a superficially boho and idyllic but really rather nasty cult in upstate New York. Once escaped, Martha moves in with her older sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson), and her husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy), in their spotless lakeside home somewhere equally bucolic at first glance. Past, present and future are as uncertain as each other as Durkin leads us back and forth between Martha’s time with the sect and the purgatory of being away from them. Gradually, Martha becomes so engulfed by unease and paranoia that we’re not sure if anything we witness is entirely trustworthy.

It sounds eventful, but there’s a lazy, dreamy quality to ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’, a reflection of Martha’s passive, troubled state bolstered by the film’s calm, pastoral and grainy look. There’s something of the truth-telling fool to Martha as she offers glassy-eyed comments on her sister’s lifestyle and home. ‘Is it true married people don’t fuck?’ she asks her prissy hosts without malice. The questions continue: ‘Why’s the house so big?’ And when Lucy over-reacts to her swimming naked in an empty lake – ‘What’s wrong with you? Jesus!’ – we wonder, as Martha does, what’s the big deal with shedding your clothes for a dip? By the time Martha shrieks at her sister, ‘You’re going to be a terrible mother!’, we’re not sure if she’s a bitch or a soothsayer.

None of which distracts from the creepiness of life at the sect. This self-sufficient, rural cult is run by Patrick (John Hawkes), a passive-aggressive hippy Pied Piper with nods to Charles Manson and David Koresh, right down to the hair. But Durkin restrains from fetishing or dwelling too long on the cult’s rituals and routines, so as not to wander too far from his main interest: Martha. It’s here she adopts the name Marcy May, given to her by Patrick, who also insists that anyone picking up the phone calls themselves Marlene. Clearly Martha achieves a brief sort of bliss from basking in the glow of Patrick’s attention – but it’s at the expense of her virginity, taken from her during a drugged sleep.

What’s most interesting about Durkin’s perspective on this story is the suggestion that you don’t need to be living under the control of a cult to be psychologically unfree. Martha leaves one cut-off social unit for another, and life with her sister often feels just as restrictive and strange. We know little of Martha’s family background, but there are hints of problems and we assume a vulnerability and lack of rootedness which attracted her to the sect, and vice versa, in the first place. Once we’ve got over the frustration of this promising film’s abrupt ending, we’re left with the feeling that you can escape a cult but you can’t escape yourself. Martha’s prisons of the mind might be harder to leave behind than we thought.

Author: Dave Calhoun

Time Out London Issue 2163: Feb 2-8, 2012

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User reviews of this film

Francesca said...

Posted on Mar 25 2012 02:10 Great film. Great actors. Wonderful setting. I wish I was good at writing film reviews to push people go and watch it for themselves! Elizabeth Olsen is magic!

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Paul Murphy said...

Posted on Mar 09 2012 13:32 A striking film which takes you to the point of view of a disoriented teenager by intercutting place so the viewer is not sure whether they are in the cult past or the sister's present. Olsen's rejection of her sister's & especially boyfriend's smug middle-class values point to why the cult may have appealed (and be comparable). Excellent camerawork eg short focus to point to Olsen's narrow perspective. Quiet, avoids thriller cliches and all the more powerful for it. Superb stuff.

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Josh said...

Posted on Mar 08 2012 11:19 Oh, and I forgot my stars. Four for the acting and atmosphere, but overall no more than three.

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Josh said...

Posted on Mar 08 2012 11:17 I found this film ultimately disappointing; perhaps because it promises so much in the first forty minutes and has some great elements. It's atmospheric and the acting is terrific. And yes, early on there are lots of interesting questions raised about what is 'normal' and how we are conditioned by society. Martha's wide-eyed questions expose the underbelly of ordinary life, suggesting that the 'love' that she receives from her bourgeois sister has its own drawbacks and costs. The control that her biological family exerts over her is different in kind from that of the cult, but it is no less real.
Yet all this interesting sociological speculation is halted. The film plateaus psychologically and the characters continue to play out the same conflicts. What does happen is a rising note of gothic darkness which raises the tension but tells us nothing new. And once this has been ratcheted up the film ends, all too abruptly, having added nothing to the interesting observations of the first half. An interesting piece but in the end, a great sense of wasted potential.

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Sutton said...

Posted on Feb 27 2012 13:45 This was an intriguing film, superbly acted by Ms Olsen and beautifully shot. It keeps you gripped to the end and keeps you thinking about it for days.

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david glowacki said...

Posted on Feb 14 2012 00:53 The other reviewers do the film justice..The enigmatic persona of the lead actress is the central focus,helped by her wonderfully beautiful face..The film has a sort of silent terror lurking in the background and because the lead speaks in a very laconic way you end up hanging on her every word...Like most art house films they are moments of daftness and OTT attempts to deliberately create a sense of misticism (particularly the ending) but the good bits are very good..l loved it 4 stars

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Paul said...

Posted on Feb 10 2012 12:29 I followed Kermode's advice to know as little about this film as possible before seeing it and found it hard to avoid my usual round of radio, tv and printed reviews. I had forgotten about all those Mary-kate and Ashley videos my daughter used to watch so it was interesting to see their younger sister's debut film appearance.
This is a story that let's you fill in the gaps and extrapolate backwards and forwards to give it a deeper context but does it in a way that feels natural and avoids becoming routine in its use of words and shots.
A very enjoyable but progressively unsettling film that was hard to predict an ending which arrives unexpectedly. Afterwards we were still pondering and discussing nuances and comments made in the film but left for our imaginations to connect the dots.

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mister_x said...

Posted on Feb 09 2012 10:44 i liked this, its clearly not out to be a thriller, nor a standard cult film, but i felt it was a little too bare, a little too minimalist at times. i wanted just a bit more to really get into the characters. as it is, its an interesting, subdued, moody character study, but its still very subtle, maybe too much for its own good. no doubt thats why critics like it so much, but for my money, take shelter, and melancholia did mental illness a bit better. MMMM is interesting in some of the questions it brings up, about being repressed by environments, some you go to on your own accord, some you are brought up in, but it didnt go far enough with these things. in fact, margaret covered the mental stability of trouble teenage girls better. if there hadnt been so much hype behind this film though, i might have looked at differently, because its a good, respectable, modest debut, but not sure its as much more as a lot of film writers have made out.

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Dominic said...

Posted on Feb 09 2012 10:01 Oh dear, he had made his point that the cult and her sister's family environment had something in common early on, but after that I could have done with a bit more plot. Very disappointing given all the glowing reviews, fairly boring all in all.

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UglyGeezer said...

Posted on Feb 08 2012 11:07 I can't fault this film insofar as it was beautifully made, hypnotic. Really good performance by the lead and brilliantly paced. The tension towards the end was stifling, the audience reaction to the end of the film was a treat. But then I was left with nothing to mull over, no brain food to munch on and discuss.
Great thriller though.

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Blaize67 said...

Posted on Feb 08 2012 08:49 A compelling drama with an extraordinary performance from Elizabeth Olsen. It's classified as a psychological thriller, but if you go looking for bumps in the night you'll be disappointed. There's a lot more to it than that. The brain washing and it's effects on our leading lady, and how she sees the world, and is dysfunctional in it, are really disturbing. Added to that the Manson like portrayal of the cult and it's leader are all too plausible. I thought the bourgeois ways and values of the sister and her husband jangled a bit and sometimes the pace was off, but for an indie production this is great value. Go see.

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brilliant said...

Posted on Feb 05 2012 00:11 Brilliant. So well acted, so beautifully directed and shot. That song! Creepy, haunting, terrifying.

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adam mccrum said...

Posted on Feb 01 2012 15:04 Sick of gore..! Martha Marcia May Marlene is creepy, but in the psychological; we, the audience, are 'trapped' in the head of Martha..! A truly great Oscar nod to the lead: Elizabeth Olsenhe comment you type in this box will appear on the site

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