Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
Synopsis: A young woman escapes a cult commune and attempts to reconnect with her sister. Her increasingly erratic behaviour is counterpointed with her experiences in the commune .hilarity ensues.
Might be spoilers
It makes me feel slightly small, criticising someone who has managed to achieve something that I've never even got close to doing. Particularly when that something is executed as well as Martha Marcy May Marlene is. This review is more an attempt to explain (to myself chiefly but if anyone finds it useful, it's a bonus), why a film I expected to be awarding an 8 or 9 star score only ended up being a 7.
So, let's get the praise out of the way first. The film is technically excellent – although the cinematography is occasionally fuzzy, for a lower budget film it makes excellent use of some distinct locations and scenery.
Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes make the most of the meatiest roles on offer but the cast are all uniformly excellent, especially laudable as in some ways the performance supersede the material that the actors have to work with.
The editing and inter-cutting between the "safe" Martha and the imprisoned "Marcy May" are imaginatively handled and provide specific counterpoints to guide an understanding of where the film is trying to go
There's also a definite feel of Durkin adopting the visual language of exploitation cinema, many of the wide vista shots mentioned earlier reminded me of Meir Zarchi's I Spit On Your Grave (1978) particularly the lakeside ones and the claustrophobic interiors of the main commune house had a Texas Chain Saw feel. Given the themes of the film this struck as not being accidental and provides an additional element of fun for those who like to play spot the homage.
You knew this was coming, but
Technical excellence is one thing. The fact that the film struggles to tell a coherent or believable story is another.
A refusal to drip feed the audience is laudable and the fact that we are offered a choice of believing Martha's paranoia is genuine or a figment of her imagination provides an interesting post screening debate point.
That said, the lack of back story dilutes sympathy for the central characters, why did Martha and her sister's lives turn out so differently when presumably they both had the same experiences up to a point? There is no suggestion that both sisters have ended up in similar situations but from different angles – Lucy's husband is clearly decent, successful and tolerant to a point, albeit slightly dull.
This lack of anchor in the sister's relationships and experiences makes it difficult to understand the situation, leaving the only conclusion being that Martha was already psychologically weaker than her sister.
This leaves the audience with little to work with in terms of sympathy for her situation, other than an obvious empathy with the horror of the cult's rape and brainwashing of its female members but its fairly one dimensional and the characterisation is not far beyond the usual cookie cutter horror film.
The actions of the sister and husband also stretch credulity as Martha's behaviour becomes more and more erratic. Whilst seeing nothing wrong in skinny dipping can be passed off as an eccentricity, when a grown woman curls up on your bed for comfort while you're having sex, it would surely strike you (even as an accumulation of circumstance) that perhaps she's had some bad experiences and needs some professional help.
The fact that the pair only seem to consider getting this help when Martha completely and violently breaks down seems driven solely by the need to get the film to a particular place as opposed to being true to what would actually happen in a situation like this and as a point of conjecture, it becomes increasingly irritating.
The commune is an obvious cipher for the Manson family Barker Ranch, from the leader's metaphysical pseudo philosophy to the "creepy crawlies" to burglarise suburban homes (another slightly clunky plot device that seems to only exist to bring Martha to her tipping point).
It would have been interesting to see an attempt to do something different rather than another rehash of the Manson scenario (in my opinion, done definitively in Jim Van Bebber's film The Manson Family).
In conclusion, the film is a curio, in many ways it's an excellent example of the way cinema can be used as a medium for storytelling in ways other than the ones we traditionally expect but conversely it can be extremely unsatisfactory when the characters and story are frustratingly oblique.
Expect to come away both impressed and dissatisfied.
Synopsis: A young woman escapes a cult commune and attempts to reconnect with her sister. Her increasingly erratic behaviour is counterpointed with her experiences in the commune .hilarity ensues.
Might be spoilers
It makes me feel slightly small, criticising someone who has managed to achieve something that I've never even got close to doing. Particularly when that something is executed as well as Martha Marcy May Marlene is. This review is more an attempt to explain (to myself chiefly but if anyone finds it useful, it's a bonus), why a film I expected to be awarding an 8 or 9 star score only ended up being a 7.
So, let's get the praise out of the way first. The film is technically excellent – although the cinematography is occasionally fuzzy, for a lower budget film it makes excellent use of some distinct locations and scenery.
Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes make the most of the meatiest roles on offer but the cast are all uniformly excellent, especially laudable as in some ways the performance supersede the material that the actors have to work with.
The editing and inter-cutting between the "safe" Martha and the imprisoned "Marcy May" are imaginatively handled and provide specific counterpoints to guide an understanding of where the film is trying to go
There's also a definite feel of Durkin adopting the visual language of exploitation cinema, many of the wide vista shots mentioned earlier reminded me of Meir Zarchi's I Spit On Your Grave (1978) particularly the lakeside ones and the claustrophobic interiors of the main commune house had a Texas Chain Saw feel. Given the themes of the film this struck as not being accidental and provides an additional element of fun for those who like to play spot the homage.
You knew this was coming, but
Technical excellence is one thing. The fact that the film struggles to tell a coherent or believable story is another.
A refusal to drip feed the audience is laudable and the fact that we are offered a choice of believing Martha's paranoia is genuine or a figment of her imagination provides an interesting post screening debate point.
That said, the lack of back story dilutes sympathy for the central characters, why did Martha and her sister's lives turn out so differently when presumably they both had the same experiences up to a point? There is no suggestion that both sisters have ended up in similar situations but from different angles – Lucy's husband is clearly decent, successful and tolerant to a point, albeit slightly dull.
This lack of anchor in the sister's relationships and experiences makes it difficult to understand the situation, leaving the only conclusion being that Martha was already psychologically weaker than her sister.
This leaves the audience with little to work with in terms of sympathy for her situation, other than an obvious empathy with the horror of the cult's rape and brainwashing of its female members but its fairly one dimensional and the characterisation is not far beyond the usual cookie cutter horror film.
The actions of the sister and husband also stretch credulity as Martha's behaviour becomes more and more erratic. Whilst seeing nothing wrong in skinny dipping can be passed off as an eccentricity, when a grown woman curls up on your bed for comfort while you're having sex, it would surely strike you (even as an accumulation of circumstance) that perhaps she's had some bad experiences and needs some professional help.
The fact that the pair only seem to consider getting this help when Martha completely and violently breaks down seems driven solely by the need to get the film to a particular place as opposed to being true to what would actually happen in a situation like this and as a point of conjecture, it becomes increasingly irritating.
The commune is an obvious cipher for the Manson family Barker Ranch, from the leader's metaphysical pseudo philosophy to the "creepy crawlies" to burglarise suburban homes (another slightly clunky plot device that seems to only exist to bring Martha to her tipping point).
It would have been interesting to see an attempt to do something different rather than another rehash of the Manson scenario (in my opinion, done definitively in Jim Van Bebber's film The Manson Family).
In conclusion, the film is a curio, in many ways it's an excellent example of the way cinema can be used as a medium for storytelling in ways other than the ones we traditionally expect but conversely it can be extremely unsatisfactory when the characters and story are frustratingly oblique.
Expect to come away both impressed and dissatisfied.