NYFF: "Martha Marcy May Marlene"

Her name is Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) but we first know her as Marcy when she slips quietly out of a crowded farmhouse where women much like her sleep in huddles, like a happy litter of puppies. Her absence is quickly noted by one of the men on the farm named Watts (Brady Corbett) and Marcy hides in the forest while her once slumbering sisters and their men search for her, continually calling out "Marcy May." Once Marcy has reached a neighboring town, she makes a trembling entirely inarticulate phone call. An unidentified woman answers:

Martha, is that you?" 

Marcy Doesn't Live Here Anymore

We know instinctively that she is, though we know little else in these first few minutes of writer/director Sean Durkin's feature debut Martha Marcy May Marlene. 

The woman on the phone is Martha's estranged sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) who whisks the young woman away from the mountains to the even more idyllic river side landscape surrounding the far less crowded summer home Lucy shares with her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy). What's comforting to us in their recognizable domesticity, is obviously alien to Martha. The narrative is all friction between the past (Marcy) and present (Martha) and shifts between them sometimes imperceptibly and other times forcefully. The past scenes become in essence an unlocking of the puzzle of Martha's life on the farm with the father/husband figure and shepherd (John Hawkes, Winter's Bone) and his free love flock (to the movie's credit the word "cult" is never uttered). These revelations about Martha's previous life have the pesky tendency to lead the moviegoer to yet more disturbing questions which will probably not have answers.

Patrick sings an entranced Marcy a song he wrote for her.

Martha... possibly hits a few of its scariest notes too obviously, but mostly it's a model of restraint and cool control. That's particularly true of Elizabeth Olsen's interiority as the title character. She's trusting that her blurry contradictory identity -- an uncomfortable mix of rigid thinking, moral confusion, and open physicality -- will be enough to sell this lost woman. The fine ensemble cast is also a boon: Hawkes brings his Winter's Bone friction of menacing stranger and filial protector and Corbett and the other cult members are a believable mix of old phantom selves fading into shadows of Patrick. In the present tense scenes, which could almost read as a satire of stories about obnovious in-laws if it had anything like a sense of humor, Paulson and Dancy sketch in a realistic background marriage that's challenged by the needy relative in the foreground. But it's the writer/director that's the movie's true star. Durkin's screenplay's rich subtext that neither Martha nor Marcy are anything like their own woman, no matter the surroundings, shines. He also makes several smart choices in the filmmaking, often eschewing the comfort of close-ups and traditional scoring, to build a quiet cumulative menace. The cinematography in particular by Jody Lee Lipes is just right with its diffuse earthy warmth as seductive blanketing for a story that's anything but.

Elizabeth Olsen and Sarah Paulson in "Martha Marcy May Marlene""What's in a name?" the doomed Juliet once asked, trying to argue their meaning of Romeo's away. But her efforts were in vain. None of us initially choose the names we're given but as we move through life, plenty of us make small adjustments, concessions, and shifts along the way to shore up our increasing ownership of self.

Before seeing Martha Marcy May Marlene, I liked its "name" a lot. Having now seen the film it's representing, the title vaults over into a thing of pure genius. Film titling is an undersung artform. You could theoretically call this movie about a somewhat nondescript girl haunted by her former life in a cult in New York's Catskills Mountains just about anything. But "Martha Marcy May Marlene" is the perfect, yet far from obvious, choice. It's a riddle, an incantation, a theme. What other name but a series of them could so accurately capture the mystery, simplicity, and loss of self, that's the haunted vacuum center of this stunning debut? A-

Previously on NYFF
The Kid With a Bike races into Kurt's hearts.
George Harrison: Living in the Material World is music to Michael's ears.
A Separation floors Nathaniel. A frontrunner for the Oscar?
The Student makes Nathaniel cram for quizzes that never come.
Carnage raises its voice at Nathaniel but doesn't quite scream.
Miss Bala wins the "must-see crown" from judge Michael.
Tahrir drops Michael right down in the titular Square.
A Dangerous Method excites Kurt... not in that way, perv!
The Loneliest Planet brushes against Nathaniel's skin.
Melancholia shows Michael the end of von Trier's world. 

NYFF: "Melancholia" This Is The Way The World Ends

[Editor's Note: Our NYFF coverage begins! You'll be hearing from Michael and Kurt and me. -Nathaniel]

Hey, everybody. Serious Film’s Michael C. here reporting from the New York Film Festival. I’m jumping right into the deep end of the pool with the first title so let’s get to it.

When the world ends in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia it is definitely going to be with a bang and not a whimper. The film opens with a stunning series of images centered around a rogue planet spinning out from behind the sun on a course to smash into Earth like a wrecking ball. It’s a dark nihilistic death dance, the B-side to Tree of Life’s sun-dappled song of life. The sequence alone is worth the price of admission.

From there the film splits neatly into halves. The first concerns the wedding of clinically depressed bride Kirsten Dunst to “aw shucks” wholesome groom Alexander Skarsgård. The second concerns Dunst and sister Charlotte Gainsbourg grappling with the whole possible destruction of the planet thing. Both halves follow similar arcs with characters hoping against hope that the worst case scenario can be avoided before remembering that this is, after all, a von Trier movie.

I’m not sure splitting up the stories was the wisest choice, since the second half never recovers the energy of the wedding scenes. I could write that the second half creaks under the weight of its symbolism, but if Von Trier is willing to fill the sky with an ominous death planet named after his own depression, who am I to point out that the whole thing is a bit "on the nose"?

Melancholia would have to qualify as a minor disappointment considering the shattering impact Von Trier is capable of, but still, it's an experience worth having. The whole cast is aces. Dunst rises to the occasion with a bone deep convincing portrayal of smothering depression, while Kiefer Sutherland, to my surprise, punches through in a big way as Gainsbourg’s wealthy put-upon husband. Best of all, is the wall to wall breathtaking cinematography by Manuel Alberto Claro, which, by the way, is probably the film's best shot at awards attention. The whole thing has a cumulative effect greater than the sum of its flaws.

My Missing Whedon: "Angel"

This morning I read all 3,040 words of "Angel by the Numbers" an essay by Dan Kerns, who started on Joss Whedon's vampire series Angel as Best Boy and worked his way up to Gaffer. I discovered the article through Whedonesque and I heartily recommend it. During the reading I consumed ½ a cup of coffee (I've successfully narrowed down my daily consumption to 2 cups!), ignored the urge to pee twice, and thought of 4 other television shows: my beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which sits comfortable at #1 of my all time favorite tv shows), one-of-a-kind Firefly, fascinating but uneven Dollhouse, and the non-Whedon series Dexter because "Darla" (Julie Benz) was mentioned and I just watched the first three episodes of Season 5 and it's just not the same without her... (and maybe it's the kind of repetitive series that should've wrapped with Season 4?)

Buffy, Angel and Faith.

Before I move on to work on 4 pending articles, I feel the need to admit that I've only seen 19 episodes of Angel, despite seeing literally every other episode -- even the unaired ones including the aborted Buffy pilot where Willow was not Alyson Hannigan (!) -- of every other Joss Whedon series and all of his movie work, too! Hell, I've even seen that animated sci-fi bomb Titan A.E. (2000). I've never understood why I couldn't work up much interest in Angel as a series but perhaps it was the procedural stand-alone nature of the early episodes which are the bulk of what I saw. Maybe I was just angry that Buffy received only 1 spinoff and not 2 (At least twice a year I impatiently dream of a 4 season run of "Faith the F*cked Up Vampire Slayer"). Of the 19 episodes I remember only about 6: the one where Oz visits to give him the Ring of Amara, the one where Willow drops in to restore Angelus soul, and any of the times that Eliza Dushku stopped in for a little big city ass-kicking. You get the picture: Crossovers! I tried again 2 times in later seasons and could not understand what the hell was going on.

Unsung Heroes: The Cinematography of 'Once Upon a Time in the West'

Michael C. here with the second season finale of Unsung Heroes. A recent obsession with the music of Ennio Morricone led me to the perfect subject, which manages the tricky feat of being both a landmark achievement and the work of an artist who is still somehow underappreciated. 

When Orson Welles finished Citizen Kane he was so grateful for Gregg Toland’s contributions to the film that he took the largely unprecedented step of sharing his title card with his cinematographer. I think it can be argued that the subject of this week’s episode of Unsung Heroes, cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli, was worthy of similar recognition. Delli Colli shot all of Sergio Leone’s famous spaghetti westerns climaxing in Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), which many, myself included, consider their masterpiece. Yet I rarely, if ever, hear recognition extended past Leone the way I do with the cinematographers of other great auteurs, even though Delli Colli played a large role in creating one of the most iconic and influential visual styles in film history.

Has anyone ever photographed sunlight to such powerful effect as Delli Colli? The heat and light in his westerns is infinite, baking everything to a dry, brown crisp. I wonder if his name is not as renown as other greats like Vittorio Storaro or Gordon Willis because they used darkness and shadow so memorably, while Delli Colli painted almost entirely with brightness. Even the shadows in Once Upon a Time appear scorching. I’ve read people credit the arid, flat Spanish landscape for the distinctive feel of Leone’s westerns, yet scenes in Once Upon a Time are shot in the heart of John Ford’s legendary Monument Valley and Delli Colli manages the same harsh, parched feel there as in the rest of the film.

Leone was a perfectionist when it came to making sure the images on the screen exactly matched those in his imagination, and he preferred to work repeatedly with the same collaborators, like Delli Colli, whom he could count on to operate at a high level without fail. There is a wonderful moment in the DVD documentary on Once Upon a Time where a now elderly Claudia Cardinale begins, “Tonino Delli Colli…” then gets a distant look in her eyes, smiles and says simply “He knew how to light me.”

(On a side note, I think Delli Colli was worthy of the Oscar in ’69 for West if only for his lighting of Cardinale whom he pushes into serious Marilyn Monroe territory in the film. I mean wow.)

I suppose my idea here isn’t to call attention the visuals in Once Upon a Time in the West, which need no help from me being recognized as a monumental achievement, so much as it is to draw a big red circle around Delli Colli’s name. His work with Leone represents one of the great director-cinematographer partnerships along with the likes of Kubrick-Alcott or Coens-Deakins or Powell-Cardiff. No list of the greats is complete without his name.

Season Two of Unsung Heroes: Minority Report, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Glengarry Glen Ross, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Zodiac, Oldboy, The Iron Giant, I’m Not There, The Hustler, The Royal Tenenbaums, This is Spinal Tap, and Amelie 

'Hit Me', Rocco!

Boxing BrothersOnly 3 episodes of Hit Me With Your Best Shot left and here's one of the three! Please join us with your own "best shot" choices for Aliens (July 13th) and Rebel Without a Cause (July 20th) as we close out the second season in the next two weeks.

Those films will be easier tasks than Luchino Visconti's ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (1960), mostly because they're more familiar properties. Visconti offers up so much to ponder in his novelistic film that one viewing might not suffice.

Rocco and His Brothers, which charts the sad aspirational lives of the Pardoni family -- they're country boys who move to the big city (Milan) -- is structured loosely by chapters named after and focusing on each brother from eldest to youngest: Vincenzo (Spiros Focás), Simone (Renato Salvatori), Rocco (Alain Deloin), Ciro (Max Cartier) and Luca (Rocco Vidolazzi). But this family is so codependent that that shifting narrative focus wouldn't be all that obvious without the title cards.

In fact, the brothers are rarely separated physically. They sleep in the same rooms, chase the same dreams (boxing), train and shower together, and even share women (albeit tragically). Visconti often films them in clumps, particularly in the first chapter, as the entire Pardoni family moves to Milan on the night of the engagement party of the eldest son.

They're never separated emotionally, as in this late shot in the film, when Rocco struggles to make a toast and the weight of his entire family hangs over him -- quite literally given the set decoration!

Rocco is a fascinating lead character because he's held up as an ideal in some respects being loyal, hard-working, and unencumbered by greed... but his tragic flaw is his own saintly martyrdom. The patriarch of the Pardoni clan is dead before the film begins (the matriarch is still wearing black) but he left five sons behind. You'd never know it from Rocco's savior complex. Does he fancy himself "the only begotten" what with the way he continually lays down his own blood, body, spirit and dreams for his wayward brother? 

But Rocco is no Christ. His love for his fellow man, or at least this one brother Simone, is so great that it's actually sinful. And it's not his own life he is willing to sacrifice but his woman's, Nadia's (a terrific Annie Girardot who you'll remember as Isabelle Huppert's crazy mother in The Piano Teacher).

Which is why the following two shots moved me the most.

Midway through the film Rocco dumps Nadia for love of his brother Simone (if Rocco and His Brothers weren't already considered a classic film, it'd have to be considered at least a classic soap opera) but his tears are impotent and this generosity of spirit hugely conditional since Nadia isn't exactly getting a good deal. In the end, it's Nadia who has to be crucified and she's not the one with the savior complex. 

"If I wanted a sermon, I'd go to mass."

Nathaniel and His Blog Brothers...  
Thanks to the following who also watched the movie for this Hit Me episode. Go read this great posts.

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• Awww The Movies loved the movie, too