Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Basically I only watched this film because of Elizabeth Olsen who is the youngest sister of well known twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. I honestly wouldn't know the rest of the cast in this but she was the only one I knew in this, she did a good job however this really is one of her movies that is the worst I've seen. Why you ask?The movie dragged on and I just couldn't understand why her character left her family. Was it because of her boyfriend or was it because of their beliefs? That was what I couldn't understand of. I mean, it should give us a better clue then have us viewers confused and wondering the whole time of the reason? This movie is pretty much a waste of time really!

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)This is in some ways a remarkable movie. It makes a small time cult-like commune in the Catskills very real and unspectacular. The leading character who gets sucked into this world, Martha (Elizabeth Olsen), plays perfectly a girl turning young woman who is naive and out of sync with reality enough to fall into such a falsely loving mire. Ah, I pass judgment already. But it is a mire, and the movie makes this clear with increasing violence as it goes. In fact, the one flaw of the movie might be its turning to such a spectacular end when at first it is the utter plainness (and believability) that make it float.This is a quiet movie. The rape is quiet, the murder is quiet (and so sudden you don't know quite what happened). And all the conversations are quiet, either from the coercive sweet-talking men who trick the girls into submission or from family who has forgotten (or never knew) how to love. But it works, slowly, surely, and with Olsen's deft performance, sharply. It cuts into the possibility honestly.There might be issues here for a critical mind, though some I can't say much about for fear of giving away some finer points. But the vagueness that works so well in some ways (avoiding having to clarify generalities) also makes for a kind of laxness. We have to go with the presumptions here, for example, of how much a girl like this would actually take (and be so naive about). One thing sorely lacking, I admit, is some basic clarity of why she would do this, what led to her going astray. This is what every parent wonders, naturally.But when I write astray I come to the trickiest and best part of the movie: the alternative world of this "cult/commune" is actually pretty nice. People live simply, they love each other with true tenderness, they seem to avoid the hypocrisy and materialism of the rest of the world. Take away the patriarchy and abuse (which is not possible, I'm sure), but take it away and you possibly have a true utopia. With the right frame of mind.That's the crux of the success here—plausibility leading to an attractive alternative, riddled with outrageous flaws.

If you like psychological films with no resolution this is for you.Our protagonist leaves a cult – and proceeds to live with (or more precisely - live off ) her sister and husband. There are unresolved issues between her and the older sister. They can never get to the point in their confrontations. Only once the sisters' husband asks if she will look for employment – but this issue is abandoned too. The film is interspersed with flashbacks to the cult she joined. I will admit that it is well acted which is the reason for the 4 stars.MAJOR SPOILERWhat was the point of showing the cult breaking-in and committing a murder - and no real resolution to this either? The cult was not violent-prone up until this stage. This was just cinematic titillation.

'Martha Marcy May Marlene' is a powerful drama about a young woman who flees a cult-ish community under the domain of a charismatic, abusive alpha male. She takes refuse with her estranged sister: but the latter is wealthy, a control-freak, determined to make the world around her fit her perfect image, whereas her new house guest is paranoid, nervous, provocative and highly de-socialised. The strength of the film is that in many ways, the host is not a particularly likable person, but nonetheless, the film forces you to see her point of view: that her sister is not someone she can care for in the abstract, but neither bear to be around nor actually help. The movie is not wildly unorthodox but it quite skilfully implies the disquiet and distorted perspective of its primary protagonist without forsaking either subtlety or the capacity to induce sympathy, right up to the disturbingly ambiguous final scene.