Two stars. Rating: R, for profanity, sexual candor, fleeting nudity and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang
Brit Marling made a bit of noise
on the indie scene last year, as the star and co-writer of Another Earth, a
mildly intriguing blend of science fiction and psychological drama that held my
attention to its provocative final scene.
 |
| When Peter (Christopher Denham) balks at regurgitating the apple he has just eaten — with good reason; he earlier swallowed a transmitter, to conceal it — Maggie (Brit Marling) challenges his failure to cooperate with the rest of her group. Maggie's disapproval begins gently but quickly turns nasty and oddly personal: merely one of many idiotic segments of psycho-babble twaddle in this dull and dreary film. |
Yes, it was paced languidly — to
put it kindly — and Marling’s view of human behavior stretched credibility more
than once, but Another Earth definitely packed about an hour’s worth of good
storytelling into its 92 minutes: a better average than many films deliver
these days.
Her new film, Sound of My Voice — which she co-wrote with its director, Zal Batmanglij — has only about 15
minutes of good storytelling in its 85 minutes. At best, it might have made a
medium-decent half-hour episode of Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone.
She’s trending in the wrong
direction.
Sound of My Voice is
insufferably elliptical: an unfocused story that raises far more questions than
it even attempts to address, and which spends most of its time — interminable amounts of time — with a
dozen folks enduring the sort of laughable encounter group grope that gives a
bad name to therapy sessions.
Not that these sessions are
intended to be therapy; it’s closer to the cultish behavior of impressionable
acolytes who’ve flocked to a messianic leader. That’s what draws the attention
of Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius), a couple who turn
amateur investigators in order to make a documentary film intended to expose
the behavior of an enigmatic young woman named Maggie (Marling).
The story, which unfolds slightly
out of sequence, begins as Peter and Lorna submit to removing their regular
clothes, taking thorough showers, dressing in hospital gowns and then enduring
blindfolds and plastic cuffs on their hands, while being driven God knows
where, in order to meet Maggie.
This raises an eyebrow at least a
little. I understand that journalists will tolerate much for the sake of a
story, but this seems a high threshold of trust for amateur journalists. And
that’s actually one of this story’s many problems: We later learn that Peter is
a substitute teacher, while Lorna is a former hard-living party girl, now
sober, who tries to write novels. They’re “documentarians” only because this
script tells us they are; we see absolutely no evidence of former journalistic
endeavors.
Which also begs the first big
question: Given the secrecy surrounding Maggie and her followers, and the care
they take to remain below the radar, how did Peter and Lorna find out about her
in the first place?
Uh-huh. It’s that kind of sloppy
script.
Maggie claims to have returned to
the past — our present — from the year 2054; her fragile body, unable to cope
with the “poisons” of our era, needs the constant attention of oxygen tanks and
a blood recycler. She cannot eat processed food, and is limited to the fruit
grown elsewhere in this large house with its basement “meeting room.”
She has gathered this group of
carefully vetted people — men, women, young, old — with the intention of
“preparing” them for an impending event that will prove catastrophic to modern
society. She skirts details, deflects direct questions and speaks only vaguely
about why this future will be so grim.
Pressed, at one point, to croon a
popular song from her era, Maggie shyly stumbles her way through a touching
ballad, gathering courage and strength as she continues (one of Marling’s
better scenes, actually). Alas, somebody in the room gently points out that she
has just sung The Cranberries’ 1993 hit, “Dreams.”
Momentarily taken aback, Maggie
recovers and insists that the song nonetheless became famous again in “her”
era, perhaps covered by somebody else.
Peter and Lorna, returning to
normal life in their apartment after each of these sessions, regard this as one
more piece of mounting evidence proving that Maggie is a fraud.
We endure a seemingly endless
series of these basement encounters, as Maggie employs a blend of cruelty,
empathy and personal charisma to break down the defenses — and reveal the core
truths — of her disciples. Peter and Lorna really are hiding something, of
course, which adds some tension to these sessions.
At least, I’m sure “tension” was
Marling and Batmanglij’s intention. In truth, Maggie’s behavior is ludicrously
unbelievable and wholly out of touch with basic human psychology and group
dynamics. These “molding” gatherings become tedious and stupid, giving us
plenty of time to ponder the bigger issue: How, precisely, is this psycho-babble
nonsense “preparing” Maggie’s followers for what is to come? What are they
supposed to do with this “new awareness”?
Batmanglij occasionally
interrupts this primary storyline to observe the extremely odd behavior of
8-year-old Abigail (Avery Kristen Pohl), one of the schoolgirls Peter teaches
by day. When she goes home each afternoon, Abigail obsesses over building
incredibly complex creations with black, Lego-like construction blocks. Her
fixation is so intense that her father must inject her with something (!) —
between her toes (!!!) — just so she can sleep each night.
That, too, is a lot to swallow in
this narrative.
Other sidebar issues erupt, the
strangest being Lorna’s indoctrination into handgun target practice, at the
insistence of elder acolyte Joanne (Kandice Stroh). Nothing is made of this —
Peter never gets this “training,” for starters — so we’re left to wonder if
Maggie feels that folks in 2054 need to arm themselves. She certainly never
says as much.
Despite the hostility that initially
propels Peter’s determination to expose Maggie — relating vaguely to
abandonment issues in his childhood — he gradually begins to fall under her
spell. (Or, once again, so the script claims. Denham isn’t enough of an actor
to sell this transformation.) The observant Lorna, her concern mounting,
becomes genuinely worried when Maggie tells Peter that she wants to meet young
Abigail.
Kidnapping? Lorna quite
reasonably points out that she and Peter clearly are in over their heads.
So are we viewers. By this point,
contrivance has piled atop tin-eared abnormality to a degree that demolishes
whatever delicate structure Marling and Batmanglij have tried to concoct. The
whole premise collapses under the weight of all this fuzzy vagueness, leaving
nothing but irritation over the time that has been wasted with this film. And
I’ll bet hostility wasn’t the reaction Marling and Batmanglij were going for.
Eventually, I couldn’t care less
whether Maggie was a fraud, or an actual time-traveler.
On the basis of this film and Another Earth, it also seems clear that Marling suffers from the affectation
that has afflicted M. Night Shyamalan, to his detriment: the insistence on a
“knock our eyes out” surprise final scene. Marling sorta-kinda pulled that off
at the end of Another Earth, but the similar attempt here is both clumsy and
blindingly obvious, long before the final “big reveal.”
On the other hand, who knows?
Legions of viewers bought into the staged phoniness of The Blair Witch
Project, so I’ve no doubt some impressionable folks — those not well-versed in
the common science-fiction clichés clumsily exploited here — will be knocked
out both by this storyline, and its “breathtaking” final scene.
The more discriminating, however,
will quickly see that this emperor has no clothes, and that the sound of
Marling’s voice should be tuned out. This flick is nothing but a yawn.
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