Movies Reviews

Martha Marcy May Marlene – New York Film Festival Review

By Ron Wilkinson Oct 20, 2011, 13:23 GMT

A young woman moves in with her older sister after escaping a cult. ...more

Sophomoric psychology and stereotypical social models cemented by wooden acting.

Sundance hit “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” directed and written by Sean Durkin, somehow made it through the selection process and was screened at this year’s New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. The film combines a good cinematic rendition of a person going crazy with a dreadful screenplay. The result is more of a promise of things to come than justification for spending 120 minutes in front of this film.

Elizabeth Olsen plays Martha, a beautiful young woman with a troubled past and a future that does not look much better. The film opens with her walking away from the cult she joined a few months earlier. One of the men in the cult tracks her down and attempts to persuade her to return. She refuses. That is the extent of the excitement for the entire film.

The cult leader, Patrick, is played by John Hawkes (nominated for Best Supporting Oscar for his work in “Winter's Bone”). Hawkes is as good as he could be given the ham-fisted screenplay with which he is saddled. Writer/director Durkin told him to be a slobbering, hateful, psycho pervert, and he did exactly that.

The problem with that approach is that nobody in the audience could believe any person, man or woman, would fall for a line from someone like this.

Yes, Martha appears to be borderline deranged when she goes into the cult. She is without parents and although there is no back-story, it is reasonable to assume this has left her unhinged. Therefore, she is susceptible to hateful, obnoxious morons. Charles Mansion himself was more personable than the character of Patrick. Hannibal Lector was more personable.

The flashback story telling is well done, so the success of the exposition should be separated from the failure of the screenplay and the acting. Sarah Paulson and Hugh Dancy play Lucy and Ted, Martha’s sister and her husband. The two characters provide a good sounding board for Martha’s lunacy.

They are exceptionally sane and make Martha look even more insane by contrast. The failure of the screenplay to give Lucy and Ted brains dooms their performances. They are living with someone who strips naked for a public swim, screams hysterically, and spontaneously contorts into the fetal position, and they seem to think everything will work out OK.

The most fascinating and creepy thing about crazy people is that they are not obviously crazy when one meets them. Writer/director Durkin panics under the weight of the responsibility of demonstrating lunacy in two hours.

Insanity can be amazingly subtle. The weight with which this film whacks us over our heads is even more of an insult than Patrick’s hospitality is to Martha. Nobody would fall for the hospitality, nor would anybody fall for this movie.

The actors seem to have responded, perhaps subliminally, to the shallowness of the set-up, with very shallow acting. They are trying to act nuts and they do not know how to do it. Paulson and Dancy get to act normal, and they do that well, again, within the confines of the plot that does not allow them even average cognitive skills. The loonies in the film, Martha and the cult staff, have the best roles. Unfortunately, those roles are butchered.

Speaking of butchering, the cult breaks into houses and occasionally murders people, for fun and profit. This gratuitous sadism provides an exploitative side to the film that some might find enjoyable.

Combined with the perverted sex perpetrated by Patrick on the vulnerable and extremely sexy Martha and the subsequent hackneyed group sex in the cult (nothing better than a slobbering group-sex cult orgy), the film fulfills the most far-out fantasies.

Those who come away with feeling that the film is “powerful” because of this should ask if this furthers our understanding of the deeply troubled Martha, or if it invites us to take the driver’s seat.

Hopefully, there are better things to come from all concerned.

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Directed and Written by: Sean Durkin
Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson and John Hawkes
Release Date: NYFF—No Planned Release
MPAA: Rated R for disturbing violent and sexual content, nudity and language
Running Time: 120 Minutes
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color