Martha Marcy May Marlene stars a relatively new actor to cinema screens: Elizabeth Olsen. You might not be surprised to learn at this point that Olsen is younger sister to famous twins Mary-Kate and Ashley (after all, the Olsens certainly wouldn’t be the first to keep it in the family), but the connection isn’t at all obvious from her performance in director Sean Durkin’s film.
It isn’t just the title that sets your head spinning. Martha Marcy May Marlene tracks the story of the many-named protagonist’s escape from an abusive cult in North America, her struggle to break free psychologically from its dogmatic ideology and to reintegrate with mainstream society. Olsen is, quite simply, compelling. Her character is a complex one that problematises our notion of the victim/perpetrator relationship. Although Martha is clearly very damaged, her vulnerability is balanced by aggression, her naivety by degrees of conviction and self-awareness. Futhermore, her deadpan sense of humour carries a film which relies on a fine balance between the excruciating and the comic for its success.
Martha’s experiences of living with the cult are revealed through a series of flashbacks that intrude suddenly and without warning into an otherwise linear plot, creating a sense of parallel realities. This is aided by Durkin’s cinematography; blurry camera shots that fade us in and out of the present and implicate the audience in the surreal, other worldly quality of Martha’s story. As the strain on Martha increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to discern between memory and delusion. Echoes of previous dialogue build towards the end of the film, until, like Martha, we too are caught in the nightmarish logic of the cult. The drama is chillingly engrossing, and you’ll find it hard to extricate yourself from it when the movie ends.