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Thread: Martha Marcy May Marlene

  1. #1

    Martha Marcy May Marlene

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    Posted this in the UFDT but probably worthy of its own thread since it's already becoming one of the year's most acclaimed titles. John Hawkes, god in the making?

  2. #2
    Screenwriter Lazlo's Avatar
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    Yeah, this looks incredible.
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  3. #3
    This was stunning. Had a very personal, emotional response that was hard to shake off, and I wasn't alone based on conversations with others afterwards. It transcends its subject matter (backwoods cults) in the sense that it's really about being torn between a false sense of belonging & being completely alien in the place where you should belong. Deftly elliptical narrative and formally exquisite in the chilly Haneke/Kubrick mold, but never slavishly indebted to either. Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes are exceptional. It's been touted as 'this year's Winter's Bone' but I think it'll be more passionately embraced by its supporters. Scarily assured for a debt feature.

  4. #4
    needs therapy, maybe. NickGlass's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Boner M (view post)
    Scarily assured for a debt feature.
    Ha. I think all independent debut films should be called "debt features."
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  5. #5
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    Looks powerful. But god do I loath dialog that involves "ever get the feeling what you're thinking is a memory or a dream" lines...
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  6. #6
    Quote Quoting NickGlass (view post)
    Ha. I think all independent debut films should be called "debt features."
    I actually left that unedited cuz it was too perfect.

  7. #7
    Run on Girl, Run DrewG's Avatar
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    Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)

    Aware I haven't posted in a while but I found this film a bit hard to shake and figured here was as good a place as any to discuss it. So here are some of my thoughts on it.



    There’s something inherently terrifying about the past, whether the memories embedded within it are pleasant or horrifying. The dynamics of the past—some holding onto it, some trying to forget it, some that can’t let it go—are part of what makes the entire experience of remembering so resonant. In Martha Marcy May Marlene, Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) is on the run from her past, a polygamous free love and farming cult in upstate New York led by the two-sided Patrick played by John Hawkes, who recalls his work in last years Winter’s Bone. Martha doesn’t have much of a family, so she spends time adjusting back to reality with her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and her brother-in-law Ted (Hugh Dancy) in their upscale vacation home in Connecticut.

    One of the film’s central questions is relayed from Matha to her sister, asking if she ever has trouble telling the difference between a dream and reality. The film’s narrative structure, readily jumping between Martha’s past in the cult and her present attempt to return to normalcy, is a constant reflection of this state of confusion. As Martha attempts to reacquaint herself to a world outside of the cult, there are visual parallels of her strange past. Her jump into a Connecticut lake is drawn back to skinny-dipping off a cliff with the cult. Her mixing of a sedative into a drink so that a new girl in the group can become docile for Patrick’s pleasure is matched with her twirling a spoon in a glass of water at the table in the Connecticut.

    Though this back and forth can feel like useless posturing, it’s this slow burn means of informing that helps to understand Martha’s emotional and social distance. Her strange behavior in her new life, jumping in the lake naked or crawling into bed with Lucy and Ted while they make love, becomes a chilling indication of how suppressed her feelings and sense of self have become. Within the cult a sense of caring and love was unquestioned because everyone contributes to the group in some way and many of them share the same rites of passage—rites Martha is convinced are done out of loving care and not sadistic abuse.

    Central to the film’s shifting levels of audience sympathy is Olsen’s breakout performance as Martha—yes, the younger and until now essentially unknown sister to Mary Kate and Ashley. Though one can pigeonhole her work as the typical edgy, indie-darling performance with all the rape and nudity trappings, Olsen’s emotive work ensures that it’s much more than merely a daring role and one that may net the newcomer an Oscar nomination. Writer-director Sean Durkin has some trouble finding footing behind piercing silences and scenes where actors chew the scenery in his debut film but gives Olsen plenty to work with as the woman in peril. Within the cult Olsen gives Martha a puppy-eyed sense of curiosity with a sporadic hesitance to accept the group’s ideals. Within her family life, Olsen ratchets up the worry, her face lined with the paranoia of being watched and followed by the group she has abandoned. Because Durkin and the narrative confuse whether her fear is justified or frivolous, Olsen’s performance feels layered in conjunction. Are the noises on the Connecticut roof at night pinecones falling or the rocks the cult used to throw on the roofs of homes before they invaded them?

    The aforementioned question is one reason the jumping within structure works so well as the film progresses, but also why it begins to drag and lack some cohesiveness. Durkin plays well on audience expectations with shots that disorient sense of time and place but eventually begins inserting needless filler that seems to only serve as a means to show the depravity of the cult without providing any discernable substance for their actions. In other words, Durkin drifts away from the love and love attitude the cult fosters on the surface for weird for the sake being weird motivations underneath. Casting Hawkes as Patrick is inspired as his face recalls Charles Manson—but tying their cult to Manson merely for senseless behavior rings somewhat hollow. If Durkin were trying to draw this parallel more vividly, he could have made these inconsistent acts in the films final quarter feel more meaningful.

    Durkin’s lens is in undeniable love with Olsen as Martha: within group shots she is centered, lengthy takes focus on her contemplative face and one close up while she cleans floors plants her cleavage directly in the foreground. Because of the shots close proximity, the question of time and place once again comes into play—though others will see it as one of many visuals that serve as misogynistic objectification’s of Olsen, and both sides are right in some measure. Despite two vastly different environments, the backwoods and farmland of central/upstate New York versus the posh waterfront digs of Connecticut, Durkin has a flair that draws them together and apart.

    Both have openness to them, but in different ways. In New York the cult’s togetherness is surrounded by desolate woods, yet the initial step for Martha towards freedom is eating at a diner in the connected town, one where the group sells items to get by. When Martha strips on the lake in Connecticut, Lucy warns of peeping neighbors on houses that surround the water. There’s something strange about how civilization feels so close to Martha in New York yet so far in the supposed comfort of civilized Connecticut. When Martha and Ted sprawl over the necessities of material life and making a living for yourself, the disconnect between the two halves of Martha’s life truly comes forward, one that’s aided by Durkin’s consistent styling between two different places—places that are more divided by emotion for Martha than they are by distance and resources.

    The relevance of the grim and dark foundations for Martha’s displacement in Martha Marcy May Marlene will vary widely from viewer to viewer. For everyone unnerved by Olsen’s depiction of the girl desperately searching for a place to call home and people to call family, others will be turned off by the film’s languid pacing and incessant attempts to rationalize Martha’s state through more and more sinister means. I grappled with the film’s strengths and weaknesses in varying degrees but found myself coming back to the question of how we deal with our past and the fog that clouds our distinction between dreams and reality. Even if Durkin lays Martha’s trauma on thick, Olsen gives the character the dimensions needed to ensure the film stays relevant, its subtle effectiveness lingering on long after the haunting final frames have flickered. But then that scary question echoes again—what’s real and what isn’t in Martha Marcy May Marlene anyway?
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  9. #9
    Run on Girl, Run DrewG's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Boner M (view post)
    </3

    Apologies. :cry:
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  10. #10
    Editor Spaceman Spiff's Avatar
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    Yeah, I loved this too. More movies should be as quietly harrowing, and I was seriously impressed by Elizabeth Olsen - an Oscar nomination seems in the works (deservedly).

    I did think the ending was a little too cute for its own good though, and the Haneke feel of it all seemed a little pervasive. Durkin needs his own voice.

    Probably my 2nd/3rd favorite of the year (behind Tree of Life and maybe Melancholia)

  11. #11
    needs therapy, maybe. NickGlass's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Spaceman Spiff (view post)
    I did think the ending was a little too cute for its own good though, and the Haneke feel of it all seemed a little pervasive. Durkin needs his own voice.
    Please define the word "cute" for me and how it applies to the ending. Like, cheeky?

    Nonetheless, I also found the film--if flawed--quite an impressive debut. Nearly all the techniques (match-cuts, flashbacks, etc.) are used to their utmost effect, creating a fluid and layered portrait of a wandering mind; they don't feel like setups for heavy-handed juxtaposition or narrative short-cuts.
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  12. #12
    Piss off, ghost! number8's Avatar
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    I'm fine with the way it turns out, but I couldn't help imagining a different movie where:

    [
    ]
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  13. #13
    Evil mind, evil sword. Ivan Drago's Avatar
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    Comes to me November 11th. The more I read about this movie, the more excited I get for it.
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  14. #14
    Editor Spaceman Spiff's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting NickGlass (view post)
    Please define the word "cute" for me and how it applies to the ending. Like, cheeky?

    Nonetheless, I also found the film--if flawed--quite an impressive debut. Nearly all the techniques (match-cuts, flashbacks, etc.) are used to their utmost effect, creating a fluid and layered portrait of a wandering mind; they don't feel like setups for heavy-handed juxtaposition or narrative short-cuts.
    Yeah, I guess cheeky.

    [
    ]

  15. #15
    Editor Spaceman Spiff's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting number8 (view post)
    I'm fine with the way it turns out, but I couldn't help imagining a different movie where:

    [
    ]
    That actually would have been awesome.

  16. #16
    I didn't think the ending was cute or cheap, mostly because [
    ] Actually it's probably the best hard cut-to-black in recent memory.

    I also like that there's no backstory for her prior to her induction into the cult, implicitly establishing it as the place of her true self-definition.

  17. #17
    Alone again, naturally eternity's Avatar
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    It's Dogtooth and Winter's Bone rolled into one, but I liked it a lot, even though I found a lot of the foley sound work distracting.

  18. #18
    Editor Spaceman Spiff's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting eternity (view post)
    It's Dogtooth and Winter's Bone rolled into one, but I liked it a lot, even though I found a lot of the foley sound work distracting.
    Can you elaborate? I do remember one scene in particular where I had a hard time understanding the dialogue but I'm not certain if there was any foley work in the background.

  19. #19
    Alone again, naturally eternity's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Spaceman Spiff (view post)
    Can you elaborate? I do remember one scene in particular where I had a hard time understanding the dialogue but I'm not certain if there was any foley work in the background.
    Especially in the first act, the foley work was exaggerated to the point of being distracting. Very tiny sounds like a glass being set on a table hit with a thud. It was obvious that they were added in later and not picked up on sound.

  20. #20
    Guttenbergian Pop Trash's Avatar
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    I'd like to say if you fans of MMMM/Take Shelter haven't seen motherfuckin' SAFE by Todd Haynes yet. DO IT!
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  21. #21
    Body Double Briare's Avatar
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    The majority of the film, following Martha at her sisters' cottage is by far the better part of the movie, the sociological implications of being in a cult environment and then reverting back to the norms of society is a really good idea and I thought it was executed very well, highlighted in certain scenes, such as the one where Olsen and her sisters' husband have a brief arguement over money and the proper way to "live", implying she s still clinging to the "ideas" fed to her by cult leader John Hawkes. However, the cult portions of the film really bothered me in that they really aren't consistent with anything I know about cults, they seemed very phony and it becomes even more obviously so when Hawkes essentially becomes Charlie Manson- literally, repeating Manson trial testimony essentially word for word in more than one scene and espousing Manson's most basic philosophy throughout- ego death, "no sense makes sense", "death is beautiful" etc. It seemed to me that the author wanted to create a Mansonesque character, since like the Family then, this one doesn't really revolve around religion but around self sustainability, music, communal living, constant fucking, etc but the Hawkes character, unlike Manson or any of those like him lacked charisma and was almost ferally cruel to his followers and this really bugged me for some reason.

    [
    ]

    This is probably going to seem pretty trivial to a lot of you but it bothered me how amateurishly written all of this was, the cult stuff just wasn't realistically culty enough. Perhaps it was the pillaging of Uncle Chuck's book of tricks but totally betraying why someone like him thought and acted that way, I thought if the film had been a little better researched it could've been excellent and in fact I actually found the screenplay to be pretty lazy in a lot of places, though I actually liked the ending a lot, cheeky or not.

    I place all of the blame on the script and not on Hawkes' performance, he was his usual brilliant self. Olsen is pretty good too, though I found the film built around her to be pretty disappointing. I don't really understand the comparisons to Winter's Bone at all, shoot me but I much preferred that to this and Olsen is no Jennifer Lawrence and Jon Hawkes was a little more sharply menacing as the meth snorting Teardrop than he was as this supposedly psychotic hippie kill cult leader.
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  22. #22
    The Pan Spinal's Avatar
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    A notable debut film with plenty to like. But, for me, not a wholly fulfilling one. Durkin's conceit is a good one, attempting to convey a troubled mind that is caught between two modes of existence. I liked his ability to create tension and his comfort with sexuality. Unfortunately, much of the film doesn't ring true for me and I think it's writing dialogue that is Durkin's biggest weakness. Durkin has the basics down - how cult leaders ensnare, isolate and abuse - but his subject seems under-researched. The film offers few psychological insights and few compelling questions to ponder once the film is over. The pseduo-philosophizing of the cult members is never really convincingly seductive, and the strained relationship with Martha's sister is never convincingly loving. Still, for every uninspired exchange, there is a directorial decision or a scene from the (mostly) excellent cast that keeps the momentum going.

    ***
    Coming to America (Landis, 1988) **
    The Beach Bum (Korine, 2019) *1/2
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    Fugue (Smoczynska, 2018) ***1/2
    Prisoners (Villeneuve, 2013) ***1/2
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  23. #23
    The Pan Spinal's Avatar
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    Ebert explains the film's title in the first lines of his review. What kind of jerk move is that?
    Coming to America (Landis, 1988) **
    The Beach Bum (Korine, 2019) *1/2
    Us (Peele, 2019) ***1/2
    Fugue (Smoczynska, 2018) ***1/2
    Prisoners (Villeneuve, 2013) ***1/2
    Shadow (Zhang, 2018) ***
    Oslo, August 31st (J. Trier, 2011) ****
    Climax (Noé, 2018) **1/2
    Fighting With My Family (Merchant, 2019) **
    Upstream Color (Carruth, 2013) ***

  24. #24
    Moderator TGM's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Spinal (view post)
    Ebert explains the film's title in the first lines of his review. What kind of jerk move is that?
    Well, Ebert is a bit of an ass...

    Edit: Just took a look at it myself, and yeah, that's pretty obnoxious that he did that.

  25. #25
    Producer Lucky's Avatar
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    I barely know a thing about this movie, but when I saw the title after seeing the trailer I thought that she had multiple-personality disorder. Just a guess.

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