Last year the subject of cults was brought up in Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, this year director and co-writer Zal Batmanglij brings us Sound of My Voice an eerie exploration of “what do you believe?” as a Los Angeles couple attempt to infiltrate a cult to expose its leader as a fraud. The film ultimately begins asking questions about how far would you be willing to go and then takes it a little further beyond that. Trust plays a big part and even if it gets a little sloppy and convenient at times, I found it still to be quite interesting in the end.
Without any build-up, explanation or lead-in, we are introduced to Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius). Their idea is to create a documentary and capture their experience on camera. The whole thing is Peter’s idea, but Lorna is going along with it, seemingly more for support than anything else as they pull into a seemingly anonymous garage, close the door and are ushered into a house. Here they bathe, change their clothes and are led into a minivan blind-folded to be taken to their final destination where they’ll meet Maggie (co-writer Brit Marling), a woman with a story that ends with her saying she’s from the year 2054 and she’s begun amassing followers.
Depending on how you feel about what I just described will affect how you view the rest of the film. How crazy must someone be to allow themselves to be blindfolded by a stranger and led to an unknown location where another stranger tells you they’re from the future? Would you put yourself in such a situation just to make a documentary?
For the sake of argument, let’s say you would. Give in to the idea and ask yourself, Once you’ve trusted yourself and these people to this extent where does it end? If you return for a second visit, subjecting yourself to their ways, participating and trusting you won’t be hurt, does there come a point where you trust them even further?
It’s easy enough to say we wouldn’t be affected when outside the situation and I would assume 99.9% of us wouldn’t be, but there is that small margin of possibility that makes Sound of My Voice mildly intriguing. Forget yourself for a second. Cults don’t exist because no one believes, they exist because people do believe, or at least choose to believe and that in itself makes for some scary notions and this film plays on those ideas and even attempts to sway the audience by the film’s end.
I never saw Brit Marling’s much talked about film from last year, Another Earth, but just watching her here I can see why there is some excitement surrounding her. She’s beautiful for starters, but convincing. She has the ability to be fragile and dominant, understanding and chastising. If it wasn’t for her, the film wouldn’t stand much of a chance and, along with Another Earth, she served as not only the film’s star and co-writer, but also as one of the film’s producers. She’s co-directed a feature in the past and even served as a second unit DP on Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man. She’s got talent to spare and while Another Earth seemed to polarize many critics, it seems like she may only be scratching the surface.
Director Zal Batmanglij makes a fine feature debut, the only decisions I wish he and Marling hadn’t made were in choosing a few shortcuts when it came to the film’s narrative. The biggest issue the film faces is the idea that Peter and Lorna are trying to capture footage of the cult in action using a small camera in Peter’s glasses and a transponder. Maybe it’s just a sign of our digital age, but the difficulty in accomplishing this feat becomes more convenient for the story than difficult when it offers a way to break Peter rather than an actual part of the story.
Just as much could have been accomplished by making the project part of a master’s thesis or something similar, but in this day and age I guess the first thought is to catch everything on video. After all, it’s much easier than actually writing anything down.
This, however, is a small complaint considering it’s beyond the point of the film, which comes primarily down to trust. Just as much as it asks us to question how far could we possibly trust these seemingly crazy people that believe this woman is from the future, how much can we trust anyone at their word? In a lot of ways I see this film as a sister-in-law less to Martha Marcy May Marlene and more to Paddy Considine’s outstanding feature debut Tyrannosaur, very much because of this issue of trust.
It’s interesting the people we allow into our lives and why. At the end of Sound of My Voice I’d be curious to know where your allegiance lies.
SIDE NOTE: You can watch the first 12 minutes of the film right here if you’re interested in meeting the characters and situation I just described.
