Martha Marcy May Marlene

With just two simple, nearly static, and seemingly harmless opening images, director Sean Durkin calmly establishes a source of foreboding fear. And over the course of the following 101 minutes, he gives that fear a face and names it Martha Marcy May Marlene. All it takes to pull us into the unsettling mystery is a shot of a few men engaged in handiwork at some dilapidated countryside home and a companion shot of a few women sitting on the porch with a baby. This possibly innocuous pair of shots suggests nothing inherently nasty, but Durkin's decision to instantly highlight what appears to be a commitment to old-fashioned gender roles subtly hints at something sinister beneath the surface. Why these two shots? Why such a deliberate line drawn between the men and the women? This approach only becomes clearer when the next scene shows all of the men of the household eating dinner around a large table, while the women sit and wait awkwardly until the men are finished and it is their turn to eat. What's going on and why? Durkin's slow peeling back of the narrative layers results in a startlingly effective and grippingly smart movie.

Upon introducing us to the creepy commune, Durkin initiates the story's birth of conflict when commune member Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) sneaks out of the house early one morning and makes a break for it by dashing off through the nearby forest. We can only assume something isn't right, but all we really know is that Martha has had enough and she's decided it's time to leave. When she reaches a nearby town, she calls her estranged sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson), who picks her up and brings her back to the gorgeous lakeside home where Lucy and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy) are currently residing. Whatever hell Martha was attempting to escape, it appears she's been successful.

But Martha remains reserved and refuses to speak of her problems and her previously fractured relationship with Lucy is rocky from the restart. At first, it seems that Martha merely needs some precious recovery time, but she soon exhibits bouts of extreme paranoia and her condition only seems to worsen. Martha's situation is harrowing, but for what reason? Durkin employs a series of flashbacks to slowly fill in the blanks and it is in this seemingly standard structuring that the movie begins to wisely come into its own. The flashbacks are courtesy of Martha's memories, which initially illustrate her early days at the commune and then slowly bring us up to speed on what an uncomfortable place it must have been to live.

These memories come fitfully and in spurts, as though Martha is uncontrollably haunted by them. What begins as a requisite batch of scenes that show us increasingly disconcerting details about the commune life soon becomes a kaleidoscopic blending of realities and muddying of timelines. Martha is losing her grip on her current reality and Durkin blurs the lines so smoothly that it is difficult to discern at exactly what point she approached the edge of her sanity. Martha's memories are invading her new experiences, making even something as simple as washing dishes a strangely disorienting action. As the days pass in Lucy's tranquil home, Martha seems to be losing her footing, moving backwards as a result of her apparent apathy. But it's not apathy, is it? It's crippling fear, horror, paranoia, the results of a mysteriously damaging past and some serious brainwashing at the commune.

As select pieces of the puzzle are methodically revealed, the reach of Martha's nightmare deepens, while the ambiguity that surrounds the cause of her mental state becomes ever murkier. She grows into a compellingly complex character and Olsen delivers a dazzling performance that feels utterly true and effectively unnerving as a result. She fills the role both internally and externally, combining the physiological and psychological aspects of her performance into a dizzying display of determined self-destruction. Martha is a beautiful young woman unaware of her budding sexuality and suffering from the loss of her innocence and the corruption of her femininity. Her physical existence is a mess matched only by the confusion rattling around in her brain. Tortured by her past, she is struggling, rather hopelessly, to make sense of it all.

As the picture of commune life comes into focus, we see the control that wily leader Patrick (John Hawkes) has over the other members of the group. Patrick has set up a rather comfortable existence for himself here, off the beaten path and surrounded by impressionable young women who are just waiting to do his bidding, no matter the cost. He's an oddly charismatic guy and Hawkes gives the character just a sprinkle of menace without allowing him to devolve into an easily pinned villain. We know there's darkness lurking within Patrick, but Hawkes gives that darkness depth and refuses to reduce his character to some dull depiction of evil. Patrick is the glue that holds the group (or family, as the commune members like to refer to themselves as) together, but he's also the one who makes the rules and proves to be quite capable of dangerous manipulation. That Hawkes and Durkin find subtle ways to approach the character's antagonistic qualities is hugely impressive.

When Martha's memory traces back to the day she was introduced to Patrick, he wastes no time taking control and christening her as Marcy May. It's an action he commits later on again and it's really his way of both claiming the women of the commune and singlehandedly stripping them of their identity. This loss of self follows Martha into the present, where she struggles to make sense of everything, anything, something. As her grip on reality continues to be weakened, Martha begins to grow increasingly fearful of the possibility that the commune members will come looking for her. The paranoia settles into her bones and she becomes desperately delusional, giving into every worry and letting her imagination roam painfully free.

With the situation collapsing beneath her feet, Martha, who also uses the commune's generic female name Marlene at one point, thus completing the puzzle of the title, becomes trapped in a maelstrom of misery. Olsen's performance stuns here, because she successfully bottles up her emotions and lets it all simmer beneath the surface where slight facial expressions are our only window into her feelings. It's such a complete portrait of this singular portion of Martha's life and Durkin's masterful melding of timelines and experiences completely complements Olsen's performance. Even a strange colour palette ties into the movie's commentary on straddling two timelines and never being able to fully inhabit either one. Muted colours and faded imagery lend the narrative a dreamy visual style that suggests colour bleeding into either side of the story and failing to brighten either end. Martha, who is Marcy May and even Marlene, leaves us on the precipice, with no tidy conclusion in sight. The movie makes its exit with an inspired ode to the character, the mystery, the future. After those two opening images that previously made such an impression, Durkin concludes his story with a single shot that puts Martha's condition into powerful perspective and left me wishing, rather helplessly, for Martha Marcy May Marlene to find some light in her life.