Martha Marcy May Marlene

NOTE:  This contains a spoiler.  The spoiler won’t be about the story, but about how the story is told.  If you read this, you won't learn less about the plot than you would in most professional reviews.  However, you’ll learn about an element of the film’s structure that I don’t think the filmmakers want you to know up front.


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"Tell me a story."  It’s what we want films to do.  Take us away, capture our imagination, perhaps expand our mind.  Begin it.  Develop it.  Let it reach its climax.  Craft a satisfying denoument.  This is how stories go.  This is how we’re wired to hear them.  This is what we want.


Martha Marcy May Marlene begins with a young woman’s escape from a back-to-the-land cult.  It’s the climax of a story that began when she joined, one we get in flashback as we watch the story of her reintegration unfold.  That story begins when Marcy moves in to her sister’s place.  It develops.  It reaches an unsatisfying climax.  Then, just when we think we're in the denoument, it indicates a fuller, better climax is still on the way.  Next - whammo!  Black screen.  Roll credits.  What the heck?


So Martha Marcy May Marlene only tells us part of a story.  I'm sure the filmmakers had their reasons.  "Ambiguity is good."  "People will have something to discuss after they leave the theater."  "We like screwing with our audience."  I'm not buying it.  In the words of noted sage Sammy Hagar:


C'mon, baby.  Finish what you started.
I'm incomplete!