Why I love Eliz­a­beth Olsen’s per­for­mance in Martha Mar­cy May Marlene

“Martha” is her real name, ​“Mar­cy May” is the name giv­en to her by abu­sive cult leader Patrick (John Hawkes), and ​“Mar­lene” is the code name that all female cult mem­bers assume when deal­ing with out­siders. Hold­ing this frag­ment­ed iden­ti­ty togeth­er is Eliz­a­beth Olsen. Back in 2011, before she was known for being the MCU’s Scar­let Witch with her own spin­off in Wan­daVi­sion, she was known mere­ly as the sis­ter of celebri­ty twins Mary-Kate and Ash­ley. That is, until Sean Durkin’s debut fea­ture unveiled her as an actor with fear­less instincts, capa­ble of show­ing the impact of trau­ma with a nat­u­ral­ism that rip­ples out­wards like the after­math of a rock thrown in the water.

The film begins with a dawn escape, as Martha flees the farm­house where she lives with a ​“fam­i­ly” of pale, bedrag­gled young men and women. One calls after her ​“Mar­cy May!” and soon she is hid­ing in the woods as these appari­tions go on the hunt. From town, she calls her estranged sis­ter from a pay phone, bare­ly able to string a sen­tence togeth­er and con­stant­ly on the verge of hang­ing up, dis­suad­ed only by the force­ful care on the oth­er end. Some time lat­er Lucy (Sarah Paul­son) appears in a car to dri­ve them to the Con­necti­cut lake-house she shares with Eng­lish hus­band, Ted (Hugh Dancey).

This arrival should mean relief, yet dread is coiled across the rest of the film. Durkin cuts between the present and the past, drop­ping Martha’s back­sto­ry into place through anec­dotes that visu­al­ly match the new loca­tion. Although Lucy is hap­py to be reunit­ed with her sis­ter and Ted tries to be sup­port­ive, Martha’s unwill­ing­ness to talk about where she’s been since drop­ping off the map two years ago, cou­pled with her anti-social behav­iour and strange remarks leads to con­cern from her hosts.

Only the view­er is privy to the source of these remarks and behav­iours. When Martha strips butt naked to jump in the lake in front of Ted and assort­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic, (“inter­est­ing choice of swimwear,” he quips) Lucy is appalled, while we see that swim­ming naked in the riv­er was cus­tom­ary in the cult where a return to nature was a way of life.

Durkin’s obses­sive research into cults (the Man­son fam­i­ly, Jon­estown, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church of the Unit­ed States and David Kore­sh) man­i­fests not in a regur­gi­tat­ed glut of ency­clo­pe­dic knowl­edge but in throw­away lifestyle details that cut deep. Cult mem­bers are restrict­ed to one meal a day which, cou­pled with new names, weak­ens their grasp on real­i­ty. The film builds to show sys­tem­at­ic drug-induced rape and a vio­lent home inva­sion, yet Martha is at first intro­duced to an idyl­lic com­mune pow­ered by love and gar­den­ing. It is framed as a sanc­tu­ary for vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple whom life has left behind.

In these ear­ly scenes, Olsen shows us an amenable and trust­ing young woman with a sharp sense of humour. This side emerges for flash­es in the present time­line as Ted teach­es her to dri­ve a boat on the lake and she enjoys a sis­ter­ly rap­port with Lucy, even as they nav­i­gate their own dif­fi­cult famil­ial back­ground. Durkin’s screen­play deft­ly and delib­er­ate­ly drops in all the con­text we need to under­stand how Martha got lost, and not an iota more. This is an impres­sion­is­tic ren­der­ing of PTSD and the way it leaves loved ones baffled.

Olsen gives a per­for­mance that swings from there to not there. One moment she is charis­mat­ic; the next vacant; the next ter­ri­fied. There is an extra­or­di­nary lack of van­i­ty or affect to her move­ments. She has the body of a pin-up yet her approach to nudi­ty is child­like, hold­ing limbs bolt upright as she strips, like a lit­tle girl at bed­time. This is both trou­bling and inspires a heart­break­ing ten­der­ness for this women with four names but no coher­ent sense of self.

In the decade since Martha Mar­cy May Marlene’s release, the dis­course has increas­ing­ly wran­gled over our cul­tur­al obses­sion with vio­lent men and our com­par­a­tive neglect of the victim’s expe­ri­ence. Straight out of the gate, Olsen gave us a psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly com­pli­cat­ed vic­tim with­in a film that holds on to the mys­tery of how these indi­vid­ual tragedies unfold. Until the final shot, mul­ti­ple sto­ry read­ings are pos­si­ble and the lead­ing lady is attuned to this ambi­gu­i­ty, play­ing her role like a vet­er­an rather than an ingénue.

Despite the ele­vat­ed pro­file Olsen now enjoys, it’s hard to name a film or TV show that has man­aged to har­ness her capa­bil­i­ties in the way that her break­out role did. Sure, watch­ing her morph from beam­ing megawatt movie star to rag­ing, grief-strick­en anti-hero in her role as Scar­let Witch is a pow­er­ful spec­ta­cle, but to see where her tal­ent stems from, you’ve got to go back to the start.