Martha Marcy May Marlene

LOVEFiLM Review Martha Marcy May Marlene

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  By Tom Charity from LOVEFiLM

  A creepy Indie drama that delivers a star in the making; Elizabeth Olsen deserved an Oscar-nod for her spellbinding performance.

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Most helpful review Martha Marcy May Marlene

• A well acted, well directed film that offers few clues and even fewer answers.

   

  By Tarumatu (39 reviews) from Brighton, England , 16 Feb 2012

  THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS Show review anywayHide

  [Highly rated reviewer]

  Events are unclear from the start of Martha Martha Marcy May Marlene, the debut from director Sean Durkin. Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) escapes from a cult and returns to the only member of family she has left, her elder sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson).
  
  Lucy has not seen Martha in around 2 years, she instantly knows something is wrong but knows she can’t push it. Its obvious that Lucy knows her younger sister well, but we dont really know what their relationship is like together. Martha is clearly plagued by something or someone, and the story slowly starts to take shape through flashbacks of Martha’s time in the cult as well as her time with Lucy and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy). The more paranoid Martha becomes, the more we learn about her past ordeals. Excellent camerawork and editing helps to build a mirrored transitional structure, one half of Martha’s immediate past, one half her immediate present. At times, Martha cant tell the difference between her old and new environment, and nor do we.
  
  The chief protagonist in Martha’s suffering is Patrick, played by John Hawkes. Similar to his Teardrop in ‘Winter’s Bone’, Patrick is even more chillingly charming and persuasive as the cult leader. One of the many creepy emotional techniques used by Patrick was to rename all the women in the cult, Marcy May in Martha’s case, as a way of establishing psychological ownership. If ever the phrase ‘never trust the quiet ones’ was meant for anyone, Patrick owns it hands down.
  
  Everything is broken, Martha is broken. Martha may be safer in her sisters home but she doesn’t feel it. Lucy’s presence offer little reward for Martha, its just another form of confusion and fear. Martha is a complex and often annoying person, not an easy person to sympathise with. But its too easy for us to say to her to grow up, get a job, have a relationship, be a good person, be all the things her sister is. No matter what she does she cannot escape herself. We know so little about her, she could have been traumatised all her life, who knows if her experience within the cult was even real?
  
  Martha Martha Marcy May Marlene is not an easy film to watch, because Martha cant find the answers, and nobody can really help her. As good as some of the acting is and as well directed, Martha Martha Marcy May Marlene is perhaps just a little too disconnected to completely engage you.

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