Martha Marcy May Marlene

Director: Sean Durkin
Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy, John Hawkes and Brady Corbett.
Distributor: Independent
Runtime: 102 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2012

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Rating notes: Strong themes and sex scenes

The tongue-twisting alliterative title is an indicator of the identity problems that Martha is having. She was Martha originally. Who has she become?

Many commentators have brought up Charles Manson and his family as a reference for this film. They are probably right. However, writer-director, Sean Durkin, has stated that he was more interested in the story of someone who had escaped from an enclosed group like the Manson family. That is who Martha is – an escapee. We learn this almost immediately as we are led into the commune, isolated, agricultural, dependent on a charismatic leader, and extremely sexist, with the women eating together after the men. And sexist in sexual exploitation as well. Early one morning, Martha runs away. Martha is played with feeling and convincing irritation to her family and to the audience by Elizabeth Olsen.

She has lived in the commune for two years without contact with her family, subservient to Patrick, the scrawny, rather non-descript-looking leader (John Hawkes eerily charming, controlling and ruthless). She rings her sister who comes to get her and Martha begins some kind of rehabilitation. But, the film poses the problem of whether she can ever be truly healed. Is she too emotionally wounded, too mentally unstable.

This is clear as Martha lives with her sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and her upwardly mobile husband (Hugh Dancy) who suffers Martha’s presence only out of loyalty to his wife.

Martha is erratic in behaviour, offensive in attitude, wearing her benefactors’ patience very thin. But, incidents lead to memories and the film is continually reverting back to the commune and Martha’s life there, work, pleasing Patrick, dealing with the other men, with the other women, more work, petty jealousies, sexual expectations from Patrick. Late in the film, there is a chilling episode where the group intrude into a house, terrorise the owner, burglarise and kill without compunction.

Amidst Martha’s memories are dreams and possible hallucinations which show the precarious nature of Martha’s recovery.

The film does not take us beyond this initial stage. We are left wondering how Martha will cope after two years of oppressive experience. But, the dangers of the sect and the cult, the control of the leader and the damage to the members are dramatised with intensity.