Martha Marcy May Marlene

Saw Martha Marcy May Marlene. The title is the protagonist's name. She opens the film leaving the collective farm she joined two years ago. She calls her sister and awkwardly asks her to pick her up. At the sister's house, she sleeps a lot and through flash-back we discover that the farm was a full-blown cult which she has just escaped. The film is mainly a portrait of a woman trying to recover after being severely mentally and physically abused. It focuses on her mental struggle to reject the nonsensical teachings of the cult-leader guru and to become comfortable in a world which does not try to hurt her, but also does not particularly care about her.

For dramatic reasons, the deck is stacked against the sister to whom Martha flees. Her house is palatial and immaculate. Her husband is a tightly-wound architect. They react with open hostility when she criticizes them for being too materialistic (they view her as the charity case and therefore as having no moral leg to stand on.) Via oblique reference, we learn that Martha had been left to take care of her hostile and aged aunt when she was younger, while her sister "escaped" to college. Communication between the sisters is strained. Even a simple apology for abandoning Martha is misconstrued as a dismissal of Martha's autonomy ("I took care of myself, okay?") which is in turn misconstrued as a refusal to accept an apology. Contrast this awkward unpleasantness with a self-sufficient farm which is lackadaisically managed by a wise guru and populated by young models wearing sun-dresses and tank-tops who all love you.

As the film goes on, Martha (and therefore we) realize that the farm was not self-sufficient at all, that it was robbing from neighboring affluent folks, that the twaddle of the guru was only self-serving post-facto justification for rape and murder, and that the "love" was orchestrated love-bombing. But then again... then again, they genuinely valued her, and they may have also genuinely loved her, and at least she was not abandoned and did not feel alone. The guru tells her she is a leader and a teacher. So far as we can tell, up until this point, no one has ever told her that she is anything at all. Can she leave this carrot behind as easily as she can leave the stick?

The film adds a final twist in at the end which I found pretty frustrating. I won't ruin it but the situation by the end is only making that smallest, most tentative steps toward improving and the twist throws doubt on the progress. My frustration is intentional however and shows that I've fully entered into Martha's world of paranoia and self-doubt. The film could be construed as a salvo in the war of the Haves vs Have-Nots, but I shy away from this more political interpretation. I'm much more invested in the imaginary Martha and her problems as mirrors of real events. Viewed in this way, the film is an interesting little character study of a woman trying to free herself.