Martha Marcy May Marlene

Director: Sean Durkin
Writer: Sean Durkin
Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson
Release Date: October 28, 2011
Length: 1 hour 41 minutes

    In addition to Rooney Mara of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Felicity Jones of Like Crazy, one of the most talked about new talented faces of 2011 and the coming Oscar season is the star of Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, Elizabeth Olsen. The younger sister of the famed Olsen twins has broken through on her own in a quite shocking debut role, as an influenced girl taken in by a welcoming cult.

    The film opens with Olsen running away from the cult through the Catskill Mountains, finding a diner on an open road. She is followed by Watts, a young fellow cult member, who refers to our lead character as Marcy May, the name given to her at the cult. He eventually leaves, allowing her to escape and call her sister to pick her up, using a nearby payphone. The girl – we learn is named Martha – is picked up by her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and is taken back to her spacious and modern summer home in upstate New York. She will stay with Lucy and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy), who are completely unaware of where Martha has been for the last two years.

    The film goes back and forth between flashbacks of Martha’s time at the cult, including her relationship with the much older enigmatic Patrick (John Hawkes) and the present where Martha has trouble interacting with the real world. As the film continues, we finely discover how much the cult has damaged Martha and her mental health and are pulled back and forth from believing the threat of the cult coming after her and thinking she has been induced into paranoia.

    After receiving incredible praise at Sundance Film Festival in January and at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, curiosity has been rising about the independent film surrounding such a disturbing topic. This powerfully unique film is not only a surprising breakthrough for the twenty two year old actress, but for writer/director Sean Durkin as well.

    Durkin, who took home the best director award at Sundance film festival, makes a bold choice for his feature film debut as well as a commendable choice in casting the unknown Olsen. Both talents soar brilliantly within their own fields, combining for a surprising and haunting success of genius. Durkin’s slow careful camerawork makes every shot appreciatively beautiful and eerie. His dark lighting and cinematography of the Catskills creates an ominous atmosphere to the time Martha spends there while the almost too bright lighting and open window décor of Lucy and Ted’s house makes us feel as uncomfortable and displaced as Martha.

   Durkin’s powerful script succeeds with subtlety about anything but a simple situation. Instead of dramatizing Martha’s experiences and memories with dialogue of her reliving it, he chooses to ever so subtly show how Martha does not fit into her sister’s world. The obvious changes in her mind grow more worrying as the film continues, with you truly seeing how two years of the cult has changed her forever. First, she goes swimming naked in her sister’s lake, and then later cringingly goes into her sister’s bed while she and her husband are having sex. In most scenes, with the simple look at the lives of people in the cult, the film never forces us into feeling only one emotion for a character, and instead lets us interpret our feeling toward the characters and situations as we choose. Although usually appreciating the delicacy, sometimes you wish it would go away more often so you could really be compelled to feel something strong toward the horrors you are seeing in front of you.

   Minding that annoyance, Durkin shines as a commanding filmmaker, including choosing some of the best working actors to live out his incomparable writing. Olsen simply takes our breath away in each scene, and not just because of her natural beauty, but also with her astonishing poignant performance as a psychologically tormented young girl who cannot leave her past behind. Olsen is one of the most talented faces to appear in 2011 and is more than worthy of an Oscar nomination this February.

   She is accompanied by the equally talented John Hawkes, who was nominated for an Academy Award last year for his performance in the highly acclaimed independent film Winter’s Bone starring Jennifer Lawrence. In Martha Marcy May Marlene, Hawkes is uncannily exceptional as the middle-aged leader of the cult, Patrick. His astounding performance makes the horrific character bizarrely attractive, just like Olsen’s character sees him. Sarah Paulson is also fantastic as Martha’s worried and confused sister, who has no idea how to deal with her clearly messed up sister as well as Hugh Dancy as Ted, who sympathizes less with the erratic and ungrateful Martha.

    Though it might not be the most enjoyable film of 2011, Martha Marcy May Marlene is by far, one of the most praiseworthy. Starring the irreplaceable Olsen and lead by virtuoso filmmaker Sean Durkin, it is a must see for any film appreciator.