Martha Marcy May Marlene heralds the debut of Elizabeth Olsen, i.e. the younger sibling of the infamous Olsen twins. It won Sundance's U.S. Directing Award for director Sean Durkin and has garnered widespread critical acclaim since its release. I finally saw it this weekend and it managed to both intrigue and disappoint me.
The story follows Martha (Olsen), a girl who has escaped from a horrific cult in the Catskill Mountains and finds solace in her sister Lucy's vacation home in Connecticut. Lucy (Sarah Paulson, who delivers a very nuanced and sympathetic performance) and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy in a very intriguing and different role from what I've usually seen him in) try their best to take care of Martha, even though she won't tell them about where's she been for the past two years. She tells Lucy she broke up with her boyfriend and needs a place to stay now, but throughout the movie we get treated to flashbacks that reveal how she ended up in the cult and the various events that led to her eventual desire to escape it.
The cult leader, Patrick, is played by John Hawkes who can go from charming and paternal to spectacularly menacing and dangerous in an instant. He finds vulnerable women who are estranged from their families and convinces them that this cult is the family they never had, a place where they can finally belong. Of course, once they agree to join, they are promptly drugged and submitted to initiation by rape, after which they become part of the "family" and lead submissive roles. The women can only eat after the men are done and wear whatever frumpy dresses will fit them off a rack in the room. Everyone sleeps on mattresses in the floor and once in a while if supplies are running low, they go out and steal things from the homes of rich families. Patrick takes a shine to Martha and christens her Marcy May, which becomes her identity as she is brainwashed into believing that she is part of a nurturing environment instead of of a horrifically disturbing one.
What's interesting about the way this story is told is that the scenes constantly flit back and forth between Martha adjusting to life with her sister and her life in the cult. We get no back story as to why exactly Martha ran away from her family two years ago but we see Lucy struggling to take care of her younger sister and understand what may have happened to her in that intervening time. Ted is trying to be supportive, but he cannot stand Martha's erratic behavior and thinks his wife is fighting a losing battle. Hugh Dancy and John Hawkes look alike enough that it makes the storytelling oddly eerie, almost as if Martha has escaped Patrick only to find herself faced with an another man who will treat her unfairly. This sense of escaping one life only to be trapped in another came to me more forcefully near the end of the movie when Martha has a panic attack and Ted brings over some anxiety meds to calm her down. Just as the women of the cult are roofied before they are initiated into the cult, this dose of Valium felt like Martha's initiation into the real world.
Martha herself is completely unreadable, with a blank face that only hints at depths of bewildered hurt as she slowly tries to come to turns with everything she has seen and experienced. And that's really the reason you should see this movie. Elizabeth Olsen deserves all the kudos she has been receiving for this performance and she makes this film feel urgent and riveting. I was only planning on watching half the movie before bed, but I couldn't stop myself from watching the whole thing to see what would happen to Martha and whether she would finally tell someone about her years as Marcy May. This movie is classified as a "psychological thriller" and it fits that genre perfectly. We start to piece together why Martha behaves the way she does, why she is so paranoid that the cult members are following her, and what exactly was the turning point that led her to flee. All these revelations build up slowly and tantalizingly, and Olsen keeps your attention focused on her and the need to know just what happens at the end. And that's where the movie disappoints.
Like so many independent films, the movie ends on a completely unresolved note. You can draw your own conclusions as to what happens next, but I don't want to. I know in my discussion of Like Crazy I said I enjoyed ambiguous endings, but I should add a caveat that I enjoy such endings only for certain genres. Movies about love can end vaguely because no one ever knows how a relationship will turn out in the long run. But I need some sort of resolution in a thriller. I need to know if Patrick finds Martha again or whether she finally gets the help she needs. I do not need any more suspense, because the entire film has kept me in suspense, and ending on that note is a complete let-down. Hitchcock films are great thrillers because they build up tension and keep you on the edge of your seat for the entirety of the film, but at the end, there is an actual end. You know what happens to all the characters, you know who gets killed and who survives. And you can exit the movie theater feeling fulfilled.
Martha Marcy May Marlene is a suspenseful character study, and again, I cannot praise Olsen's performance enough. I just wish the movie invested more time in completing its story than subscribing to the idea that an independent movie cannot have a straightforward ending.
The story follows Martha (Olsen), a girl who has escaped from a horrific cult in the Catskill Mountains and finds solace in her sister Lucy's vacation home in Connecticut. Lucy (Sarah Paulson, who delivers a very nuanced and sympathetic performance) and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy in a very intriguing and different role from what I've usually seen him in) try their best to take care of Martha, even though she won't tell them about where's she been for the past two years. She tells Lucy she broke up with her boyfriend and needs a place to stay now, but throughout the movie we get treated to flashbacks that reveal how she ended up in the cult and the various events that led to her eventual desire to escape it.
The cult leader, Patrick, is played by John Hawkes who can go from charming and paternal to spectacularly menacing and dangerous in an instant. He finds vulnerable women who are estranged from their families and convinces them that this cult is the family they never had, a place where they can finally belong. Of course, once they agree to join, they are promptly drugged and submitted to initiation by rape, after which they become part of the "family" and lead submissive roles. The women can only eat after the men are done and wear whatever frumpy dresses will fit them off a rack in the room. Everyone sleeps on mattresses in the floor and once in a while if supplies are running low, they go out and steal things from the homes of rich families. Patrick takes a shine to Martha and christens her Marcy May, which becomes her identity as she is brainwashed into believing that she is part of a nurturing environment instead of of a horrifically disturbing one.
What's interesting about the way this story is told is that the scenes constantly flit back and forth between Martha adjusting to life with her sister and her life in the cult. We get no back story as to why exactly Martha ran away from her family two years ago but we see Lucy struggling to take care of her younger sister and understand what may have happened to her in that intervening time. Ted is trying to be supportive, but he cannot stand Martha's erratic behavior and thinks his wife is fighting a losing battle. Hugh Dancy and John Hawkes look alike enough that it makes the storytelling oddly eerie, almost as if Martha has escaped Patrick only to find herself faced with an another man who will treat her unfairly. This sense of escaping one life only to be trapped in another came to me more forcefully near the end of the movie when Martha has a panic attack and Ted brings over some anxiety meds to calm her down. Just as the women of the cult are roofied before they are initiated into the cult, this dose of Valium felt like Martha's initiation into the real world.
Martha herself is completely unreadable, with a blank face that only hints at depths of bewildered hurt as she slowly tries to come to turns with everything she has seen and experienced. And that's really the reason you should see this movie. Elizabeth Olsen deserves all the kudos she has been receiving for this performance and she makes this film feel urgent and riveting. I was only planning on watching half the movie before bed, but I couldn't stop myself from watching the whole thing to see what would happen to Martha and whether she would finally tell someone about her years as Marcy May. This movie is classified as a "psychological thriller" and it fits that genre perfectly. We start to piece together why Martha behaves the way she does, why she is so paranoid that the cult members are following her, and what exactly was the turning point that led her to flee. All these revelations build up slowly and tantalizingly, and Olsen keeps your attention focused on her and the need to know just what happens at the end. And that's where the movie disappoints.
Like so many independent films, the movie ends on a completely unresolved note. You can draw your own conclusions as to what happens next, but I don't want to. I know in my discussion of Like Crazy I said I enjoyed ambiguous endings, but I should add a caveat that I enjoy such endings only for certain genres. Movies about love can end vaguely because no one ever knows how a relationship will turn out in the long run. But I need some sort of resolution in a thriller. I need to know if Patrick finds Martha again or whether she finally gets the help she needs. I do not need any more suspense, because the entire film has kept me in suspense, and ending on that note is a complete let-down. Hitchcock films are great thrillers because they build up tension and keep you on the edge of your seat for the entirety of the film, but at the end, there is an actual end. You know what happens to all the characters, you know who gets killed and who survives. And you can exit the movie theater feeling fulfilled.
Martha Marcy May Marlene is a suspenseful character study, and again, I cannot praise Olsen's performance enough. I just wish the movie invested more time in completing its story than subscribing to the idea that an independent movie cannot have a straightforward ending.
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