Martha Marcy May Marlene is an unsettling look into the mind of a mentally scarred young girl. This is not a typical thriller, choosing to focus on the character rather than any shocks. Indeed, it struck me as a character piece, a window into the world of a deranged woman.
Elizabeth Olsen plays Martha, who is seen escaping from a self-sufficient farm (read: brainwashing cult) in upstate New York at the beginning of the film. From there she is reintroduced into the privileged world she escaped from two years prior. The drama comes from her difficulty to settle back into a world that takes its conventions and idiosyncrasies as ‘natural’ and ‘normal’. However you view the cult’s pretty revolting use of drugs and sexual deviance, Martha does at least learn one crucial thing: that things can be done differently.
Elizabeth Olsen’s daring turn as Martha is engrossing and glacial. One wonders whether during the running time she’ll begin to crack, such is her composed silence in the early scenes. And, of course, Martha does eventually fall apart. The latter half of the movie is played out to a backdrop of confusion and paranoia. As the audience sees essentially what Martha sees, we never know what is real and what is delusion. Where MMMM stands out from similar genre pieces is how it shifts the focus away from this confusion and onto Martha’s character. Pondering over the reality of a certain event is less rewarding in this film than considering the repercussions to Martha’s life.
The film begins and ends with Elizabeth Olsen, but a lot of credit must go to Sean Durkin who sculpts a wonderful low-fi haunter as his debut. Durkin also takes writing credits and (dodgy ending aside) everything here is tight. He’s also got to take a lot of credit for refusing to allow his supporting cast to fall into cliché. John Hawkes’s Patrick is not your stereotypical cultist. He is charismatic, of course, but also knife-like in his constant threat of violence. Ted, as portrayed by Hugh Dancy, equally threatens to turn into some sort of English Public School trope but belies expectation throughout. Things are hinted at, but nothing comes to fruition on screen, which serves the movie well. Camera work and direction is wonderfully washed out. There is a sense that the movie is not fiction at all, but a documentary, such is the realism captured in every shot.
Martha Marcy May Marlene is a slow burner. Don’t expect to be frightened or wowed by cheap parlor tricks. It’s a movie about degeneration: of the family unit, of the economy, of society and, chiefly, of a young girl with no hope of escaping herself.
