SEAN Durkin’s feature-length writing/directing debut is a disturbing yet closely connecting drama about how a cult that beneath its surface commitment to self-sustaining harmony conceals domination, exploitation and other kinds of cruelty.

Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) flees a cult’s rural community and returns to her only living relative, the recently-married Lucy (Sarah Paulson) whose husband has difficulty accepting a woman carrying such awful emotional and sexual baggage.

The film moves between Martha’s present time and place and the life she has fled. Her inculcation in the latter’s values has taken firm hold of her behaviour and her comfort zones. Having lived in a male-dominated community where women come second in every activity from mealtimes to sleeping, she has no inhibitions about her body.

Having seen morally frightful things, her understanding of the gulf between right and wrong is confused
In a zone of disquiet that makes difficult demands on our ability to like his film, Durkin‘s intention seems clear. Capturing and bending the minds of people seeking answers to life’s great imponderable questions, cults are capable of great evil. Ultimately, the less we know about Martha the better. But Durkin’s film deserves seeing precisely for that reason.

Confused? Don’t be.

At Dendy and Greater Union

“Martha Marcy May Marlene”