{"id":1967,"date":"2011-11-13T22:27:32","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T03:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/?p=1967"},"modified":"2021-08-26T10:33:43","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T15:33:43","slug":"martha-marcy-may-marlene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/13\/martha-marcy-may-marlene\/","title":{"rendered":"Martha Marcy May Marlene"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fragility of the human psyche seems especially pertinent at this particular moment, as evidenced by recent zeitgeist films such as Jeff Nichols\u2019s Take Shelter<\/em> and Miranda July\u2019s The Future<\/em><\/a>. Sean Durkin suggests in an interview<\/a>: \u201cI guess I\u2019m most afraid of conforming. Groups that conform in a blind way without understanding what\u2019s happening to them, that terrifies me. That was a major fear of mine as a child.\u201d Perhaps it shouldn\u2019t surprise us then that fear permeates his debut feature Martha Marcy May Marlene<\/em>, a riveting character study of a young cult victim, which might be the most disturbing film I\u2019ve seen this year.<\/p>\n

Martha Marcy May Marlene<\/em> begins with scenes of a rural commune, in which dinner is segregated by gender \u2013 not surprisingly, the men eat first. While everyone is sleeping, a young woman named Martha (Elizabeth Olsen), who has been renamed Marcy May, suddenly bolts into the thick woods. A male voice calls out, \u201cMarcy May, where are you going?\u201d As she runs frantically, others soon follow in pursuit. At a small-town diner, she appears paranoid as she makes furtive glances and wolfs down her food. Sure enough, she is confronted by another member, Watts (Brady Corbet), who has tracked her down. Martha manages to use a payphone to call her sister, who begs her to come home. We feel relieved when she\u2019s rescued from the Catskills and transported to her older sister\u2019s lakeside retreat in Connecticut. Once there, she learns that Lucy (Sarah Paulson) has recently married a developer named Ted (Hugh Dancy).<\/p>\n

When quizzed about her whereabouts \u2013 it turns out she\u2019s been missing for two years \u2013 Martha offers a vague story about a boyfriend with whom she\u2019s broken up. If something seems \u201coff\u201d about Martha\u2019s responses, the same could be said about Lucy\u2019s. Claiming to feel guilty, she has accepted her sister\u2019s disappearance with an odd sense of nonchalance. \u201cGet a good night\u2019s sleep,\u201d she tells Martha, \u201cand you\u2019ll be as good as new tomorrow.\u201d Lucy, who\u2019s clearly in denial, tells Ted, \u201cShe seems okay.\u201d Whereas Curtis in Take Shelter<\/em> is tormented by images from the future, Martha is haunted by memories from her past. Signs that things are not okay become obvious when she begins to talk and act inappropriately. The first comes when Martha impulsively strips off her clothes and goes skinny-dipping in the lake in front of Ted. She also wonders why their house is so big, and blurts out, \u201cIs it true that married people don\u2019t fuck?\u201d<\/p>\n

The film uses a parallel structure in shifting between the present and Martha\u2019s past life in the commune, which is slowly revealed to be a bizarre cult, run by a skinny Charles Manson-like figure named Patrick (John Hawkes), who has sex with all the young women. Shortly after he initiates Martha, she falls under his spell after he sings a song about her in front of the others. Whether it\u2019s the result of the juxtaposition of scenes, there seems to be a sexual undercurrent between Martha and Ted as well. When Lucy goes into New York City, the two are left together. There\u2019s something about the way he slips behind her in showing her how to navigate a speedboat that feels smarmy. The two also drink beer together afterward. When he confides that he and Lucy are trying to have a baby, Martha bursts out laughing. She tells him dismissively, \u201cI can\u2019t imagine Lucy holding a baby. She wouldn\u2019t know what to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a flashback, we watch Martha slip into bed with Patrick during the middle of the night. Right after this, she gets into bed with Lucy and Ted while they\u2019re in the heat of making love. Lucy insists that there are defined boundaries. Flustered, she explains to her, \u201cIt\u2019s private.\u201d She gets Martha to admit that what she did was wrong \u201cbecause it\u2019s private and not normal.\u201d As a result of the intrusion, Ted is forced to spend the night on the sofa. In the morning, Lucy thanks him for his patience, but he flat out tells her that her younger sister\u2019s behavior is \u201cfucking insane.\u201d Martha talks about being confused about the difference between memories and dreams. When she acts as if this is natural, Lucy suddenly asks, \u201cDo you blame me?\u201d Martha insists, \u201cI\u2019m a teacher and a leader and I know who I am.\u201d Lucy answers, \u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n

When Ted questions Martha about her career plans, she asserts that there are other ways to live. She tells him, \u201cPeople don\u2019t need careers. People should just exist.\u201d She has an ideological defense for her lack of ambition and becomes more vocal in her criticisms of her sister and husband, who define success in terms of money and possessions. After Ted chews her out for being a freeloader, Martha explodes: \u201cYou don\u2019t know anything about it.\u201d The temporal shifts between past and present become more revealing as the film progresses. If we question how Patrick holds power over his followers, there\u2019s a key scene where he teaches Marcy May to shoot a gun in the forest. \u201cThink of someone who has hurt you,\u201d he tells her, as she aims her weapon. The tension increases as Patrick\u2019s sociopathic nature suddenly becomes manifest.<\/p>\n

The members of the commune, who eat a single meal a day, talk about creating a sustainable farm, but in the interim Patrick has them hit up their parents for money and also break into lavish houses to get what they need. There\u2019s a scene in which Lucy gives Martha a makeover before a party, which seems to reference Bergman\u2019s Persona<\/em>, but Martha has a meltdown during it. When Lucy tells her that they want to have a family and she can\u2019t stay with them any longer, Martha tells her: \u201cLucy, you\u2019re going to be a terrible mother.\u201d Lucy and Ted\u2019s decision about Martha sends the film toward what feels like an inevitable conclusion.<\/p>\n

Sean Durkin was part of the team that created Antonio Campos\u2019s Afterschool<\/em> (2008)<\/a>. Durkin gets a terrific performance from Elizabeth Olsen in her acting debut. Her face exhibits an inscrutable innocence that also harbors deep pain and unfathomable secrets. In short, she captures the schizoid nature of Martha, whose fractured identity is reflected in the title of the film and her three different names. Martha Marcy May Marlene<\/em> is a psychological thriller, with overtones of the horror genre. The latter reaction seemed to surprise Durkin, who deservedly won the Best Director award at last year\u2019s Sundance Film Festival. Maybe the sense of horror we feel in Take Shelter <\/em>and Martha Marcy May Marlene<\/em> merely reflects the sense of the abnormal that has become a part of our everyday lives. It\u2019s little wonder that the genre is having a big resurgence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fragility of the human psyche seems especially pertinent at this particular moment, as evidenced by recent zeitgeist films such as Jeff Nichols\u2019s Take Shelter and Miranda July\u2019s The Future. Sean Durkin suggests in an interview: \u201cI guess I\u2019m mostRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1967"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4350,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967\/revisions\/4350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}