Review – Martha Marcy May Marlene
Words: Gentleman's Journal
By Tatiana Hambro
If I told you that the director of this film (which is about a young woman escaping an abusive cult) is also part of a cult himself, you may well be confused. And you would be right to be confused because Martha Marcy May Marlene is not exactly an appraisal of cult-life. In fact, most have interpreted the movie as an exposé of such a lifestyle; revealing, as it does, the abuse (sexual, psychological, physical, emotional…) that forms the foundation of one particular cult in upstate New York.
Now, when I wrote that Durkin was in a cult, I didn’t mean it seriously. But the effect of the comment is the important part. Durkin understands this himself when, during an interview, he accepts the interviewer’s joking comparison between Durkin’s relationship with his partners (Josh Mond and Antonio Campos) and cults: They are cultish in such a way that all three men provide for and support one another, backing each other ‘all for one and one for all style’ on whatever projects they are focusing on at the time. Despite many viewers concluding the opposite, M.M.M.M is not explicitly anti-cult. Durkin expresses the point nicely saying, ‘I never want to make messages’.
The question is neatly begged: If he’s not making messages, what is he doing? Sure, we can go through all the usual guffaw of character and story but (sorry Sean) I think there are messages within the movie. At the risk of sounding bogus, I’m going to say they’re hidden; they are more subtle promptings than dogma.
The parallels between Lucy and Martha are emphasised throughout. Clearly, the sisters pursue opposing paths but the very structure of the movie encourages us to recognise similarities; exposing, as they do, the hypocrisy of each ‘life path’ and revealing the maxim: ‘life = suffering’ to be a universal truth. Different life-paths they may be, but we are encouraged to see them as running parallel to each other, rather than perpendicular. The scenes are played out in a composed juxtaposition, rather than any chronological order, which (amongst other stuff to do with memory) traces the thin line between Martha’s new world in ‘society’ and her life in the Catskills. Simple moments (such as Martha gardening) allow the more sinister ones to bounce off with more poignancy. The sedation scenes are a good example – it is in both worlds that Martha is force-fed drugs which numb her to her immediate reality and, in doing so, facilitate her surrendering of control over to her guardians.
But, crucially, Martha is not just a victim – a trait brilliantly captured by Olsen’s performance. She drugs another, with eerie similarity to how she herself was first drugged, into the initiation process whereby Patrick rapes each new girl, creating the foundation that allows his violent patriarchy to flourish. This may be a cult in which the male sex dominates, but, as is often the case, the female sex is complicit.
This point here is that, just as the feature title suggests, no character has a fixed identity. There are no goodies and baddies per se. Instead, we are presented with a series of fluid identities, which swap places and mutate, challenging our sense of judgement and pushing our pre-conceptions out the window. Rather than judging the things we are watching, the lack of a focal standpoint renders us mere observers – probably Durkin’s greatest achievement as, by a crude paradox, it reveals the ‘message’ of the film to be the inadequacy of making messages. Perspective is all.
Occasionally, it is Martha’s perspective that we are granted exclusive access to. I’m thinking about the final scene and also the scene with the song. That song. I still dig it out on youtube just to listen to it repeatedly. Why? Because of what it made me feel when I watched it: beauty. It is the beauty of the shot which, I think, makes it the best scene in the film. ‘Marcy’, always pretty, now appears truly beautiful: the wind blows her hair, the acoustic guitar chimes, and Patrick’s haunting voice penetrates your consciousness, somehow transforming the rape that occurred the previous night into a profound and ineffable experience. This is just how Marcy feels, too. It suddenly makes sense as to why she remains in the cult; how it offers her what was lacking before. We now understand why one of girls says she would ‘give anything to have my first time (with Patrick) again’.
When I wrote before that Patrick’s voice haunts your consciousness, that’s exactly what I meant; it’s the sound, not the words, that seduces. Once the words are understood, the sheer perversity with which Patrick yields his power is revealed: ‘Well she, she’s just a picture that’s all’. Here Martha, now Marcy May, falls further into nothingness as she is reduced to a frozen moment in time, a mere image of her former self – that’s all. The original song (by Sixties folk singer Jackson Frank) was probably written about a lost loved-one (– is she dead?) Regardless, it hardly seems appropriate to sing it to someone sitting in front of you. And that’s precisely why the moment is so curious: what makes Martha feel special and beautiful is also the thing that dilutes her into non-existence. Here, Patrick’s mantra – ‘Death is beautiful’ resonates with a sordid kind of logic.
And so does the film. You will walk out feeling unbalanced, decentred and uncertain. And that’s exactly the point. That’s exactly how Martha feels, too. Clear messages? Perhaps not. Mutterings and murmurings? Yes, there are plenty of those.
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