Christopher Abbott – Movie Musings

Durkin’s debut is atmospheric but not quite satisfying enough look at the danger of cults

Director: Sean Durkin

Cast: Elizabeth Olsen (Martha/Marcy May), John Hawkes (Patrick), Sarah Paulson (Lucy), Hugh Dancy (Ted), Brady Corbett (Watts), Christopher Abbott (Max), Maria Dizzia (Katie), Julia Garner (Sarah), Louisa Krause (Zoe)

When 22-year-old Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) surfaces after two years off-the-grid, seeking help from her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and Lucy’s husband Ted (Hugh Dancy), they think she’s still the same slightly selfish screw-up she’s always been. But unknown to them, Martha has spent those missing years rechristened as Marcy Man in a patriarchal Manson-like cult in the Catskills run by charismatic Patrick (John Hawkes). As Martha attempts to readjust, she is haunted by flashbacks to the cult and a growing paranoia that her escape from Patrick’s clutches might only be temporary.

Durkin’s debut film is a masterclass in unsettling atmosphere. With its gloomy photography and stretches of unsettling silence, it never lets the viewer relax. Lucy and Ted’s luxury country house ends up feeling as unsafe and uncertain as the cult’s rickety farm. Well-handled cuts take us suddenly from present to flash-back – for example, a cut sees Martha dive from Ted’s boat to land in the waterfall near the cult’s farm. Auditory and visual transitions run throughout the whole film – Martha’s sleeping positions in the house suddenly mirrored in flashbacks, or food preparation in one timeline transitioning to the same task in the other. It makes everything feel as disjointed and jagged to us as it does to Martha.

This unsettling uncertainty, where the “safe” environment of Lucy and Ted’s house increasingly mirrors the unsafe world of the cult, is a neat way of suggesting the struggle of people like Martha to truly escape. It also complements a very effective, star-making turn from Elizabeth Olsen. At times hostile, Martha is just as likely to withdraw, Olsen showing her deeply unsettled by everyday acts like her sister combing her hair (an act reminiscent to her of the cult’s sexual abuse), or blankly not comprehending the society’s everyday rules. Desperate for reassurance, she still clings to the cult’s empty mantras, lashing out with furious venom when she feels vulnerable. It’s a soulful, damaged and delicate performance that carries much of the film.

Martha Marcy May Marlene captures the horrific, insidious manipulation of the cult. John Hawkes is very good as a quietly charismatic, intimidating man who, without ever raising his voice, controls every situation he is in through self-confidence and absolute certainty. The cult is firmly hierarchical, with Patrick at the top, men below and women at the bottom, serving the men – from cooking food (and not eating so much as a crumb until they are finished) to taking part in partner-swapping orgies watched by Patrick. All women are initiated into the cult through a “cleansing” ritual – being drugged by the other women, then raped by Patrick and they and the other members are brain-washed into pride at being “chosen” for Patrick’s wisdom.

Durkin leaves the nature of the cult deliberately ill-defined, in itself a comment on the shallow emptiness of these movements and the intellectual mediocrity of their leaders. When a row develops over dinner, Martha responds to the (admittedly smug) Ted by angrily parroting the cult’s empty, depth-free anti-money and anti-capitalist statements. The cult roughly follows the Manson Family playbook in breaking into homes and stealing (or worse) to fund its activities. Its main function is dehumanising its members, so they will think nothing of killing and abandon all personal boundaries. Martha still suffers from the latter: used to sleeping in communal rooms, she thinks nothing of wandering into Ted and Lucy’s room and lying down to sleep on their bed while they noisily have sex in the other half of it (they are not pleased, much to her bemusement).

There is good stuff here – which makes it disappointing that the film ends up, for me, feeling slightly unsatisfying. We get no real sense of what made Martha join this cult, or who she was before it sunk its claws into her. We also get very little sense of what made Martha decide to escape. The film suggests maybe her reaction to the murder of the owner of one of the wealthy homes they break into: but since the film later suggests that murder (and Patrick’s teaching that killing is somehow doing people a favour) is a fairly regular occurrence in the cult, this also feels unlikely.

The film also avoids really diving into interesting questions about readjustment and de-programming from traumatic experiences. For all it brings Martha’s PTSD to the fore, it doesn’t really show much development in either Martha’s feelings towards the cult or her understanding of her experiences. Now it’s true the road to recovery isn’t a straight line of narratively smooth continual healing, but a long, complex journey with many setback. But as a film, focussing solely on this part of her life ends up rather repetitive, like we’re struck watching just part of a longer story.

Durkin’s film is instead really a study of paranoia – Martha’s growing, unspoken, fear that the cult is coming for her and her family. But for those fears to really work, we need to feel the cult is capable of pre-meditated murder – the only killing we see is sudden and unprepared, other house entries showing the cult go to great lengths to be undetected. The film caps with a deliberately ambiguous sequence that may or may not be a mix of reality, chance, coincidence and Martha’s paranoid fears. But it’s a sequence that feels like it’s been created to conclude the film, rather than something that grows organically throughout, blunting some of its impact.

It’s a shame as there is a lot to like in this impressive, atmospheric debut, not least Durkin’s coldly unsettling direction, Olsen’s terrific performance and very good supporting turns from an exasperated-but-patient Sarah Paulson as Lucy and Hawkes’ dark, quiet charisma. But Martha Marcy May Marlene eventually boils down to telling you that being in a cult is traumatic, without really exploring the nuances of the struggle to overcome that or what pulls you into that situation in the first place. By focusing on paranoia, it feels like it tells only part of a wider, more interesting story.

Distinctive, challenging and hilarious film that mixes social issues with quotable dialogue

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Cast: Emma Stone (Bella Baxter/Victoria Blessington), Mark Ruffalo (Duncan Wedderburn), Willem Dafoe (Dr Godwin Baxter), Ramy Youssef (Max McCandles), Christopher Abbott (Alfie Blessington), Kathryn Hunter (Madame Swiney), Jerrod Carmichael (Harry Astley), Hanna Schygulla (Martha von Kurtzroc), Margaret Qualley (Felicity), Vicki Pepperdine (Mrs Prim), Suzy Bemba (Toinette)

“It’s Alive!” cries Frankenstein as his creation is sparked to life before abandoning it to become a revenging monster. Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things imagines a different creature – nurtured (admittedly as part of an eccentric experiment), maturing at an accelerated rate, discovering physical and intellectual stimulation and deciding they can’t get enough of either of them. Adapted from Alastair Gray’s novel, Poor Things is a vibrant and challenging film that, for all its sex, is a feminism-tinged Frankenstein that says no to societally enforced ideas of shame and conformity.

In Victorian London, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is the creature, a stumbling, barely articulate young woman when she is introduced to trainee doctor Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) by her guardian (her “God”) Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). “Bella” is resurrected corpse – the body of a suicidal pregnant woman, the brain of the child she carried. Developing at an accelerated rate, Bella is both Godwin’s experiment and his surrogate child. But as Bella discovers the pleasures of the body and the wonders of the world around her, she wants to experience life outside of the house. Eloping – with the agreement of her guardian – with roguish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), Bella discovers not only sensual pleasures but deeply engaging intellectual pleasures across Europe, determined to become her own woman defined by no-one.

Poor Things is practically a dictionary definition of a Lanthimos epic (fish-eyed lenses, spidery text captions, a jarring mix of period and modern) and is almost impossible to categorise. It is, in turn, serious and thought-provoking, laugh-out-loud funny, uncomfortable and challenging. Shot in a deliberately artificial manner, its cinematography and sets reminiscent of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it’s Victorian but also a remix of everything from Metropolis to the mansion at the heart of Sunset Boulevard, here turned into a Dr Moreau style den of freakishly spliced animals. It makes for something wildly, unpredictably unique visually, a smorgasbord of the real, the overblown and plain weird.

With a sharp script by Tony MacNamara, crammed with quotable lines (sometimes Lanthimos has a bit too much of an eye on creating GIF moments) Poor Things reinvents itself as constantly as its hero. Opening in rich black-and-white to chronicle Bella’s early years, it explodes into a gorgeously expressive Powell and Pressburger colours as she experiences the world. It superbly mixes the real with the weird, shaping its collection of bizarre characters into living-breathing people while keeping the world around them a melting-pot of styles and genres.

Poor Things has been attacked by some as semi-pornographic or exploitative. In fact, it’s a complex and daring look at female empowerment. On first discovering the pleasures of, well, self-pleasure (with a selection of vegetables), Bella is immediately told such things are not done in polite society. But Bella refuses to see “furious jumping” as shameful, but just a source of pleasure and experience like any other. If she takes pleasure in the act with someone, why should be ashamed? And if she makes all the decisions about what does and doesn’t happen with her body, who should judge her?

Bella is a curious hybrid her whole life: the body and feelings of an adult, with a swiftly developing brain, absorbing understanding of the world around her swiftly. Like a child she lashes out at the rules Godwin and his protégé Max place over her (partly for her protection, partly to continue their psychological development experiment). But this comes from her increasing frustration at having her horizons limited by these men, deciding what and who she can see. Lanthimos takes clear from the start Bella can take as much sensual pleasure in feeling fallen leaves under her body or watching fireworks in the sky as anything else and doesn’t feel she should be denied it.

Poor Things sees Bella demanding, and then making, her own decisions – and to hell with expectations. Whether throwing plates at dinner because she wants to leave or choosing to run away to Europe with caddish Duncan for the experience of it, she shall make her own choices. Decisions being made for her, infuriate her: Max’s refusal to let her leave or Duncan’s decision to take her, unannounced, on a cruise. Bella will talk to who she wants and experience anything she finds curious. If she decides to go on the game in Paris in a high-class brothel (on the basis that she enjoys sex, the hours are short and it pays well) who gives a damn if Duncan is appalled. He doesn’t – for all he might like to think so – own her.

These are complex and challenging ideas, as Bella jokes she has become “the means of her own production”. But Bella believes the only thing in the world should make us ashamed is the suffering of others: witnessing a slum in Alexandria she is moved to tears at the indifference that lets children die in poverty, with only platitudes for these “poor things”. And you can see her point: why flinch at personal misconduct but not even blush at the idea of others dying because of our inaction. That’s why she doesn’t want to be constrained by societies ideal, be that enjoying sex, reading Marxism, dancing all night long or wanting to punch a baby that won’t stop crying in a restaurant.

All these complex ideas are brilliantly captured in Emma Stone’s extraordinary performance. It is, of course, a physical marvel, her body slowly, jerkily, developing, but also a rivetingly complex embodiment of a hugely complex personality, absorbing everything around her, processing it and then shaping it into her own world view. It’s reflected in the gorgeous eccentricity of her dialogue – she is “a changeable feast” of views, peppering her sentences with astute (and funny) unique metaphors “finding being alive fascinating”. She makes Bella determined, naïve, exceptionally wise and insightful, uncertain, kind and unforgiving. It sits perfectly at the heart of a film about a woman refusing to be ashamed and determined to better the world around her. It’s a brilliant creation.

One of many in the film. Godwin, a hideously disfigured famous surgeon, was the subject of his own father’s experiments (Godwin describes with matter-of-fact scientific curiosity a series of repugnant surgical experiments, including the removal of organs to discover if the body needs them – “turns out we do”). Godwin seems at first a blinkered mad scientist, but in Dafoe’s brilliantly layered performance, a humanitarian with a sense of fair play is revealed, who genuinely cares for his creation and refuses to stand in her way. Although she calls him “God” he is far from a messianic tyrant, instead refusing to repeat the mistakes of his own tyrannical parent.

He contrasts neatly with Ruffalo’s rake. Ruffalo has a whale of a time in a ‘leave nothing in the locker room’ performance of comedic excess. Duncan seems at first a threatening rake, but becomes infatuated with the mysterious Bella (something she finds more and more wearing), crumbling from worldly-wise playboy to a spoilt schoolboy whining about things he can’t have. Ruffalo inverts Bella’s development: as she becomes more mature, he degenerates into a dependent child.

Which fits because Poor Things is a Frankenstein-in-reverse story of a woman not being defined by men. Those who try fail, left to choose either to support her or flail against her rights. Lanthimos’ work is striking, original and hugely dynamic, brilliantly mixing striking visuals with searching questions. Why shouldn’t women feel the same lack of shame in their bodies and accomplishments as Bella does? It’s an urgent question – that’s getting lost in discussions about the films. Often as wildly funny as it is freakily weird, its deliberate artificiality and anachronisms help create a film that is a playground of ideas. I’m still working out what I feel about it all now – and how refreshing to have a film as bold as that to consider?