The feeling of belonging, to be part of something, to feel significant is a powerful emotion, one that can often misguide our judgment at the cost of gaining some salvation. Sean Durkin's debut film Martha Marcy May Marlene explores this idea when a young girl with no direction in life and no close family finds herself embroiled in a semi religious incestuous cult and the aftermath she faces returning to everyday life.
The film begins with scenes from a rural commune, people tend to gardens, young men fix barn roofs, the women lay the table for the men, this at first glance could simply be a naturalistic community fending for themselves in a back to basics style (the only initial hint that something is amiss is when then women are not allowed to eat before the men). Then the mood shifts as a young girl Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) tiptoes out of the compound and, when is spotted, flees into the neighbouring woods, where she is chased by members of the commune, this sounds like the set up to a horror flick but is something much more terrifyingly real. Martha is caught up with at a diner by one of the young males, but she is not physically forced to return (there is however a psychological threat) and she calls her estranged sister Lucy (Sarah Poulson), whom she has not contacted in 2 years, who lets her stay with her at the holiday lake house she shares with her husband. It is here where Martha tries to readjust to normal life whilst still haunted by paranoia that the cult are going to catch up with her, that they are still watching her every move.
The film does not present a chronological order of how and why Martha came to be part of the commune, instead it seeps in memories of her time there, the slightest sound effect sparks a remembrance, the past and present overlap with subtle effective similarities, her actions trigger recollections of the place she has left. An ill advised skinny dip in the lake is inter cut with images of the commune members naked, all bathing together in an enclosed stream. An even more unwelcome move from Martha happens when she enters her sister's bedroom whilst she is making love with her husband and lies on the bed next to them, much to their dismay and horror. This gives way to a flashback of Martha going to lay with the leader of the cult Patrick (John Hawkes) in his room, her previous experience and her unease with sleeping means she does not see the harm and inappropriateness of her actions of disturbing the martial bed.
As Lucy and in turn her husband find it increasingly difficult to deal with Martha's odd behaviour, Martha herself begins to lose her sense of what is really happening, her ordeal is still too raw and present.
The life in the cult at first seems one of harmony and togetherness, if a little too insular, but as the film teases more and more glimpses of their world, it becomes more and more sinister. It is one of sexual abuse, the women have to undertake an initiation which they try to justify as a 'cleansing' but is actually a drug induced act of rape and the girls are weened off their past lives in a discreet systematic way, given nicknames (Martha becomes Marcy May) that seems a friendly part of the lifestyle but disconnects them from their former existence. For the film to work, we have to believe that the cult leader is someone who would warrant following and one who instills a hypnotic power and John Hawkes' Patrick does just that. Whether he is delivering dubious philosophy ("Fear is the most amazing emotion of all") or playing his guitar in a fatherly manner for his disciples (he sings a song about 'Marcy May' furthering her inclusion) he is utterly and frighteningly believable as a authoritarian messiah, with Hawkes giving a commanding performance.
But this is Elizabeth Olsen's movie, as Martha/Marcy May she is a compelling memorable presence, fully committed and fearless in her portrayal of a young women who encompasses a range of emotions, from child like naivety to steely determination, when her behaviour wavers on the incomprehensible (she goads her broody sister by telling her she will be a terrible mother) she still elicits empathy and is softly bewitching. In terms of acting she is a million miles away from her squeaky sisters and is one to watch for the future. Also promising is director Sean Durkin, with his debut film, he has crafted a intensely beguiling film, one that makes the viewer work for its evasive appeal, his creates a hazy dreamlike scape that is balanced with a stark, primitive world. What is also admirable is that Durkin does not give any resolute answers to his psyche puzzle, it is a habitat that we will not come to terms with, some of the members of the cult truly feel at home in that environment, something that we cannot comprehend and one that is perhaps the most chilling of all. The final scene may be too ambiguous for some tastes but it is one that encompasses the entire position of the the film, not to distinguish the reasons why but to glimpse a fractured young woman, a soul in turmoil, that is a haunting in a beautiful tragic way.
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