Cinefile

One of the first searing images we see in Lynne Ramsay's bleak, nonlinear drama We Need To Talk About Kevin (United Kingdom) is that of a mosh pit of people covered in what looks like tomato sauce, swaying back and forth (sometimes violently) in a collective current amidst the city streets. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey shoots this from an aerial point of view. The curvish lines among each person's body creates a pulsating vibration on the screen. In fact, the whole screen is practically red; imagine the white noise you see on a TV channel suddenly bleed red. It's an unnerving image and although the literal act of what these people are doing is a celebratory one, Ramsay is basically telling the viewer that this is a story about being trapped in hell.

The great Tilda Swinton (Julia, I Am Love) stars as Eva, the depressed, grief-stricken mother of Kevin. Kevin is serving time for a murder spree he went on inside of his high school at the age of 16. None of this serving as a plot spoiler. These are elements established from the get-go in the film. We Need To Talk About Kevin is an impressively edited drama that is told in fragmented flashbacks and harsh present day realities. It doesn't try to understand its villain (Kevin, played as a teen by Ezra Miller). Rather, it tries to emulate the suffocating confusion, anger and bewilderment felt by the mother (Swinton). In fact, I thought the nonlinear strategy of bouncing back and forth along the narrative timeline was much more effective here than in say 21 Grams. But narrative strategy and style can only make up so much. This is a hopelessly bleak film. I'm not sure what Ramsay wants viewers to walk away feeling. Despair? Empathy? Neither?

A movie like Funny Games, on the other hand, comes out and expresses its concern with morbid narratives and then exploits it skillfully. With Ramsay's film, the audience is put through an endurance test that has no payoff. We sense even as a toddler that Kevin is not quite right. Something devastatingly wrong is curdling inside this young man. Eva's husband (John C. Reilly) is so underdeveloped that he is left to play that character typical in most dramatic thrillers: The calm person who won't believe what the protagonist is trying to warn everyone about. We Need To Talk About Kevin does an impressive job of creating the day-to-day quiet terrors of living with evil but does little to talk about it. Some may call it high art. I call it a film that demands to have ushers hugging moviegoers on the way out of every theatre screening.

Winner of the Best Director prize at Sundance earlier this year, Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene (USA) is a haunting and deeply involving character study. It's the sort of horror film that doesn't have a monster, ghost or slasher character. This is a film centered on the horrors of doubt, misperception and guilt. Like We Need To Talk About Kevin, it centers on a heroine who is struggling to cope with her past, the choices she made and the modern terrors of her current environment. It features an awards-worthy breakout performance by Elizabeth Olsen. The fact that its main subject matter is that of a rural cult shows that Durkin isn't aiming to make your traditional "good guy vs. bad guy" thriller. Cults usually have a way of wrapping themselves in an enigma; they're not talked about much in mainstream media.

Early in the film Martha (Olsen) runs away from the cult she's been living with. She leaves the farm and disappears into the woods. The cult members (male and female) go out to look for her with no luck. When Martha finally makes it into town she calls her older sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) from a payphone. After Lucy picks Martha up and takes her to a summer home by the lake (one Lucy shares with her husband Ted played by Hugh Dancy), it becomes clear that Martha and Lucy haven't had the best of sister relations. We sense that Sarah was the successful daughter; Martha was the black sheep.

Through some flashbacks we see Martha in the early days of joining the cult and the frightening matter-of-fact environment its members seem to create. Their leader is Patrick (Oscar nominee John Hawkes), a skinny, gentle-speaking man. He writes a song for Martha and plays it to her on his acoustic guitar. Later Patrick has sex with Martha. Soon after, Patrick invites the other male members to have sex with Martha on different occasions. All of the women in this cult take turns cooking, cleaning and caring for the young children. It's implied that some of the male members are in fact Patrick's sons (who must've been born of older female members). The cult functions on the day-to-day routine of simply being happy that everyone is together, on the notion that this surrogate family can live on. But what about when supplies run out? Or food? Or money? The cult has diabolical ways of fixing such things.

Durkin doesn't paint these cult members as two-dimensional monsters, thankfully. They're much more complex. They have reasons for their actions. They vehemently believe that their way is the right way. Through this, we can identify with how Martha fell into such a trapping: They were the family that accepted her. This fact makes the present day scenes all the more powerful. Whether it's at a dinner table or at a summer party, we can feel the surmounting pressure that Martha is experiencing. This isn't a film about plot so much as it is about the psychological underpinnings of one's unraveling. By the film's end we're not sure of Martha's state of mind nor her safety. We just know that we're deeply invested in whatever will be her next choice.