Another one-off review. Like with "Take Shelter", this wasn't a big release in the cinema but there was a lot of positive critical attention given to it. I should probably point out that there's some triggering content in this movie which I will discuss to some extent, though I don't really go into great harrowing detail.
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Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
First of all, the film title needs some explanation I feel. It's not a spoiler. These four names make up three identities within the film. The decision to make the title of the movie by lumping the names "Martha", "Marcy May" and "Marlene" together is to signify the loss of identity in the film.
Essentially, it seemed to me that this was two films. One film tells the story of a girl who meets up with a relative after a long gap, unwilling to explain where she has been but clearly now completely confused by typical social norms. The other tells the story of a girl who joins a cult, quickly (and bizarrely) adapts to their lifestyle and then comes to realise that the cult is more dangerous and disturbing than she thought. "Martha Marcy May Malene" combines these two stories, skipping between the confused girl becoming reacquainted with her sister on the one hand and her memories of her time in the cult on the other. The transitions between the two stories are often quite cleverly done, but I felt that one of the two stories was a great deal more successful than the other.
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The film begins with Martha getting up and leaving the house where she has been staying. She is in a cafe when one of the other cult members catches up with her and asks her what she's doing. There a definite sense that he is only being civil for appearances and that she is actually in quite a threatening situation. The conversation ends and we're not entirely sure whether the threat was a bluff or not.
Martha then calls up her older sister and she picks Martha up and takes her to her expensive holiday home where she is staying with her husband. As far as I am concerned, all the most interesting parts of the film take place here in this house. The first sign that all is not right with Martha is when she goes to swim naked. The sister says that she cannot do that because families come past the lake next to the house and children can see them. Martha responds by asking why that should matter. It's actually a good point. Why do we think it's so important that children should not see grown ups naked? Even in a lake and from a distance? But Martha isn't just being contrarian. She seriously doesn't understand why anyone would have a problem with children seeing her swim naked.
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Martha is going through a reverse culture shock. She is not used to ordinary social norms anymore and is unwilling to just accept them again without an argument. She has got into a whole new pattern of living and adopted a whole new set of values. The values she is now faced with, particularly by a very rich couple, are hard for her to accept. For her, the house is far too big to just be occupied by just two or three people. She also finds the idea that she ought to get a job to be overly capitalist, much to the annoyance of her sister's husband who is frustrated by the seemingly contrarian houseguest. Martha has a hard time accepting that she is really leaving behind the subsistence lifestyle she once had, but is also unwilling to discuss her former life with her sister.
In the background to all this is the feeling that the cult members might actually be after her to punish her for daring to leave.
What I've just described was quite interesting and if paced well could make a pretty good film. Unfortunately it seems that leaving the cult a complete enigma was not on the cards. We get to spend quite a lot of time seeing Martha's life with the cult, but at no point do we get an answer to the most pressing question: "Why did Martha ever join?"
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The best part of the cult scenes is John Hawkes. I first noticed John Hawkes in the opening scene of "From Dusk Til Dawn" where he plays the cashier at a convenience store. That was very much a comic performance (and hilarious too). Then I saw him the other year in the film "Winter's Bone", where he gave a much darker performance showing that he can play rather more imposing and threatening figures. In "Martha Marcy May Marlene" he is the leader of the cult and is able to seem at once both comforting and encouraging, yet also creepy and threatening.
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Martha appears at the cult seemingly already very keen on joining, but we in the audience still have very little idea what the cult does nor why it would be appealing to an outsider. After spending a bit of time with them it seems she has decided to take part in the initiation rite. And, there's no easy way to put this and anyone considering watching the film needs to know this in advance, the initiation rite turns out to be being forcibly raped by the cult leader. Afterwards, Martha is assured by another cult member that in spite of appearances, what just happened to her is good. She then talks to the cult member who introduced her to the cult, who says she wishes she could do the initiation again. Seemingly we in the audience are expected to believe that she is desperate enough to join in with the indoctrination to accept this.
Essentially my problem with "Martha Marcy May Marlene" is that, whatever these scenes of cult-life are supposed to achieve, they don't succeed. they remove our mystery as to what life in the cult is like, but it's never quite clear what the cult intends to achieve. A simpler life seems to be the best bet, where indoctrinated girls can forget their past while the cult males can have their way with those girls and have it be seen as normal. However, what is still left unclear is why Martha joins the cult in the first place. Her family is clearly super-rich and the ONLY clues to what drove her into the cult are going to come from the scenes where Martha has already left the cult, not from these flashbacks. I can accept that perhaps a few flashbacks might have been helpful, but with the flashbacks taking up at least half the movie it just becomes frustrating.
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I think the intention may have been to use the flashbacks to build up dramatic tension, but in actual fact (asides from the occasional sickening rape) they do the complete opposite. By showing us what the cult is, we can see their limitations. Martha's fear of the cult having run away actually instills more fear in the audience than seeing its few members interacting with each other.
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There's nothing wrong with the performances and it's really sad to have to dismiss the scenes with John Hawkes, but in the end the flashbacks to the cult do not serve the story. I actually wonder whether the writer didn't originally intend to show very little of the actual cult and then lost confidence that the audience would understand if the cult was kept too much in the background. This becomes particularly problematic at the end when the mysterious open ending feels unwarranted after we've been told so much about the cult. Put it this way (to avoid spoilers of any kind), if you've got some kind of alien presence in the background of your movie, hinting at their presence at the end might seem kind of cool. However, if E.T.'s been running around for the whole runtime making kids psychically drunk and showing off his shiny magic finger, then an ending that seems to ask "what if there are aliens?" feels utterly redundant. The ambiguity of the ending in "Martha Marcy May Marlene" was unwarranted because we knew the cult far too well to feel surprised.
C-
Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
First of all, the film title needs some explanation I feel. It's not a spoiler. These four names make up three identities within the film. The decision to make the title of the movie by lumping the names "Martha", "Marcy May" and "Marlene" together is to signify the loss of identity in the film.
Essentially, it seemed to me that this was two films. One film tells the story of a girl who meets up with a relative after a long gap, unwilling to explain where she has been but clearly now completely confused by typical social norms. The other tells the story of a girl who joins a cult, quickly (and bizarrely) adapts to their lifestyle and then comes to realise that the cult is more dangerous and disturbing than she thought. "Martha Marcy May Malene" combines these two stories, skipping between the confused girl becoming reacquainted with her sister on the one hand and her memories of her time in the cult on the other. The transitions between the two stories are often quite cleverly done, but I felt that one of the two stories was a great deal more successful than the other.
The film begins with Martha getting up and leaving the house where she has been staying. She is in a cafe when one of the other cult members catches up with her and asks her what she's doing. There a definite sense that he is only being civil for appearances and that she is actually in quite a threatening situation. The conversation ends and we're not entirely sure whether the threat was a bluff or not.
Martha then calls up her older sister and she picks Martha up and takes her to her expensive holiday home where she is staying with her husband. As far as I am concerned, all the most interesting parts of the film take place here in this house. The first sign that all is not right with Martha is when she goes to swim naked. The sister says that she cannot do that because families come past the lake next to the house and children can see them. Martha responds by asking why that should matter. It's actually a good point. Why do we think it's so important that children should not see grown ups naked? Even in a lake and from a distance? But Martha isn't just being contrarian. She seriously doesn't understand why anyone would have a problem with children seeing her swim naked.
Martha is going through a reverse culture shock. She is not used to ordinary social norms anymore and is unwilling to just accept them again without an argument. She has got into a whole new pattern of living and adopted a whole new set of values. The values she is now faced with, particularly by a very rich couple, are hard for her to accept. For her, the house is far too big to just be occupied by just two or three people. She also finds the idea that she ought to get a job to be overly capitalist, much to the annoyance of her sister's husband who is frustrated by the seemingly contrarian houseguest. Martha has a hard time accepting that she is really leaving behind the subsistence lifestyle she once had, but is also unwilling to discuss her former life with her sister.
In the background to all this is the feeling that the cult members might actually be after her to punish her for daring to leave.
What I've just described was quite interesting and if paced well could make a pretty good film. Unfortunately it seems that leaving the cult a complete enigma was not on the cards. We get to spend quite a lot of time seeing Martha's life with the cult, but at no point do we get an answer to the most pressing question: "Why did Martha ever join?"
The best part of the cult scenes is John Hawkes. I first noticed John Hawkes in the opening scene of "From Dusk Til Dawn" where he plays the cashier at a convenience store. That was very much a comic performance (and hilarious too). Then I saw him the other year in the film "Winter's Bone", where he gave a much darker performance showing that he can play rather more imposing and threatening figures. In "Martha Marcy May Marlene" he is the leader of the cult and is able to seem at once both comforting and encouraging, yet also creepy and threatening.
Martha appears at the cult seemingly already very keen on joining, but we in the audience still have very little idea what the cult does nor why it would be appealing to an outsider. After spending a bit of time with them it seems she has decided to take part in the initiation rite. And, there's no easy way to put this and anyone considering watching the film needs to know this in advance, the initiation rite turns out to be being forcibly raped by the cult leader. Afterwards, Martha is assured by another cult member that in spite of appearances, what just happened to her is good. She then talks to the cult member who introduced her to the cult, who says she wishes she could do the initiation again. Seemingly we in the audience are expected to believe that she is desperate enough to join in with the indoctrination to accept this.
Essentially my problem with "Martha Marcy May Marlene" is that, whatever these scenes of cult-life are supposed to achieve, they don't succeed. they remove our mystery as to what life in the cult is like, but it's never quite clear what the cult intends to achieve. A simpler life seems to be the best bet, where indoctrinated girls can forget their past while the cult males can have their way with those girls and have it be seen as normal. However, what is still left unclear is why Martha joins the cult in the first place. Her family is clearly super-rich and the ONLY clues to what drove her into the cult are going to come from the scenes where Martha has already left the cult, not from these flashbacks. I can accept that perhaps a few flashbacks might have been helpful, but with the flashbacks taking up at least half the movie it just becomes frustrating.
I think the intention may have been to use the flashbacks to build up dramatic tension, but in actual fact (asides from the occasional sickening rape) they do the complete opposite. By showing us what the cult is, we can see their limitations. Martha's fear of the cult having run away actually instills more fear in the audience than seeing its few members interacting with each other.
There's nothing wrong with the performances and it's really sad to have to dismiss the scenes with John Hawkes, but in the end the flashbacks to the cult do not serve the story. I actually wonder whether the writer didn't originally intend to show very little of the actual cult and then lost confidence that the audience would understand if the cult was kept too much in the background. This becomes particularly problematic at the end when the mysterious open ending feels unwarranted after we've been told so much about the cult. Put it this way (to avoid spoilers of any kind), if you've got some kind of alien presence in the background of your movie, hinting at their presence at the end might seem kind of cool. However, if E.T.'s been running around for the whole runtime making kids psychically drunk and showing off his shiny magic finger, then an ending that seems to ask "what if there are aliens?" feels utterly redundant. The ambiguity of the ending in "Martha Marcy May Marlene" was unwarranted because we knew the cult far too well to feel surprised.
C-