As the film opened to a scenery of the Catskills that resembled a painting's texture, the green of the trees and the dark brown of the ground so well shot and damp looking it was stunning, Elizabeth Olsen appears as she begins her plight from a cult. Sean Durkin's atmospheric, slow, long-shot film is an American masterpiece, filling each shot like a palette, oppressively evoking truths through images, and providing the vessel for Olsen, whose placid face contorts into such a range, she's due to become one of the great American actresses. With Olsen we don't just get a character's feeling at a certain time, we get a character whose face feels like the product of emotions from birth to that moment.
As she plays Martha, a damaged girl whose fled from an abusive cult, she arrives in a vacuous home populated by her sister (Sarah Paulson), who she hasn't spoken to in years, and her husband (Hugh Dancy). John Hawkes plays the seductive cult leader who brings her in, and he lends an extra creepiness to the film. But what MARTHA does so well is stray from clichés while remaining truthful. So many films stray from clichés but result in implausibility. MARTHA understands clichés, and thus uses truths and varieties in order to create a specific character in Martha. When Martha is back at home, her mind is still polluted with the cult's insanity, and her actions are that of a habitual way of life that became normality. Olsen inhabits this role fully and boldly in her marvelous role, portraying Martha as someone admirable and who is truly trying to escape a situation in the best way possible.
★★★★★ out of Five
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