Writer/Director Sean Durkin delivers an assured feature debut with Martha Marcy May Marlene, a film that won raves on the festival circuit and should immediately jump up in everybody’s “must-see” queue.
Martha’s been living for a couple of years in a rural commune, but eventually runs away and turns to her uptight yuppie sister Lucy to help re-assimilate herself to society. Flashbacks and dreams of the time with her unusual “Family” constantly enter her mind and fill in the blanks that she isn’t willing to talk about as she struggles to move forward. Questions of normalcy, memory, trust, trauma, and the role of family bubble to the surface in a masterly dance of past and present.
As Martha, Elizabeth Olsen is a revelation in an incredibly complex, vulnerable role. John Hawkes commands every scene as the Family’s leader, Patrick, a man of quiet manipulation. On their first meeting he tells Martha, “You look like a Marcy May,” which immediately establishes his influence and ability to refashion her identity within the Family as a newly-favored underling. Soon he’s "written" a serenade for her that’s as patiently penetrating and cunning as anything since Keith Carradine wooed an entire room of women in Robert Altman's Nashville.
The entire supporting cast is stellar, starting with Sarah Paulson and Hugh Dancy as Lucy and her new husband Max, they hold their own against Olsen’s whirlwind of emotion. The members of the Family (er...it's a cult) make a perfect mix of complementary personalities, the script guiding them to play underneath the emotions established by Patrick: Christopher Abbott and Brady Corbet (whom I recently knocked as a weak-link in Mysterious Skin) and especially the women, Maria Dizzia, Julia Garner, and Louisa Krause; each “finds his or her role” expertly in the small space given.
I found myself repeatedly caught off guard and wowed by unexpectedly beautiful imagery, a testament to the talented eyes of Durkin and young cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes. The story/character arcs don’t deliver all the answers about the backstory, and leave some things open at the ending, which I promise will leave you on edge. The more I think about the film, however, it’s fitting to the character that we’re left in the dark, too. No matter how many times her sister or another Family member asks Martha, “What are you feeling? What’s wrong?,” she’s not talking. The tension builds throughout, and as a series of transgressions that occurred while with the Family is slowly revealed to the audience Martha worries that she may be found. As a result, Martha Marcy May Marlene is an experience that is thoughtful, enigmatic, and often unsettling.
The entire supporting cast is stellar, starting with Sarah Paulson and Hugh Dancy as Lucy and her new husband Max, they hold their own against Olsen’s whirlwind of emotion. The members of the Family (er...it's a cult) make a perfect mix of complementary personalities, the script guiding them to play underneath the emotions established by Patrick: Christopher Abbott and Brady Corbet (whom I recently knocked as a weak-link in Mysterious Skin) and especially the women, Maria Dizzia, Julia Garner, and Louisa Krause; each “finds his or her role” expertly in the small space given.
I found myself repeatedly caught off guard and wowed by unexpectedly beautiful imagery, a testament to the talented eyes of Durkin and young cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes. The story/character arcs don’t deliver all the answers about the backstory, and leave some things open at the ending, which I promise will leave you on edge. The more I think about the film, however, it’s fitting to the character that we’re left in the dark, too. No matter how many times her sister or another Family member asks Martha, “What are you feeling? What’s wrong?,” she’s not talking. The tension builds throughout, and as a series of transgressions that occurred while with the Family is slowly revealed to the audience Martha worries that she may be found. As a result, Martha Marcy May Marlene is an experience that is thoughtful, enigmatic, and often unsettling.
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