Olsen Stunning in Martha Marcy Mae Marlene

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE (2011)

Directed by Sean Durkin

Fox Searchlight, 102 mins. Rated R (nudity, violence, sexual assault)

* * * *

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are this generation’s Ava and Zsa Zsa Gabor–trashy tabloid fodder and the butt of countless jokes. Please, please, please do not extend the twins’ helium celebrity to younger sister Elizabeth; as she proves in the deeply disturbing Martha Marcy May Marlene, she is a weighty and serious young actress from whom will see marvelous things. (She also possesses a fresh, natural beauty that her airbrushed sisters can’t touch.)

This film follows a young woman who was born as Martha. She becomes Marcy Mae when she falls in with an upstate New York quasi-religious cult and Marlene is a phone pseudonym if any outsider calls. But Marcy Mae is the real problem; it’s the handle given to her by the Svengali-like cult leader, Patrick, played with demonic intensity by John Hawkes (who was Teardrop in Winter’s Bone). Hawkes’ wiry body and chiseled face evoke a younger Sean Penn, and he’s every bit as creepy as Penn in one of his dance-on-the-razor roles. Patrick is a mash-up of David Koresh and Charles Manson; that is, a psychotic charismatic who cajoles and love bombs his followers as prelude to gaining their consent for unspeakable acts such as crime sprees. So thoroughly does he hold sway over his flock that female members willingly prepare relaxing drugs to relax new recruits for their initiation: being sodomized by Patrick. The cardinal cult rule is that Patrick’s wisdom cannot be questioned.

Martha, though, does the thing a cult member isn’t supposed to do: she allows her conscience to consider things done in the name of alleged greater glory. This prompts her to flee the cult and seek refuge with Lucy (Sarah Paulson), a sister from whom she has long been estranged. But is she any better off with Lucy and her self-absorbed Yuppie husband Ted? (The latter role is played with British pretension by the talented Hugh Dancy.) Lucy wants to be supportive, but she’s thoroughly bourgeois and Martha has become semi-feral. The clash between her desire for social respectability and Martha’s asocial behavior has Lucy frazzled and has driven Martha to the borders of insanity. In fact, Martha has become so unhinged from what happened in the cult and her inability to resocialize that neither she nor we can discern what is real and what is imagined. Are Martha, Lucy, and Ted in great danger? Is Martha being stalked by the vengeful cult, or is she tormented by inner demons? Those familiar with the Bible will recognize Martha as one of the two sisters of Lazarus. Legend holds that she later wandered to Provence, where she pacified the Tarasque, a monster that terrorized locals. This Martha, however, remains in the grips of so many dragons that she could have easily been named Sibyl.

As you’ve no doubt surmised, this isn’t exactly a first-date film! But it’s a damned good one and it’s way scarier than the average slasher film for the simple reason that it’s plausible rather than fanciful. Most of us smugly assume that we would never fall prey to a cult; this film suggests just how easy it is for a vivacious and bright young person to do so–especially one trying to make sense of past disappointments (and who isn’t?).

Olsen is simply stunning as Martha, both physically and psychically. She exudes so much vulnerability that you slowly begin to see her as a cork bobbing on choppy waters and marvel at the inner resources she had to marshal in order to make the inner-directed decision to flee the cult. Does she or doesn’t she escape? I’ll only say that you won’t escape thinking about this film long after the final credits have rolled. Keep your eyes peeled for Ms. Olsen. And don’t call her Mary-Kate or Ashley!

Ivan Nova Got Jobbed in R.O.Y. Vote

Give me a guy who wins over one that puts up fancy stats.

The American League just gave its Rookie of the Year (ROY) award to Tampa Bay pitcher Jeremy Hellickson. He’s a promising talent and put up impressive numbers everywhere except where it really matters: wins. He was just 13-10.

I mean no disrespect to Hellickson, but this is a travesty on par with giving Felix Hernandez a Cy Young Award for a 13-12 record. In fact, it may be worse because Tampa Bay is a decent team and the Mariners simply stink. I know these prizes are individual awards, but baseball is still a team game and the ultimate measure of any single player’s worth is whether he helps the collective to victory, not whether he is the lone rose in a field of thorns. (Look at some of the gaudy numbers put up by the 2011 Red Sox and you’ll appreciate the importance of team efforts!)

This brings me to the guy who got jobbed: Yankees pitcher Ivan Nova. Hellickson had more strikeouts (117 to 98) as one might expect from a power pitcher versus a finesse ground ball pitcher; he also had more walks (72 to 57), but a lower earned run average (2.95 to 3.70). I suppose one could make the case for Hellickson, except that Nova went 16-4. That is, Nova was +12 and Hellickson was just +3. To put a point on it, anyone who knows anything about baseball knows this: without Ivan Nova the Yankees wouldn’t have made the postseason. He rescued a pitching staff that was as thin as hobo soup.

The Stat Heads would retort that most of Hellickson’s other numbers were better, and so they were. But explain to me how Nova finishes fourth in the balloting. Kansas City’s Eric Hosmer finished second by hitting .293 with 19 homers and 78 RBIs–a nice season, but hardly Mickey Mantle numbers. And the Royals needed him to lose 91 games? And then there’s the third-place finisher, Mark Trumbo of the (Wherever the Hell in California) Angels who hit just .254 and whiffed 128 times to go with his 29 homers and 87 RBIs. This guy was more valuable to the Angels–who finished ten games out of the money–than Nova to the Yankees?

Excuse me if I’m seeing anti-Yankees bias going on here. Let’s see, Hideki Matsui finishes second in the 2003 ROY race to the immortal Angel Berroa and C.C. Sabathia wins 21 games in 2010 but loses the Cy Young to a guy one game over .500. Hmmm…. Are we playing Fantasy Baseball or the Real McCoy? In the latter, what matters is who wins. I’ll take a guy who wins 21 games with a higher ERA every season over a guy with great stuff who wins 13. And I’ll take one who is +12 over one who is +3. And spare me the spiel on who surrounds you on the roster; a pitcher (as opposed to a thrower) adjusts his stuff to what is needed; you don’t need to throw like it’s 2-1 if the score is 7-2.

I look forward to the day when real baseball fans invite the numbers wonks to catch batting practice without gear–maybe a few foul tips would knock some sense into them. As for now, I could stomach Nova as the ROY runner-up, but fourth? Do the people who vote these awards actually watch the games?

Two Boring Films to Avoid

Porn sites have to be more interesting than this film!

We had heard many good things about the film Meek’s Cutoff (2010, Directed by Kelly Reichardt, PG, 110 mins.) and the film is gorgeous on the surface. Alas, it doesn’t have much except surface. Well… not quite true; Michelle Williams, as usual, is a riveting force, but not even she can rescue a film in which next to nothing happens. It’s set in 1845 and a small band of settlers is lost in the high desert of Oregon, running low on water, and probably in Indian territory. The film certainly chips away the romance attached to the American pioneer myth and it also exposes the preposterousness of Anglo-Saxon superiority presumptions, but it’s ultimately a film that touches upon but never penetrates the bigger issues it raises. Some critics have praised director Reichardt for not tying up loose ends. Fair enough, though ambiguity isn’t always very compelling viewing and Meek’s Cutoff drifts into a category we might label “So what?” It’s 110 minutes of people trudging across barren land and feels longer than Lawrence of Arabia.

Avoid Love and Other Drugs (2010, Directed by Edward Zwick, R, 112 mins.) unless you absolutely need to see Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal naked. They are both gorgeous, but don’t buy for a second that this film is making a serious statement about Parkinson’s disease or the sleaziness of the drug industry. (Do we need a film to tell us about the latter?) Let’s call this one what it is: soft porn. I enjoyed Anne Hathaway in her birthday suit, but I suspect there are Internet sites where I could have seen her without sitting through this vapid film.

Liberal Democrats and the Weenie Problem

Only in Weenie World is this negative campaigning!

Tomorrow is Election Day and I’m a content man. We elect the new mayor of Northampton, MA tomorrow and I’m fine with whoever wins. I’m well aware of how lucky I am to live in Northampton. Folks elsewhere often have to choose between entrenched politicos and Tea Party crazies. Not Northampton. Our longtime beloved Mayor Clare Higgins—an open lesbian known for her plain talk, acerbic wit, and political acumen–has retired and two men vie to replace her: former John Olver aide, acting mayor and city council president David Narkewicz is squaring off against Michael Bardsley, a gay man with a long record in public education and city politics. In other words, it’s a very liberal Democrat against a very liberal Democrat.

I have no idea yet as to how I’ll cast my vote as it’s been hard to tell the difference between the two. I sort of like Bardsley’s position on a local aquifer issue better than Narkewicz’s, but I like both of these guys a lot and might just toss a coin before I go into the booth. There is, however, one thing that might push me to put an X beside Bardsley’s name, the factor I call liberal weeniedom. Through no fault of his own, Narkewicz has attracted an inordinate number of the sort of folks who think that government ought to be a giant group hug in which harmony and consensus reign. Some of them, I suspect, think a city council meeting ought to end with a massed singing of “Kumbaya.”

Bardsley has been accused by liberal weenies of “negative campaigning.” Count me among those who laments the decline of civil discourse in America, but you tell me if these things descend to the level of “negative” campaigning. Bardsley’s first campaign slogan was “A Mayor Should be Elected, Not Selected,” a reference to the fact that Higgins retired a few months early and is supporting Narkewicz. The Bardsley campaign raised the question of whether a bit of favoritism was at work by allowing Narkewicz to sit in the mayor’s chair in advance of the election. “Perish the thought!” cried the weenies, who insisted that all procedure was followed and that it was a mere “coincidence” that Narkewicz was in the city charter-defined position to take over. Yeah—right! There are lots of detached heads lying about this town that once belonged to those who mistakenly took Clare Higgins for a fool! I can’t prove it, but I’d say she knew exactly what she was doing. Get over it, folks, politics is sometimes Machiavellian, a term I’d apply both to her premature resignation and Bardsley’s attempt to exploit it.

Bardsley’s newest slogan is “Everybody’s Mayor,” and this too has set the weenies on edge. He has raised the issue–an irrefutable one–that Northampton’s business community and upper middle class get more attention than its less affluent residents living in the outlier districts. My goodness—to hear the weenies cry “foul” on this one, you’d have thought that the Aardvark of the Apocalypse just took a stroll down the center white line of the universe! Only a truly air-stuffed brain could get lathered about a slogan such as “Everybody’s Mayor.”

I find myself so amused by the passion generated over this stuff that I don’t talk about the election in public, lest I be viewed as smug. Guilty. I am smug about this. If this election is viewed as “negative,” I have to ask if Northampton voters have ever heard of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. The Tea Party? The Republican Party? Nobody has sung “Kumbaya” for quite some time, except post-election liberal Democrats licking their wounds after getting knocked out once again by boxing according to Marquis of Queensberry rules while their conservative opponents pounded away below the belt!

As a historian I wonder what my city’s squeamish would have made of the election of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson was accused of being an atheist and a terrorist. Or the 1840 election in which William Henry Harrison was called the sort of man who’d be content to live in a log cabin alongside his jug of hard cider. In 1884, Grover Cleveland weathered the charge that he represented the party of “rum, Romanism,” and rebellion.” Prohibitionists dismantled Al Smith in 1928; FDR hung the Depression on Hoover in 1932; John Kennedy had to sidestep charges he’d turn the nation over the pope in 1960; Lyndon Johnson made Barry Goldwater into a nuclear mad man in 1964…. The list goes on. In the 1964 election, though, GOP operative Lee Atwater learned the lesson that politics was a contact sport and began to fashion the politics of division blueprint that has led to steady Republican gains ever since. Is it pretty? No. Does taking the high road pay off? No again. Frankly, I’ve come to doubt that the Democratic Party has the stomach for modern politics–an irony as it was the Dems who perfected down-and-dirty ward politics during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries that made it into the majority party.

This much I know: the Democrats are going to continue to lose elections they should win until they turn their backs on the weenies. Get tough or get off the ballot–that’s just the way it is these days. Regrettable? Yes it is. But that and a few dozen positions papers will get you second place on Election Day.

This is why I’m smug about Northampton’s election. We get to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that politics is about rational people making public-spirited decisions. It still works that way here. Lucky us. I’ll be happy tomorrow no matter who wins: David and Michael are both quality individuals. I’ll be happy, but I won’t look for a group hug. Things just don’t work this way when you drive out of Northampton into the troubled and divided realm known as “America.”

Ritch Workman is an Idiot and Other Political Rants

Lead candidate for bunghole of the year!

You’ve got to hand it to the Republican Party: in Herbert Cain it managed to find an African American who is even whiter than Clarence Thomas! Cain’s recent lampoon of the Wall Street occupiers as a bunch of unemployed people trying to take money from those who earned it is straight out of 19^th century Social Darwinism in its callousness. He also missed the point. They are unemployed, you damn fool—that’s the entire point of the occupation.

Speaking of Clarence Thomas, expect to hear him complain again of being “lynched” by the left. (Only someone craven would use the term as cavalierly as he.) It seems that the press is finally getting around to raising a question or two—albeit with kid gloves—about the seed money the Supreme Court Justice provided his wife to form a Tea Party group. Justices are, in theory, banned from engaging in partisan politics as they are expected to be impartial (yeah, right!) when cases appear before them. Thomas is now disingenuously saying that he knows little of his wife’s political activities or the $1.6 million he helped raise for Tea Party causes. What he has done isn’t impeachable (or believable), but if he has a scrap of decency he’ll recuse himself from future cases with even a hint of ideology attached to them. Don’t hold your breath, though; Thomas is a disgrace to robes once worn by Thurgood Marshall.

In an older blog I suggested that shock jock Michael Graham wasn’t very funny in making dwarf jokes. I’m ready to declare Graham a saint in comparison to Florida Representative Ritch Workman, who has actually argued that Florida should repeal its law on dwarf-tossing. This mean-spirited jackass actually had the moxie to suggest that a repeal would create opportunities for unemployed dwarves, who could get jobs in bars servicing patrons who get their jollies from hurling small folks around the joint. I’ve got a better idea—one that could go a long way toward alleviating the national debt. How about a bill that allows citizens to fling dung on legislators? How much would you pay for that privilege?

A last rant, this one directed at liberals. I’ve been approached by numerous people to sign petitions asking that the government halt the deportation of illegal immigrants and that it launch legal challenges to draconian laws such as that of Arizona and Georgia. Sorry, folks, but I won’t put energy or money into a lost cause. We need a debate over immigration law, but it’s not going to happen in this Congress and it has zero chance of occurring until 2013 at the earliest. I must also say that the United States is about the only nation in the world where a debate over illegal immigration would even take place. I know that there have been heartbreaking cases of families torn asunder, but this is truly a case in which risk assessment is part of the equation. I have personally known illegals—mostly from Ireland and Scotland—and each was well aware of the consequences of being apprehended. As I said, I’m all for a revamp of immigration laws–legal immigration laws. But kneejerk defenses of illegal immigration strikes me as muddled liberalism that’s out of touch with current law, prevailing politics, public opinion, and common sense. It is, simply, a cause with no future.

Mini Picks, Including a Classic!

Truly one of history's greatest films.

I had heard about it for decades and avoided it for all the reasons I generally avoid all things hyped. Take the word of one who was foolish but is now wiser: Les enfants du paradis (“Children of Paradise,” 1946, 163 mins. French with subtitles) deserves its status as among the greatest movies ever made. Directed by Marcel Carné at the very end of the German occupation of France during World War II, the film is set in Paris in the 1820s, a time in which class distinctions were as sharp as a noble’s sword. It centers on the character of Garance, a model/prostitute/courtesan and the four men who love her: a romantic mime, an egoistical actor, an arrogant duke, and an amoral criminal, each of whom is based on a real-life character. It is a film about the thin and porous lines between admiration and obsession, love and lust, ambition and egotism, passion and cruelty, and celebrity and notoriety. There are parts of the film that are more surrealistic than anything Fellini ever imagined, and others that are more sumptuous and sensual in black and white than a Crayola factory could manufacture. The film’s stunning final scene has been often copied, but never equaled. Don’t wait to see this, even if you think an old black-and-white film in French sounds dreary. There’s a reason why it has been praised to the skies.

Also in French is Sarah’s Key (2010, directed and written by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, PG-13, 111mins.) This one isn’t likely to make its way onto any classic films list and there are bits of it that are exceedingly contrived, but give it credit: it at least tries to do something new with the Holocaust. I mean nothing condescending in that remark, only that it’s hard to tell that story without drowning an audience in horror, pathos, and sadness. All three are present in Sarah’s Key, but the film humanizes the scale of the Holocaust in ways that, in many ways, makes the tragedy more impactful. The central character is Sarah Starzynski, a child rounded up in the seldom-discussed Parisian roundup of Jews in 1942. The story switches between Sarah in 1942, and investigative journalist Julia Jarmond in the present. The fully bilingual and always impressive Kristin Scott Thomas plays Jarmond. This film is still in theaters as well as on DVD. It’s worth viewing.

A music pick. If you want a night out that involves a break from the present and tongue-in-cheek mayhem, go see the Sweetback Sisters, a delightful retro band that culls the Country music backlist from the days in which slickness meant hair grease not studio tricks. We caught them in a West Whatley, MA concert recently and reveled in their hijinks, energy, tight harmonies, and crisp musicianship. Okay, we could have done with fewer histrionics from the lad playing electric guitar, but what’s not to like in a repertoire that draws from Patsy Cline, Hazel Dickens, and loads of other earlier Country and bluegrass stars and supplements them with superb originals?

Looking for something quite different musically? I just caught up with Wu Man recently, whom I had not seen in a while. Wu Man is the mistress of the Chinese pippa, a four-stringed, 23-frets instrument whose sound you will recognize, though you’ll not hear many who can play it like Wu Man. At times she makes her instrument sound like it came from some royal court thousands of years ago; at others she’s so wild and expressive that she’s been dubbed the “Jimi Hendrix of the pippa.”

NBA Fails to Open and the Public Yawns

Who cares?

November 1 was supposed to be the first regular season game of the National Boring Association, sorry--National Basketball Association. The impasse between the filthy rich players and the even filthier, even richer owners has delayed this. Aside from vendors, advertisers, and a handful of service-industry workers, does anyone really care? The lack of a public hue-and-cry for the NBA contrasts greatly with the angst associated with last summer’s possible pro football cancellations. The NFL lockout was front-page stuff news; the NBA is relegated to the internal columns of the sports pages. Why? And how can we salvage the NBA?

First of all, now that the NBA finals extend until late June, it’s not like we’ve been without NBA basketball for very long. The NBA is overexposed and that’s not good news because…

The second problem with the NBA is that its product is unattractive. NBA marketers do their best to manufacture heroes, but the millionaires it seeks to promote are too flawed or too immature to play their roles. The league’s best is Kobe Bryant, who has never recovered from rape allegations leveled in 2003. That leaves LeBron James, who is overhyped, underperforms under pressure, and who made a total ass of himself in his televised decision to bolt Cleveland for Miami. In a recent poll James ranked as the sixth least-liked athlete in the United States. Guess who was number five? Yep--Kobe Bryant. You know the NBA has an image problem when you’re as likely to see past and present players on America’s Most Wanted as on ESPN. Among the lowlights (lowlifes?): twice-convicted Allen Iverson, Ponzi-schemer Tate George, jail birds Isaiah Rider, Charles Smith, Sly Williams, and Sean Banks, and gun-toter Gilbert Arenas. Oh yeah, the guy Arenas pulled a gun on is Jarvaris Crittenden, under investigation for murder. And these are just the tip of the iceberg. And the NBA Players’ Association thinks the public gives a damn what percentage of basketball revenue goes to this lot?

Athletes are seldom saints--Michael Vick is a starting NFL quarterback for heaven’s sake--but the road to redemption is to thrill audiences in the arena. This leads to the NBA’s third problem: it’s just not a very good product at present. Blame owners and management for that. They’ve gotten it in their collective heads that “athleticism” and “an NBA body” is more important than the ability to score, the possession of skills, or actually understanding the game. There are millions of kids in playgrounds and gyms across the world and the NBA can’t find more than a dozen who can knock down a 15-foot jump shot? Don’t tell me about how good the defense is these days--I’ve seen the footage of Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird, Dave Cowens, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, George Gervin, Michael Jordan, and Dr. J draining shots with guys hanging on them like a Cadillac hood ornament. Don’t get me started on the lack of ball-handling ability; let’s just say that in the old days if a team trailed by ten going into the 4^th quarter, the game was over.

Here’s my proposal to solve the NBA impasse. First, as anyone who has viewed the game in the past decade knows, the first 46 minutes are irrelevant. They also know that the final two minutes will take an hour to play with the constant time outs, fouls, feigned injuries, etc. So let’s forget salaries altogether. Negotiate a TV contract based on a series of one-hour broadcasts of the final two minutes of NBA contests. Let’s pretend 46 minutes have been played, start with a good modern NBA score of 73-73, and play the final two. An alternative would be to say that the first team to 80 wins--though networks would have to be prepared to extend the one-hour timeslot. Players and management split the TV revenues 40-40, with 20% going to support the underfunded high schools that supply NBA talent.

Second, create a round robin of two-minute games to determine who gets to the playoffs and finals. The entire season could be played out and filmed in about two weeks and replayed on TV according to a seasonal schedule with the first “games” aired in November and the “finals” in late April. Players would sign sworn affidavits not to reveal the outcomes in advance; anyone doing so would be barred for five years from the main revenue-enhancing outlets of NBA players: endorsing sneakers, fast food, or Gatorade.

Because the NBA season would actually be played and filmed in its entirety by late August, those athletes who wish to play entire games would be free to go elsewhere to do so. This would be additional income for them and they’d still get U.S. TV revenue money. Kobe could go to Italy and LeBron to China, where apparently people still care about pro basketball. The rest of us just want to see the circus finale, not the plumed prancing horses.