MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE Discussion

 

I actually found Lucy to be an interesting character. I liked her mini-arc through the film, where her attempts to deal with her sister tie into her desire to have a baby, and her hope that helping Martha will prove her worthiness to be a mother. Other than that, I agree with you about pretty much everything you've said.

 

I also mentioned this in the "Abrupt Endings" thread, but it bears repeating: the last scene / shot of the film is terrific, and leaves you on the exact right note of paranoia/uncertainty.

Wonderful film, maybe my favorite of the year. I loved how the framing left too much room, making you constantly think something was around every corner. A superbly effective way to create paranoia and tension.

 

I thought Paulson and Dancy were well-drawn characters, not the primary focus but they carried their weight. The ending was perfect.

huge contrast

 

Edited by Joseph P. Brenner - 1/14/12 at 10:45am

I liked the second-to-last scene with her in the lake, with her head popping out of the water as the current washed by.  You could really visualize the parallel-dimension time-stream nonsense the cult members were rambling about and how nicely it correlates with feelings of paranoia and schizophrenia.  It seemed obvious that the cult-members on the other side of the lake could be a hallucination, and that the last scene with the traffic accident could be a coincidence, but I guess that was the point.  Reminded me of the first three seasons of LOST, how everybody was trying to make heads or tails of what was "real" and who was "good".

 

It's neat to think of this as a companion film to "Picnic at Hanging Rock" and "Virgin Suicides", to see what would happen to the somatic spooky pixie-teens if they survived killing themselves or being abducted by aliens, how they would end up in their early twenties, barely hanging on.  This may be the first great post great-recession film, where the lines of class warfare have been redrawn, with Martha as the middle class grasping for reality somewhere between iPhones and lake-houses and handguns and "sustainability". 

 

It's also great to see Hawkes starring in first-class small films years and years after Deadwood.  This was a nice update on Manson, Hawkes' cult member seemed like a reality-show host setting up poorly thought-up "challenges" while he sits back and keeps score - it was a nice touch that he was the only guy on the farm that was taking notes or had a stack of books, which would seem reasonable at a place with no computers, TV, or radio.

 

Hard to imagine that even with ten slots for best picture, neither this or Drive was nominated for best picture or any actor awards.  I feel like I might have outgrown Oscar night.

So many great little details in this one.  Two of my favorites: The way it's implied that Patrick has all the younger guys who have no idea how to play guitar or sing act like fools in front of the girls before he seduces them with his musical ability.  The eerie scrawl of instructions on the wall over the phone, telling the cult members how to deal with callers.

 

The way the film deals with Martha's PTSD really speaks to the way this kind of trauma fucks with a person, as my wife can attest; she dealt with some pretty terrible stuff in her youth, and this film really hit home with her.  But this is primarily a horror film of sorts, and the movie is filled with terror and dread. In many ways I was reminded of early Polanski.

 

In terms of the class reading, I do not dismiss it, but I didn't get that out of it.  For me it was more a movie about the effects of trauma, and the corrosive danger of silence.  Not just in the extreme example of what happened to Martha in her time with the cult, but also the already strained relations that existed in her family before she fell in with Patrick's group.  Her relationship with her sister was distant, the death of at least one parent early on, living with an aunt who apparently was unloving.  The Virgin Suicides was mentioned above, and in a similar sense I was struck in this film about how sometimes just growing up as a young woman is difficult in a way that guys very seldom if ever have to experience.

Showed this to my roommate last night and he postulated what i felt to be a completely off the wall viewing of the film but the more I think about certain scenes he seems to have created a pretty decent narrative of it.  He likes to talk about how he took a class or two one time about how to watch movies and, annoyingly, he will always blurt out minute nuances throughout films that he is tying into the grander picture of the film.

 

For example(his words in green): SPOILERS ahead

 

Martha, Marcy May, Marlene- The first letters of her names say Mama, Mama.  Obviously the movie is about family and he points this out at the first guitar scene with the two guys playing

Patrick- His first name is Pa or Dad.  Father figure.  Wow, insightful.

 

In the scene where the girl stabs the guy, she comes out of no where and he appears to be holding her back with one arm as if it were his daughter and the cult has come to collect her.  He then ties this in to the end of the movie saying that Martha was actually sent to kill her sister and brother-in-law, eliminating her past family and taking up fully with her new one in the cult.

 

His theory would seem to be borne out from several scenes earlier in the film:

The guy who finds her at the coffee shop doesn't take her back.

On the dock before swimming naked, Martha asks Lucy how far away from where she picked her up were they.

The bathroom scene where Martha is tricked into letting Patrick in.  Patrick tells her he will take away responsibilities from her if she cannot handle them and then she says no she is ready.

The phone call that Martha receives at the farm, I believe the guy who takes the phone from her confirms if the person on the other end is ready and sure they are ready and that they will come help them then.  This could be the "daughter" of the guy they stab.

The above theory is further backed up by Martha making her own phone call to alert the cult she is ready.

The three questions and instructions on how to take the phone calls could be some sort of Manchurian Candidate keystroke that Patrick has implanted in the girls.

 

My roommate feels the movie ended with her about to kill her sister and brother-in-law and that the cult members we see on the lake and possibly on the road are there to collect her.

Sounds those classes taugh him "how to watch movies" about as well as numerology teaches you science and math.

Nice Job

 

 

That's an interesting take. I'll need to watch it again with that scenario in mind.

 

To clarify something though, if I am recalling correctly, the cult members we see at the lake may only be through the mind (and not the literal eyes) of Martha.

 

In other words, your roommate may be on to something with the theory of how the cult is using their flock to wipe out their blood families, but that doesn't mean that it is happening in Martha's case.....or that it isn't a additional fabrication she has added to the traumatic reality of her experience (i.e. twisting her metaphorical fears into tangible memories of what she believed to have really happened).

The big hole in that theory is that she actually escapes at the beginning.  Like, they chase her and whatnot.  

And that there's no indication in the stabbing scene that the victim is the father of anyone in the cult. The woman doing the stabbing has been with the cult longer than Martha and is in several previous scenes at the farm/compound - most notably having a sort of orientation conversation with Martha about finding her roll there and later showing Martha how to make a pre-rape roofie smoothie for a new initiate.

-The guy doesn't take her back because the cult isn't in the business of abducting people in broad daylight in front of witnesses. In fact I don't think physically making people stay is generally part of their MO. It's about maintaining a psychological hold as much as possible. Not that they're totally averse to using force, which is why Martha is scared of them, but it seems like a certain percentage of followers leaving is expected. I think the assumption is they have their hooks in deep enough that she'll come back to them
-Martha asks her sister that because she's afraid
-The bathroom scene is demonstrating what a master manipulator/controller Patrick is. The talk of responsibility is all about exploiting Martha's insecurities, and is follow from previous interactions they've had
-The phone conversation is a glimpse of their recruitment process, so to speak. He's talking to/about a new prospective member who's ready to make the leap to the commune the same way we've seen Martha and the other girl do. And since I've already said that the stabbing woman is already at the farm at this point, it certainly isn't her he's talking to
-Martha makes the call because she's confused and still feels a certain attachment to the cult because they DID get their hooks in deep and she's not sure she's any more at home with her sister and brother in law, and she immediate regrets making the call.
-The idea of these people being Manchurian Candidate sleeper cell murder agents with implanted trigger words is just absurd. Why would you even want this film to be that? The instructions are about protecting the cult and controlling its members. Keep them in line and deflect/obfuscate inquiries from snooping authorities or family members who call.

I just really dislike this reading cause, on top of it having very weak textual support, it reduces the movie to a shallow narrative puzzle hiding a dumb, silly story of brainwashed sleeper agents. What subtext does the movie have if this theory true? What interesting themes that resonate with the viewer? Hell, even on a visceral level it makes the film less scary.

I'm not of the mind that MMMM needs to be about teenage sleeper agents murdering their old families to be good and creepy and suspenseful and resonant. In fact, like Dan, I kind of think that would totally rob the movie of its most chilling and insightful moments, because they'd all be undercut by the simple truth that Martha's behavior is all performance. She's not afraid, she's not paranoid, she's not emotionally sundered; she's pretending. She's there to kill her sister and her brother-in-law, and she's in full control of herself the whole time.

 

I would have felt cheated by that. Seeing Olsen play out the roiling stew of neuroses that define Martha is one of MMMM's greatest joys; giving Martha a clear-minded and ulterior purpose would call all of Olsen's work into question. It would have turned the movie into a parlor trick.

For some reason the "add reputation" button won't work on my phone, but exactly. Exactly my feelings and eloquently put.

So, at the risk of introducing another crazy theory...am I the only one who thinks there's a real suggestion that the cult stuff didn't actually happen, or didn't actually happen the way Martha remembers it happening? I know "it was all in their mind" twists are kind of done, but the movie does explicitly bring up the idea that her memories are faulty, when she talks early on about how you can remember things that never happened. And of course the mere existence of the cult, in the scenes at the beach house, seems to be weirdly ambiguous--by the end she's seeing Patrick appearing to her ambiguously, like some kind of vision, and there's that weird scene at the party where she seems to have randomly decided that a total stranger is one of the cult members (was he?). Everything can be read as being all in her mind. I don't know what this adds to the movie, per se, but there definitely seemed to be a strong suggestion on the part of the filmmakers.
 

Easily one of the most frustrating and unnerving films I've seen in the last few years, but in a good way. The level of non-communication going on between every single person in the film was fucking staggering and infuriating. 

 

There was some part of me that was hoping that the narrative wouldn't involve murder (I suppose I feared it would lead to cliche and poor drama and so on), but as soon as it went there, I settled in to it pretty quickly. For Martha to be as traumatized as she was, the crescendo of her experience with the cult had to be severe, and I think it built to that quite successfully and organically*. "You're going to be a terrible mother!" was a line that stood out to me, especially considering how I grew up and what my relationship is to my immediate family and vice versa. There's a lot going in that line and I felt every bit of it. 

 

 

 

*I believed every single moment of Olsen's performance, thanks in no small part to John Hawkes. I guess you don't get Oscars and whatnot for this kind of work. I felt not a trace of technique or "play" coming from Hawkes. The man is pure magic.

Prankster: there are definitely lines blurred between memory, present reality, and dream/imagination, but I don't think there's enough evidence to take that all the way to her being paranoid schizophrenic or whatever. Just not enough indication that her mental problems are of an ENTIRELY delusional variety. So there must be some real trauma that has put her in this psychological/emotional state, and since the film suggests no alternatives we have to accept that the scenes portraying he experiences on the farm are relatively accurate memories and the episodes she has and statements she makes while at the lake house demonstrate the effect those events had on her. Otherwise wouldn't large portions of the film, if not the whole thing, be kind of pointless?

 

Unless it is part of the training of the curly haired blonde who Martha seems to make sure that she sees her "get away".

 

 

 

 

His argument for that is that we don't see her let in through the front door or climbing in windows.  She does appear to come out of nowhere in the scene and the guy does almost imperceptibly seem to be shielding her as she comes up behind him.  Also, in the scene where Martha handles the telephone I believe she is nowhere to be found.

 

He has been "raving" about the film since we watched it and his new layer to his theory is that the women are all chosen because of their rich families not lost "runaways".

 

Mind you, I don't like his viewing of the film.

Edited by TzuDohNihm - 7/5/12 at 3:33pm

It all sounds like typical pothead/conspiracy theory ideas to me. Besides Martha, there's no evidence the other girls' families are rich. The one girl gets money from her dad (for what he thinks are drugs), but that doesn't mean he's rich. My parents used to give me money sometimes while I was in college, and we were by no means rich.

We do see her enter the house with the others. Martha climbs in the window and opens the door, and Hawkes enters followed directly by Stabby Woman, Martha's blonde friend (Zoe?), and Brady Corbett. Hawkes and Stabby McGee sort of wander off further into the darkened house while the other three go straight to the kitchen by the door, where the owner sees them when he enters and turns on a light a second later. Stabs is simply hiding in the shadows somewhere off camera beyond the kitchen and thus can easily sneak up behind him once his back is facing that direction. I see absolutely nothing in his body language that reads as him physically protecting someone in the same space as him. He doesn't know she's there. Even if she IS his daughter he doesn't know she's there.

It's true Stabitha isn't literally in the phone call scene but what I meant was that she's in several scenes before it that pretty clearly establish that she's already a resident of the farm when Martha first arrives. The other thing about the phone call scene is it seems really obvious to me that Corbett is just talking about meeting up with some girl on the outside who he's currently in the process of seducing into the cult. His dialogue is only ominous is that we know that's what he's doing, there's no implication that he's scheduling a murder with her. It's super casual.

Sorry to be the didactic dick who actually fires up the DVD, it's just I was starting to think I was misremembering. But yeah I really think your friend is seeing and hearing things that aren't there, like, at all.

(P.S. credit where credit's due, the Mad Stabber is actually named Katie and is played by Maria Dizzia, who does a great job in the second segment of the hilarious "Bummer/Blueberries" episode of LOUIE)

I just saw this yesterday. Whdayaknow.

I agree with agracru plenty about the fan theory.  Turning this into a secret high concept thriller really robs it of its power, which is all about how locked in Martha is after the whole experience.  That's very true to life, from what I gather, and very well done.  You've got to fill those silences with putting yourself in the shoes of all the main  characters to see just how frustrating trauma like that is.

Theories like that are fun for Inception and the like, but I wouldn't want them to be true for this.

 

The bit in the house; you could read that as he's standing there with what he thinks is his loyal daughter behind him, thanks to the timing of the dialogue.  But that's not really in keeping with cult practices.  Anyone new would be mostly cut off from their family for a long time.  They wouldn't just wander in and out.  You'd really want to establish that she had just been recently returned to her family for a couple of days to help this theory along any.

Without that it seems like a bit of a hole that they don't seem to kill the guy for any real reason, not hanging around to rob the place or anything.  But I suspect that's more a nod to Manson, as with the class warfare stuff.  This is the hinted hatred of rich people and targeting of nice rich houses escalating to its crazy height.

For the phone call, and I didn't actually check this before I returned the rental, but I think the girl on the phone is Mary.  There's a short on the bluray called Mary Last Seen... which shows the guy (Watts is his name apparently.  I had him pegged as Bobby for sure) bringing in a new girl he's clearly been working on for some time.

 

Anyway, classy understated flick.  As mentioned by Mangy, I really liked that sense they created of expecting someone to turn up in the background all the time.  And they never let you know for sure if they've found her (or are even looking), right to the end.  Impressive restraint.

 

To me it actually sounds like something a dude who's taken one or two film classes would say, the type of guy who thinks an understanding of phrases like "mise en scene" makes them genius-level cinematic thinkers. Not to disparage a guy who can't even defend himself here (well, too much, anyhow), but the theory doesn't hold up in the slightest-- not because it lacks any subtextual support but because it relies entirely on things happening in the movie that don't actually happen. (And, as Schwartz pointed out, the beginning shows her making a real-deal escape from the cult. If she's really a sleeper agent, then there's literally no good reason for her to sneak out other than to lie directly to the audience. That's just shitty storytelling.)

 

I applaud how much the guy pulls out of the film in terms of detail, but "the first two letters of each of her names spell out mama" isn't really an example of mining the depths of a film for real meaning. Family's a big, obvious theme in the machinations of the cult from the word go. Pointing out that Patrick has "Pa" in his name is just cute observation. And the sleeper agent thing, well, it doesn't add up, and I'm glad Dan went back to the DVD to underscore how and why. It's one thing to deeply read into actions in a movie, it's another to...well, to make shit up for the sake of a theory that frankly would just dissolve all of MMMM's resonance were it proven true.

 

Like, literally, if Dan had gone back and found that everything about that theory held up, I'd probably write a new review for the film absolutely trashing it. That's how bad that little theoretical and unsubstantiated twist is.

No, disparage him all you want, agracu, I don't mind.    I'm trying to recall if I shared his chess observations from the most recent Planet of the Apes in that thread.

 

Anyways though I wanted to share his thoughts with the board even though I had basically told him everything everyone here said.  I'm glad this sparked a little discussion and maybe bumping this thread will get more people to see this film.

This movie seems to have be slipping from the public consciousness despite everyone who saw it seeming to love it, which is a shame.  I thought Elizabeth Olsen might start challenging Jennifer Lawrence for some of those plum young lady roles, but that doesn't seem to have materialized either.  She still has time, I suppose.

 

The most impressive thing about this to me is how it doesn't just eschew conventional filmmaking techniques for ratcheting up tension, but does the exact opposite to achieve a similar result.  Instead of close up zooms of faces in distress and a droning score, it operates in near silence and pulls so far back that it almost (but not quite) breaks the fourth wall in terms of making us aware of the frame, waiting and straining to see what might be just beyond it.  It's a really bold and assured for a first time filmmaker.

You know, I thought the same thing about Olsen-- that she'd kind of neck and neck with Lawrence as one of the film scene's most vital young actresses, picking up loads of good roles in good films by good directors. Yet Lawrence seems to be climbing the ladder faster than Olsen. I think Hunger Games alone has done more for Lawrence than MMMM could ever do for Olsen, naturally since only critics and cineastes saw MMMM and it doesn't seem to have picked up an audience on home release; it makes me wonder if Olsen needs a project like that to keep her from just doing things like Liberal Arts and Silent House, neither of which were terrible or particularly noteworthy. (And it helps that she's wonderful in both.)

 

I'm waiting for Olsen to really find her breakout role. I think 2012 is Lawrence's year between THG and Silver Linings Playbook. I have no idea what Olsen has in the tank for the next couple years, but she's such a talented actress that I can't see her fading away.

 

"Assured" is the most perfect word to describe MMMM. If I hadn't known any better while watching for the first time, I would have assumed that Durkin was a much more veteran filmmaker. This is filmmaking on the level of a much more practiced artist; it would be a good effort for a fifth or sixth or seventh film, forget about being a first-time effort. It's all about the conscious, careful choices that he makes with his camera placement, his angles, the details he chooses to include in every shot...this is just very considered stuff. You can tell with every frame that Durkin put a great deal of thought into the entire process.

 

 I'm sure you didn't intend the visual but I got kinda light headed and you lost me from here on out.

 

On a serious note though, Olsen comes off to me like she doesn't WANT the KStew/Lawrence level of fame and I bet her watching it eat her sisters alive plays into that quite a bit.  To me she definitely comes across like she would be extremely happy playing the indie circuit her entire career.

 

I don't feel like that's the right parallel to draw; MMMM should've been Olsen's Winter's Bone, which paved the way for her to find her Hunger Games, which hasn't happened.  She hasn't even found her X-Men, and I have to think she's had offers to at least play a femme fatale in The Wolverine or somesuch things.

 

 

I didn't even think about that, but I'm sure it's a factor.

 

I think that's probably true. But I hope that Olsen still ends up doing more work in the vein of MMMM instead of Silent House and Liberal Arts. She's too good an actress to be doing stuff that middle of the road.

 

Fair. But at the same time that's what makes it difficult to draw parallels between them at all. Discussions of craft and talent and preference aside, Olsen just isn't on Lawrence's level. The weird thing is that they're developing their celebrity within roughly the same time frame-- Lawrence grew in recognition after Bone, Olsen yadda yadda MMMM-- but Lawrence's first big role has taken her places while Olsen's hasn't. I'm wondering if/when she's going to take the next step, or if Tzu's analysis is just completely spot-on and we'll never really see her climb to heights of fame like Lawrence has.

 

I mean, not that Olsen needs to be famous to be legit as an actress. I just hope she at least gravitates more toward projects like MMMM.

I'm not sure what Durkin's next project is, but I'm hoping she sticks with him for it.  I understand they were film school buddies, so it doesn't seem too far-fetched to hope that she might be the McDormand to his Coens, or at least Uma to his Tarantino.

I'd love that more than anything. She's a great actress; he's a great director. Unless MMMM was just, like, lightning in a bottle or something.

Ha, maybe I should preface that by saying I hope Durkin turns out to be more of a Rian Johnson than a Richard Kelly.

 

But I'm not terribly worried on that score.   We were just talking about how assured it is as a debut, and to that end MMMM works almost entirely on the mastery of craft on display, whereas Donnie Darko struck a chord more based on its weirdness and imagery.  You can't really fake or luck into the craft.

I wouldn't be worried either, for the exact reasons you mentioned. Donnie Darko-- and I'm not going to say it's a bad film, just a film that's interested in ideas and gimmicks and tricks and subterfuge more than actual technique-- doesn't have much by way of craft to support it. MMMM is all about craft and the technical skills of Durkin and his crew, and of course Olsen's performance.

As far as identifying a potential "star" I think Winter's Bone is a big winner on all fronts.  It was very popular for an indie, and generally simpler and more accessable than MM-MM.  It's just slapped you in the face with how tall and resilient and awesome, yet vulnerable and human, JL was and made everyone forget her sitcom past almost instantly, apparently.  And she's been picked to do big roles like that several times since.

Whereas MM-MM is much more oblique.  There's not as much call for that sort of thing in the mainstream and it's not a role that's going to give Olsen an instant identity.

 

If you want the lead powerhouse, you get Jennifer Lawrence. If you want someone delicate you get Carey Mulligan.  I can see Olsen being in the middle of casting's general lack of imagination there for a while.  Could be for the best.

I think one of the biggest reasons that Olsen hasn't blown up quite as much as Lawrence is that she didn't receive an Oscar nom, honestly.  I know the Oscars are not some bastion of quality, but the two names you just mentioned, Lawrence and Mulligan, both received nominations for their break-out roles, whereas Olsen did not.  And I think Olsen's performance is just as good as Lawrence in Winter's Bone and Mulligan in An Education.

 

Although another young actress who recently received an Oscar nomination for what is arguably a break-out role, Rooney Mara, seems to be in a similar situation as Olsen.  She hasn't been in a film all year, if I'm not mistaken (though she has Side Effects coming up, so that could help).

 

 It's an interesting discussion, but I think the Oscar screwed Olsen on this one.

I just checked her imdb and it looks like she has some interesting stuff coming up. She's doing Oldboy with Spike Lee and she's playing Edie Parker in Kill Your Darlings, which I'm hoping gives us a more interesting take on the Beats than the dull and lifeless On the Road adaptation did.

Finally watched this.

 

Olsen was fantastic, I can't wait to see what she does in the future. John Hawkes was, well he's John Hawkes. The man can do no wrong.

 

The tension throughout the movie was insane. The sound (or lack thereof, I should say) really let the viewer feel Martha's isolation and that sense of being trapped in one's own head, as did Durkin's decision to use wide shots so often. That distant shot near the end of Martha floating in the water really stuck with me. 

 

Hell of a debut from Sean Durkin. 

She definitely killed her family.  I don't understand why people think this would take away from the film.  In this movie as viewers, as we watch Olsen's mental state deteriorate with her sister, we constantly wonder why she keeps quiet.  Why doesn't she come out and tell her sister about the cult and what happened?  Because she is a teacher and a leader as Patrick tells her.  She is ready for her responsibility. 

 

A lot of people say the hole in the theory is that she escapes.  I think she is initially escaping because she is unsure of her duty. She doesn't want to commit to her responsibilities.  However at the diner after the escape, the boy doesn't directly tell her anything but his demeanor is very controlling.  Of course he can't just take her and run away at the diner in the city but he looks at her almost knowingly that she has this "seed" of the cult planted.  The next scene she is making a phone call to her sister.  She seems distraught and hesitant the entire call ( well really the entire movie) but the phone call is one she almost regrets...

 

Flash later into the movie at the dinner scene where she fights with Lucy and mainly her husband.  The whole class warfare scene.  That night Olson makes the phone call and what does she do... She asks 3 questions then hangs up as she feels instant regret...Rocks begin hitting the roof...

 

Then a lot of people think that the guy at the end during the swim is an illusion this is completely false because the next scene while they are driving away the husband and wife see him proving that he isn't just part of Olson's paranoia. 

 

The Director was also interviewed for the movie and said it is mainly based on two cults the Jonestown Massacre and the Mansion family and at the end of the interview he says the movie definitely leans much more toward the Manson family and if you haven't don't research on the Manson family just browse a couple of Wiki articles.

.......

 

I think the beauty of the film is all still there with this theory and don't understand why people think it just makes it into a bunch of little sleeper cells.  The performance from Olsen shows her internal struggle to grasp the situation she's in.  Does she want to leave the Cult life or not.  She puts on the new pink dress and laughs at it.  She laughs at the husband for wanting to have a kid.  Then tells her sister she will be a terrible mother.  She needs some kind of justification for the death of her sister and husband.  After all like Patrick said death is a wonderful thing.  Im paraphrasing which just makes me want to go watch this movie again...