Our Idiot Brother

Directed by Jesse Peretz.

2011. Rated R, 96 minutes.

Cast:

Paul Rudd

Elizabeth Banks

Zooey Deschanel

Emily Mortimer

Hugh Dancy

Rashida Jones

Steve Coogan

Shirley Knight

Ned (Rudd) is a lovable man-child who has three sisters: Miranda (Banks), Natalie (Deschanel) and Liz (Mortimer). True to the movie’s title, he’s arrested within a few minutes of us meeting him for selling marijuana to a uniformed officer. Yes, he sells weed to a cop in uniform. Fast forward to the day he gets released from prison. Not only has his job as an organic farmer vanished, but his girl has replaced him with a guy who could be his clone and kicks him out of the house. She won’t even let him have the dog he absolutely adores. With nowhere else to go, he goes back to mom’s house. Due to circumstances and opportunity he then winds up spending a little time living with each of his sisters. He accidentally wreaks havoc on each of their lives mostly by not knowing when to shut up.

Calling Ned an idiot is putting it mildly. The same applies to calling this movie idiotic. He’s presented as a charming dunce who has apparently never met a stranger. People freely confide in him things they’ve never told anyone else despite only recently meeting him. He can’t help but regurgitate what he’s heard to anyone who bothers to ask. In addition, he accepts any explanation given to him for things he sees with his own eyes as if he’s a three year old. The film merely plays on these things by dropping him into a vicious cycle. He moves in with one of his sisters, repeats something he’s been told or talks about something he’s seen and that sister’s life goes spiraling out of control, not they had any control to begin with. The sister then kicks him out and it’s on to the next house to repeat the process.

Allegedly, Our Idiot Brother is a comedy. However, very little of it is funny. Instead, we just roll our eyes in disbelief at how stupid this man is, wonder if he has some undiagnosed disability. Slogging through the movie is made all the more tedious because we can easily tell what this is all leading to. In case you plan on seeing this I won’t come right out and say it. I will ask you this: what happens in every other movie where a mentally challenged individual is surrounded by self-centered, busy people who think he’s a burden? If you know the answer to this question you’ve no need to bother with Our Idiot Brother.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Directed by Sean Durkin.

2011. Rated R, 102 minutes.

Cast:

Elizabeth Olsen

Sarah Paulson

John Hawkes

Hugh Dancy

Brady Corbet

Maria Dizzia

Julia Garner

Louisa Krause

After two years of not speaking with anyone in her family, Marlene (Olsen) suddenly calls her sister Lucy (Paulson) from a payphone. Surprised and relieved, Lucy rushes out to pick up her baby sis from two hours away. Her and her husband Ted (Dancy) let Marlene stay with them until she can get back on her feet. They don’t realize how far a climb that is. Marlene is obviously damaged, but they don’t understand why. She won’t tell them what we already know: she’s just escaped from a cult.

We watch Marlene try in vain to make the transition back into “normal” life. She seems to know she’s done the right thing yet she can’t shrug off the off-putting communal habits she’s picked up. Neither can she stop replaying in her head the horrors she’s endured. She’s been psychologically and physically manipulated. It all haunts her.

Elizabeth Olson does an amazing job being haunted. She makes Marlene a study in fragility mixed with ill-timed, hallucination or nightmare driven outbursts. At times, she’s an unapologetically brazen, raving lunatic. At others she’s so timid she seems to be trying to hide within herself. All of it is wrapped in paranoia as she’s never quite sure that the people she’s left behind aren’t coming to get her. It’s a high-wire act balancing a plethora of emotions, each seamlessly inhabiting the character so that none feel false.

As Lucy, Sarah Paulson is also very good. She assumes multiple roles in Marlene’s life. She’s both motherly and sisterly. She even tries her hand as an amateur therapist. She probes for clues, and tries to do so delicately in an effort to keep from upsetting the applecart. This proves to be a task easier said than done.

Wisely, the two parts of Marlene’s life we’re shown run side by side through the use of flashbacks. It the tale had been told in a linear fashion it runs the risk of being less impactful. One part or the other would be too dominant. Told as it is, if provides us with easy reference points in the other half of the story. The pain, or the result of the pain we see as it’s being caused stays fresh in our minds.

Despite subject matter that seems ready-made for a traditional thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene forgoes most genre conventions. Where most movies would build towards a dramatic showdown and/or a daring escape, this movie is only interested in the possibility of the former and totally downplays the latter. In fact, escape is the first thing that happens and it’s never mentioned again. As a result, we get a movie that plays more like a slice-of-life than a dramatization, albeit a very dark slice. Like many such movies, the ending isn’t a climax, but a stopping point. It’s an intensely interesting one that opens up plenty of possibilities forcing us to confront the questions it raises without giving us any of the answers.