This film seems better while you are watching it; afterward, as I thought about it, I was more and more distracted by the film’s shortcomings. In the end, I’m kind of sorry I saw it. It is depressing, superficial, ambiguous, needlessly slow, and has a fucking crappy, gutless ending.

Martha Marcy did confirm for me my suspicion that films making use of parallel narratives (past / present) are inherently limited in quality. The problem is this structural approach takes away too much dialog. Consider this film: the parallel narrative means that Martha never has to actually tell her sister anything, but this makes the parts with her sister kind of dull, as you just sit around waiting for her to do another outrageous thing in front of her sister’s husband. The parallel narrative also eliminates any kind of set-up for the film – because everything has to evolve out of this dual structure, you are necessarily just plunked down in the middle of the story, much like The Debt (another film limited by the use of past / present parallel narratives.) Some people might really like this approach to films, but I don’t.

The main part of the story, her time in the commune, is done pretty well on the surface, but none of the characters are developed very deeply, or rather at all, including Martha. Basically, what the film has going for it is that it captures very effectively the creepy atmosphere of the camp and the nighttime excursions, and the general affect of the camp’s population. But that’s it. You never really bond, or develop any kind of substantive feeling toward any of these people. As a result, you take away very little from this film besides the surface creepiness (which doesn’t go very far.)

I thought Elizabeth Olsen was pretty good as Martha, despite the relative lack of things for her to say (that’s not her fault, after all.) Hugh Dancy is a personal favorite of mine, and he is really good in this supporting role, although I wish he would get more role where he gets to play someone nice. The chick playing the sister is just okay. Then there is “Teardrop,” the guy from Winter’s Bone, John Hawkes. He seems to be making a good little career out of playing these filthy, crazy wackjobs in gritty, depressing indie films. He’s good in this movie, although I must say I was not totally sold on the aspect of the cult where women surrendered to him so eagerly and dramatically – I think they needed to write more dialog to pull that off.

Martha Marcy May Marlene: at the end of the day, it is unfortunately pretty mediocre.