Sean Durkin
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As compared to 2023’s The Iron Claw, which was a journey through immense trauma for a family of wrestlers, lending itself to lots of melodrama and stereotypes, while Smashing Machine is a journey through relatively unremarkable events with characters you’re not given much reason to empathize with.
Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw (2023)…
Every sad wrestling film (“Foxcatcher,” “The Iron Claw,” “Cassandro”) usually gives a sense of quotidian routine…
Where other sports films, from Rocky to The Iron Claw, get up close and personal with the characters, essentially getting in the ring with them, Safdie and team unwisely maintain a degree of separation.
They sure are scary, especially given the remote setting, reminiscent of that in Michael Haneke's diabolical Funny Games.
Martha Marcy May Marlene recalls in spirit, if not in specifics, Winter's Bone and Ruby in Paradise .
At times, Durkin seems to be visually quoting Ingmar Bergman’s Persona as he shows the two women side by side, trying each other on for size.
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced The Nest (2020)
Themes Characters
The film is set expressly in the financial world in the mid-nineteen-eighties, in the same milieu as modern classics of the genre such as “Wall Street” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the age of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, which unleashed a new age of financial speculation and manipulation.
If Rory seems a template for something like the DiCaprio figure in Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street , he is a man strangled and not enlivened by the penny-stock tier, the desperation behind his million dollar smile reminiscent of Billy Wilder’s darker portraits of humanity.
The follow-up to director Sean Durkin's powerful, highly acclaimed feature debut Martha Marcy May Marlene , from 2011, The Nest may somewhat resemble movies about unchecked greed and the obsessive search for status ( Wall Street , The Wolf of Wall Street , etc.), but it doesn't include the flashy, intoxicating excitement of those films.
It’s tempting to call this a fable or allegory that distills the materialistic, ruthless spirit of the ’80s, the furies glimpsed in films such as The Wolf of Wall Street , Trading Places , Wall Street , Working Girl , Broadcast News , and others.
Apart from the similar tense aesthetic the film shares with the previous year’s Winter’s Bone, the two pictures also feature John Hawkes in two very different, yet subtly sinister performances.
In Martha Marcy May Marlene, the younger sister of the Olsen twins delivers a breakthrough performance that will remind many of Jennifer Lawrence's excellent work last year in the similarly unsettling (though clearly superior) Winter's Bone.
And indeed it works in a similar quiet, spooky style as last year’s “Winter’s Bone,” which got Oscar nominations for best picture, for supporting actor John Hawkes and for its then-unknown star Jennifer Lawrence.
“Martha Marcy May Marlene,” the feature debut of writer-director Sean Durkin, was a big talker at Sundance, and it’s easy to see why: Its unsettling portrait of a little-seen existence rivals “Winter’s Bone.”
Writer-director Sean Durkin maintains the mystery about her even as flashbacks start to tell her story, the farm she used to live on, the charismatic guy (John Hawkes of “Winter’s Bone”) who took her in, the daily life in the cult where she was given a new name.
The film obviously wants to fill the same niche as Winter's Bone , and be the geographically precise study of a nasty backwoods cultured anchored by a groundbreaking female lead and John Hawkes as a scary supporting actor, but it's nowhere near as intelligent as that film was, nor as pictorially excellent, it does not have anything meaningful to say about the culture it depicts beyond "cults!
It's a topic that's been handled in films before, perhaps most notably in Jane Campion's "Holy Smoke," but Durkin offers the most persuasively believable peek into the psyche of such a character I've ever seen.
Durkin has clearly studied some masters of the subjective eye - Polanski (Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion) and Haneke (Cache, Code Unknown).
The Nest recalls, in particular, Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017).
Scared Straight! (1978)
Directed by Arnold Shapiro
influenced Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
Themes
While not a fun-and-popcorn entertainment movie, “Martha Marcy May Marlene” is a cautionary tale—a teaching piece, perhaps, a la the prison documentary horror “Scared Straight!”
Durkin is a collaborator of Antonio Campos, whose disturbing Afterschool attempted a similar kind of harsh, gnawing suspense but was undercut by Campos’ formal trickery.
The Master (2012)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced by Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
Characters Themes
With a charisma occasionally recalling John Hawkes in "Martha Marcy May Marlene," he says his methods have power over disease and that the answers to current problems are hidden in past lives.
Martha Marcy May Marlene said something similar, albeit with a different sort of character and a great deal more tension and narrative momentum.
Durkin has clearly studied some masters of the subjective eye - Polanski (Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion) and Haneke (Cache, Code Unknown).
With composers Daniel Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans' (2011's " Martha Marcy May Marlene ") propulsive score urgently bleeding into each successive scene, director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Javier Gullón fascinatingly delve into the psychology of a human being faced with the internal crisis of having a doppelgänger and the question of what makes him or anyone else unique.
Musically, the exciting on-the-rise composer duo of Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans (“Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “Simon Killer") bring an atonal A-game of discordant cellos and oblique half notes that would make Jonny Greenwood proud, and keeps the movie tilted on its discomfiting axis.
Short Term 12 (2013)
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
influenced by Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
It’s one of those performances, like Elizabeth Olsen in “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” where a young actress comes seemingly out of nowhere and becomes indelible.
Her work in Short Term 12 should get her noticed in much the same way that Amy Adams turned heads for Junebug , Jennifer Lawrence escaped relative obscurity with Winter's Bone , and Elizabeth Olsen showed her talent in Martha Marcy May Marlene .
Queen of Earth (2015)
Directed by Alex Ross Perry
influenced by Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
Themes
A seam of cinema history currently being mined by Ben Wheatley, Leigh Whannell and James Wan, Perry wraps these familiar tropes around an intense study of psychological breakdown, drawing comparisons with Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene.
Sarah Paulson (2008's " The Spirit ") is quite good in her own right as elder sister Lucy, her relationship with her sister a war between true empathetic concern and bitter contempt, while John Hawkes (2010's " Winter's Bone ") is memorably assured and slimy as insincere, opportunistic cult leader Patrick.
Elizabeth Olsen ("Martha Marcy May Marlene") is tart and sharp as Kerouac's first wife Edie.
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Directed by Roman Polanski
influenced Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
Visuals
Durkin has clearly studied some masters of the subjective eye - Polanski (Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion) and Haneke (Cache, Code Unknown).
The Devil All the Time (2020)
Directed by Antonio Campos
influenced by Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
Adapted for the screen by Paulo Campos and directed by Antonio Campos (whose works as a producer include The Eyes of my Mother and Martha Marcy May Marlene ), The Devil All the Time is beautifully executed and very disturbing.
It’s a fundamental flaw of the producer (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”) and occasional director Antonio Campos’ film, one that slows its progress and betrays a kind of patronizing remove from the material.
Director Antonio Campos ( Martha Marcy May Marlene ) does an excellent job threading the different storylines together.