MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE directed by Sean Durkin (USA, 2011)
It is common to brand someone as insane when their behaviour runs counter to the conventional norms in society.
But what if those norms are based on fucked up values?
Sean Durkin’s assured debut movie is a powerful psychological drama that shows the vulnerability of the ‘haves’ in society and raises disturbing questions about how we classify mentally illness.
In the latest Adbusters tactical briefing that I received by e-mail today I was informed that: “millions of people around the world are waking up to the fact that their future does not compute… that their lives will be a never-ending series of ecological, financial, political and personal crises… and that if we don’t rise up and start fighting for a different kind of future, we won’t have a future”.
There’s no intrinsic political message in this movie but it occurred to me that the bleak conditions of the modern world that Adbusters so accurately identify are a fertile ground in which cults and fake ideologies thrive.
In desperate times people look for desperate solutions and are drawn to those who offer a sense of purpose and belonging. Continue reading
I never had any plans to travel to the Missouri Ozark region and certainly won’t be rushing to go after seeing Winter’s Bone. I’m sure it has beautiful lakes, historical sites and fine wines , but the movie shows that it also has godforsaken areas where grinding poverty is the norm.
