Sound of My Voice

Sound of My Voice (2012)
Dir. Zal Batmanglij
Starring Brit Marling, Christopher Denham, Nicole Vicius

SOUND OF MY VOICE is an interesting little exercise in a film which is narratively complete, straightforward, and yet still offers only questions with no answers. Whether or not you enjoy it probably comes down to  how fair you find it that the film gains its ambiguity by deliberately withholding information, and how worthwhile you find the questions that it raises in and of themselves.

The premise is exceedingly simple. LA  hipster couple Peter and Lorna infiltrates a cult with the intent of making a documentary about the subject, only to find themselves asking some uncomfortable questions about themselves and their new “family.” See, the cult is headed by the charismatic Maggie (co-writer and ANOTHER EARTH star Brit Marling) who claims she is from 2054 and has traveled backwards through time in an effort to guide her followers out of harms way when some unspecified disaster befalls mankind in the future. If she’s telling the truth, the film should probably be called a Sci-Fi. If not, it’s closer to a prequel to MARTHA MAGGIE MAY MARLENE.

So is she full of shit, or should we take heed of her dire warning? She seems honest, approachable, human. Peter’s initial assessment of her is, “to hear her is to believe her,” but of course, that’s exactly what you’d expect from a successful cult leader, right? We also see her bully, intimidate, and manipulate. Is that merely an expression of her human flaws, or another good indicator that she’s a highly skilled con artist?

This can only end in Kool-Aide.

The film’s story evolves slowly but steadily, introducing new wrinkles just as you’re sure you’ve got a handle on the situation. But although the story is plenty compelling, the whole thing is mostly just a framework to examine the concept of belief. What is it gonna take to get you to believe someone when there’s no evidence to support their unusual claims? Is it a judgement of the person making the claim? A risk-benefit assessment? Do you simply want to believe even though maybe you shouldn’t? The film seems to slyly be suggesting just how badly most people want something to believe in or --more troublingly-- want to surrender their free will to some authority figure.

This particular film is about a cult, but of course it applies to any “mainstream” religion just as easily. If you’re willing to accept and respect people believing in accounts written decades after the fact about a mortal god who was his own son committing suicide to appease himself, then what grounds do you have for skepticism about this cute blonde gal who says she wants to help you prepare for a post-apocalyptic world which seems perfectly likely these days? And for that matter, why is either appealing? Is it the threat of the apocalypse? The appeal of a charismatic messiah? The simple, primal need to be part of something? Out hipster LA couple goes into the project with the smug certainty that they’ll easily infiltrate the cult and surreptitiously gather evidence to use against them later. What they don’t count on is just how being assimilated into the group will affect them, and how much it will call into question things they took for granted about themselves. And the audience --doled out information at the same rate as the characters-- gets to play along too.

Now, as an exercise in belief, I think it’s very slightly unfair for the simple fact that it’s a movie. In real life, I’m not sure I’d be tempted to believe some hot blonde’s story about being a prophet from the future unless it seemed likely that sex would be forthcoming. But in a movie, you know the director is in control of reality and it might very plausibly turn out that Lorna is a robot assassin sent from another dimension or some such nonsense. So as director Batmanglij* slowly reveals pieces of the puzzle, you get the experience of trying to assemble them yourself into something which seems plausible to you. And as things change, you’re challenged to ask yourself why you might have been so ready to believe one scenario over another.

Man, this Michael Bay reimagining of NINJA TURTLES has really gotten out of hand.

To my mind, the pleasure of the ambiguity is ruined slightly by the end, which provides one bit of information which seemed to me a little too definitive. But wouldn’t you know it, my filmgoing companions walked out with the exact opposite impression of what the end meant, so maybe that just proves Batmanglij’s point. Either way, don’t expect any big denouement where everything is neatly explained. Life is often a frustrating tangle of ambiguity for us to try to parse some sense out of, and the movie embraces that idea. Instead, expect a quietly tense, compelling, and haunting little story which dares to ask not just what you believe, but why.

Marling, who co-wrote and starred in both ANOTHER EARTH and this one, seems to be the real deal. A thoughtful, imaginative creator of simple yet compelling scenarios, who is also a gifted enough actress to pull off the execution. Looks like other people are taking notice; she’s being directed by Robert Redford and co-starring with Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Tim Roth in a few upcoming films set for release this year. But despite those names, the one I’m really looking forward to is her next film as a writer, again working with Batmanglij on something wikipedia calls an “action mystery film” (what, like 48 HOURS?) If that one is as good as her first two, I’m ready to officially call her one of the most exciting artists working today. And that, my friends, will be a belief based on very solid evidence indeed.


*motto: just say “Batman” and add “glij”

Another Earth

Another Earth (2011)

Dir. Mike Cahill

Starring Brit Marling, William Mapother, Kumar Pallana

I actually got to see this one at the DC premier a few weeks back, and was thinking I’d write about it before the film came out to show you all how in the know I am. But I tried to write about it a few times, and just found I didn’t have much to say. It’s funny, I can ramble for 5,000 words about CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, but when it comes to this carefully made, sensitive, thoughtful, mysterious little film, I’m kind of tongue tied. But it’s real good and I figure I ought to spread the word now that it’s getting a bigger release, so here’s my attempt.

First off, ANOTHER EARTH is a slightly different film than it appears to be. It’s described as a sci-fi love story, but really it’s a fragile drama about regret which happens to have a central metaphor which is visualized a little more bluntly than most films would dare. If it has a genre, it’s not sci-fi but rather magical realism. Yes, there’s that other Earth hanging in the sky the whole time, but it’s not something the film really feels necessary to explain or even explore. It’s an idea, hanging up there – an idea which hangs over the whole film but seems both starker and more painful when it suddenly seems to force itself into the real world.

The story is a simple one; smart, gorgeous, up-and-coming college freshman Rhoda makes a mistake one night. She has a little too much to drink, and on her way home hears a story on the radio about a new planet which has just become visible in the night sky. She looks up at the sky out of her car window as she’s driving home, and slams into another car carrying a family of three. The wife and son are killed, and Rhoda spends the next four years in prison.

She emerges a withdrawn, ghostly wisp of her former self. Her ambitions and dreams are long gone, and her guilt has slowly taken over every minute of her waking life. She’s got nothing to live for, and doesn’t think she deserves to find anything anyway. Some people ask if she’s going to go back to school, pick up where she left off, but of course she can’t. She gets a janitorial job at her old high school, pulls her hood as far over her face as she can, sits alone in her empty old room. Unable to do anything else, she finally goes to apologize to the husband who survived the car crash (Tom Cruise cousin William Mapother), but loses her nerve and tells him she’s the cleaning lady instead. He doesn’t know who she is, and the two gradually begin a tender relationship which brings both of them out of their shells and, gingerly, back into the world. But hovering above their heads the whole time is the surreal sight of a doppelganger Earth, with all that implies about what might have been.

That’s pretty much the whole movie. There’s not a lot of plot to it – hell, there’s not even a lot of dialogue—but the film makes you feel the crushing weight nestled on poor Rhoda’s slender shoulders and the bottomless despair she and her victim feel about their lives and the world. Co-writer Marling gives a crushingly internalized performance, which is mirrored nicely by Mapother’s almost perversely externalized pain. It’s these two performances, and the subtle way they change as the characters emerge from their hazy nightmare, that sells the film. In a film in which the central metaphor is so unsubtle that it hangs from the sky, you can rightly expect some convenient plotting which may stretch your credulity to the breaking point –and for some, probably beyond. But there’s a profound emotional realism in the characters which the actors painfully draw out into the open. Their conflicts may feel a little manufactured, but their agony never does, and its weighty enough to make the film’s seriousness feel earned. Without those performances, the film would be a mess of plot mechanisms and overt symbolism. With them, those same plot mechanisms and overt symbolism seem absolutely necessary to describe the surreal emotional metaphysics of extreme human experience.

Any film can show you a guilt-ridden protagonist agonizing over the way things might have been different. But how many have the conviction to literally dangle it over her head the whole film, letting it grow gradually closer and closer like a gathering storm? It’s a stunning image, made all the more potent as you consider what it means for our ruined protagonist, and for us. Even if the film isn’t the least bit interested in the science of what’s happening, making it real gives it unexpected heft. It’s no longer hypothetical to imagine your life being different, imagining yourself making different choices. You might be able to meet that version of yourself, they’re out there ready to present you with all the painful might-have-beens that you might otherwise be able to dismiss through faith, fate, divine plan, or random chance. Another Earth. Another you. Maybe the you you always wished you were. Maybe the you you always feared you’d be. Maybe --maybe most horrifyingly-- the same you you inevitably are.

It’s not a perfect film, but it boldly and sometimes uncomfortably puts this infinite existential heartbreak under a microscope. And then fills the sky with it for good measure.