Martha Marcy May Marlene
In the early scenes of Sean Durkin’s excellent character study, troubled Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) flees the acreage of an upstate New York polyamory cult with a Manson-ish penchant for home invasion. She makes a halting, reluctant call to her estranged sister and soon she’s ensconced in a secure, well-appointed Connecticut home. But there is no safety for Martha now. What she’s running from is no scarier than what she’s internalized, as the past and present bleed together in her mind, constantly battling for dominion over her.
Cult leader Patrick (John Hawkes) gives his acolytes a new name (or two or three) that’s similar to their old one, initially distancing them ever so slightly from their identities. It’s just the beginning of the process. In due time, Martha, now Marcy May, is drugged, sexually assaulted, trained to act deferential to men and made to participate in burglaries and the initiation of other new women. Her ego is broken down over the course of her neverending indoctrination and then rebuilt according to the needs of the cult.
What the cult often needs in addition to obedience is cash, hence the endless string of home break-ins. One such robbery goes awry and results in a brutal murder, an act which leads to Martha ultimately absconding from the commune, carrying with her all the shattered pieces of herself. But there’s little her sister or brother-in-law can do since she speaks of the cult to no one, isn’t even present enough to know that she needs to be deprogrammed.
After the murder that stunned Martha, she speaks of her battered conscience to another woman in the cult. Her fellow member, still a true believer, rationalizes what’s occurred, insisting that the murder of an innocent man wasn’t so heinous. “We’re never really dead or alive,” the woman says, “He’s still existing…it’s just in a parallel time.” The idea that chronology is fallacy is nonsense when applied this way, but it can be true of psychology.• Watch trailer.
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