Martha Marcy May Marlene
(Welcome to The Irony Mark's very first guest post! So far, this has been a one man show, but the times they are a'changin'. If you have things to say about film, theatre, music or literature, drop a comment and we'll get in touch.)
When a filmmaker wants to unnerve an audience, why not do it from the very beginning? The opening sequences of Martha Marcy May Marlene are simple; serene even. They paint a domestic picture of a seemingly idyllic rural lifestyle. But there is something profoundly unsettling behind every image. The women sit in silence waiting for the men to eat their dinner. They share the same clothes. They sleep on the floor of the same room. They nurse each other's babies. They all wait anxiously for approval from the same man. There is, no doubt, a sense of community but you get the feeling someone is holding it all tightly in place. Once you're in, there's no coming out. At least not without penalty. When Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) creeps out at dawn and runs headlong into the nearby forest the stakes immediately rise and we know this commune is not all that it seems.
What ensues is the exploration of a woman's paranoia as she tries to assimilate back into a life after two years in what we soon discover to be an incestuous, abusive, dictatorial cult. When Martha escapes she is taken in by her estranged but maternal older sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy), and stays at their lakeside holiday house. Parallels are soon made between the two worlds Martha now inhabits – the world of her memories and her current reality. Martha exists in a desensitised state unaware of her strangeness to others as she has frequent flashbacks to the atrocities committed by the cult. As she compares her past experiences with the life of her wealthy and apparently stable sister, her understanding of right and wrong becomes all the more confused. Martha knows the commune was exploitative and led to unspeakable acts of violence (she knows she does not want to return) but she also fails to see how her sister's life is any better. This internal struggle blurs what she chooses to see as memory, dream, or reality as she hallucinates her way into a state of psychosis: “Do you ever have that feeling where you can't tell if something's a memory or of it's something you dreamed?”.
It is easy to see how Martha arrives at this particular mental disturbance after seeing how manipulative the members of the cult have been, in particular, its leader Patrick (chillingly played by John Hawkes of Winter's Bone fame). His form of brainwashing extends to everything from re-naming his new followers upon arrival (Martha becomes 'Marcy May'), choosing his 'favourites', and, worst of all, using rape as an initiation ritual and stamp of his approval. As events escalate into further violence you understand Martha's urgency to leave and her terror about being followed and brought back.
This disturbing tale is cleverly cut with effective long shots and slow zooms which heighten the silence of scenes and potently capture Martha's overwhelming sense of being engulfed by her own fear.
If Martha Marcy May Marlene is writer/director Sean Durkin's first attempt at feature filmmaking, his future looks very promising indeed. As does Elizabeth Olsen's who proves her family does have some talent – it was just hiding behind the celebrity shadow of her twin sisters. Her performance is unselfconscious and brave. It's hard playing the kook. There's always the danger of going overboard. She doesn't. And you can't take your eyes off her.
MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE
Written & Directed by Sean Durkin
Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy
Review by Emily Freestone
When a filmmaker wants to unnerve an audience, why not do it from the very beginning? The opening sequences of Martha Marcy May Marlene are simple; serene even. They paint a domestic picture of a seemingly idyllic rural lifestyle. But there is something profoundly unsettling behind every image. The women sit in silence waiting for the men to eat their dinner. They share the same clothes. They sleep on the floor of the same room. They nurse each other's babies. They all wait anxiously for approval from the same man. There is, no doubt, a sense of community but you get the feeling someone is holding it all tightly in place. Once you're in, there's no coming out. At least not without penalty. When Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) creeps out at dawn and runs headlong into the nearby forest the stakes immediately rise and we know this commune is not all that it seems.
What ensues is the exploration of a woman's paranoia as she tries to assimilate back into a life after two years in what we soon discover to be an incestuous, abusive, dictatorial cult. When Martha escapes she is taken in by her estranged but maternal older sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy), and stays at their lakeside holiday house. Parallels are soon made between the two worlds Martha now inhabits – the world of her memories and her current reality. Martha exists in a desensitised state unaware of her strangeness to others as she has frequent flashbacks to the atrocities committed by the cult. As she compares her past experiences with the life of her wealthy and apparently stable sister, her understanding of right and wrong becomes all the more confused. Martha knows the commune was exploitative and led to unspeakable acts of violence (she knows she does not want to return) but she also fails to see how her sister's life is any better. This internal struggle blurs what she chooses to see as memory, dream, or reality as she hallucinates her way into a state of psychosis: “Do you ever have that feeling where you can't tell if something's a memory or of it's something you dreamed?”.
It is easy to see how Martha arrives at this particular mental disturbance after seeing how manipulative the members of the cult have been, in particular, its leader Patrick (chillingly played by John Hawkes of Winter's Bone fame). His form of brainwashing extends to everything from re-naming his new followers upon arrival (Martha becomes 'Marcy May'), choosing his 'favourites', and, worst of all, using rape as an initiation ritual and stamp of his approval. As events escalate into further violence you understand Martha's urgency to leave and her terror about being followed and brought back.
This disturbing tale is cleverly cut with effective long shots and slow zooms which heighten the silence of scenes and potently capture Martha's overwhelming sense of being engulfed by her own fear.
If Martha Marcy May Marlene is writer/director Sean Durkin's first attempt at feature filmmaking, his future looks very promising indeed. As does Elizabeth Olsen's who proves her family does have some talent – it was just hiding behind the celebrity shadow of her twin sisters. Her performance is unselfconscious and brave. It's hard playing the kook. There's always the danger of going overboard. She doesn't. And you can't take your eyes off her.
Comments
Post a Comment