**** out of ****
Directed by: Sean Durkin
Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy and Brady Corbet
Running time: 102 minutes
The sorrow comes in waves for Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) after she decides to flee from a cult commune in upstate New York. She tiptoes out of her quaint sleeping quarters one still morning and retreats headlong into the forest.
Later that day, her voice chattering, Martha phones her protective sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson). Lucy picks her up and lets her stay at the newly built Connecticut cottage that she shares with her English husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy).
It may be a vacation home for the young couple, but it only brings home the worst fears for the unstable Martha, haunted by the memories of her abusive cult leader, Patrick (John Hawkes) – a man who told her that “fear is the greatest emotion because it gives you full awareness.”
Even though she is hundreds of miles away from Patrick and the subservient life she led for two dismal years, Martha is fully and completely aware. The wanting come in waves, too, and Martha wants peace. Unfortunately, peace is hard to maintain when you are cold, alone and desperate.
If you get past the cleverly alliterative names in the title – Martha is referred to as “Marcy May” on the commune and all women living there use “Marlene” when they answer the phone – then there are two more you should not forget: Elizabeth Olsen and Sean Durkin.
Olsen, younger sibling to twins Mary-Kate and Ashley, is astonishing in her screen debut, where she encounters a role of constant emotional complexity. Her face is plain but opaque and hard to read, and as fragments of her memories from two years on the cult return to her damaged psyche, Olsen remains deeply vulnerable while becoming increasingly unpredictable.
Alone in the darkness at night, Martha is frightened that the folks from the commune will return. She dreads looking out the window or into the distance and narrowly avoids eye contact with anyone or anything. Olsen is shatteringly good, her character unable to get rid of the conflicted feelings that grip at her, which seep into the comfortable framework of Lucy's cottage.
Aligned with her point-of-view, suspense steadily builds for the audience, as well. It is one of the many pleasures from watching a film – and a film debut – from a writer/director who has capable control over ever tinted frame.
Like Martha, we seamlessly wander between scenes in the present and mementos from the past, and Durkin steers through these jumps of time with impressive smoothness and efficiency. The tinny bellows of the musical score by Daniel Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans, distant yet incessant, keep us within her entrapped state of mind.
Sarah Paulson and Hugh Dancy also offer strong supporting work, as the former tries to reconnect with the younger sister who abandoned her, while the latter is curious about her whereabouts, of which Martha has remained silent.
Those whereabouts, a self-sufficient centre where women and men have separate quarters for eating, working and sleeping, is rampant with "family" secrets. Martha goes along with this "family," hoping to find a role and a purpose as “a leader and a teacher,” as its leader Patrick so poignantly puts it.
This Patrick is played by John Hawkes, one of American independent cinema’s greatest treasures. Fresh off a sharp, gritty turn in Winter’s Bone that garnered him a deserved Oscar nomination, Hawkes measures a terrific balance of menace and seduction with his antagonist character. He ably coaxes the males and females on the commune to commit ungrateful acts for him, knowing that they blindly oblige to prove their loyalty.
Hawkes, piercing glare and all, is, to use another word beginning with “M,” mesmerizing. Here’s another word with that letter that sums up Martha Marcy May Marlene: masterpiece.
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