Winner of the Best Dramatic Direction award at this years’ Sundance Film Festival, Martha Marcy May Marlene heralds the arrival of two very impressive talents on the independent cinema scene. First, director Sean Durkin, who in his first feature film demonstrates an incredible assuredness and mesmerizing control of his camera, intermingling through astounding editing two timeless with ethereal subtlety and consummate skill. Secondly is young actress Elizabeth Olsen, who shatters any negative preconceptions one might associate with the acting abilities of her older sisters Ashley and Mary-Kate and gives a bravura performance as a socially alienated young woman tormented by paranoia and bygone emotional distress. A stunning debut for both director and star, this is an entrancing psychological drama that simmers with ominous tension and malformed emotion.
After a two year absence, Lucy (Sarah Paulson) receives a terrified phone-call from her younger sister Martha (Elizabeth Olsen; Silent House) asking for help. Unconvinced by her feeble claims that she has been living with a boyfriend, Lucy brings Martha back to her summer lake-home, where she and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy; Adam) try to coax the truth out of the troubled and emotionally fragile young woman. Intertwined with these scenes, flashbacks slowly reveal where Martha has been living for the past two years: as part of a commune/cult led by the enigmatic but violent Patrick (John Hawkes; American Gangster). Haunted by her experiences, Martha’s present behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, as she begins to fear that her past is eventually going to catch up with her.
Although I wouldn’t quite qualify Martha Marcy May Marlene as a thriller, Durkin manages to evoke an incredible sense of menace through his confident filmmaking, realizing his own cleverly structured screenplay to its complete and sinister potential. Long, quiet, beautifully composed takes build feelings of uncertainty and dread, while fluid and absolutely magnificent editing — genuinely some of the best I have ever seen– intentionally blurs the transitions between the two timelines, as we flow in and out of Martha’s escalating memories, dreams and nightmares, often uncertain of what is past and what is present. There is also a twisted cyclicality to the film, as we watch how Martha’s position in the cult slowly evolved from victim to perpetrator. Small lines of dialogue and behaviours occur in one timeline, and then payed off with disturbing effectiveness in the other.
Elizabeth Olsen’s performance is remarkable. Weary, naïve and constantly on edge, there is both an ambiguity and intensity to her work in this film that earmarks her as a serious contender for an Oscar nomination late in the year. The same goes for John Hawkes, who fresh off his captivating work in last year’s Winter’s Bone is creepily charismatic as Patrick, a man who prays psychologically and sexually on weak and impressionable young women; through his character film demonstrates with unsettling clarity how people become drawn into twisted “families” like these, especially when there is such an articulate and magnetic figure at its head.
Expect to hear a lot more about Martha Marcy May Marlene it in the months leading up to awards season. Incredibly well made and impeccably acted, it is an unshakable film that will stay with you long after its final image fades.
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Tom Clift is a web-based film journalist from Melbourne, Australia. Visit his website here: http://reviewsbytom.blogspot.com.
You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of MIFF 2011 here.
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