Sound of My Voice
(2011)
(SPOILERS) Engrossing to experience, but
seemingly so shot through with ambiguity at every turn that you’re left
wondering if there’s any point in trying to distill its elements into something
cohesive.
An investigative journalist, Peter (Christopher
Denham), and his girlfriend Lorna (Nicole Vicius, an actress with a highly
distracting nose) infiltrate a cult with the intention of exposing its leader Maggie
(Brit Marling) as a sham, a woman who claims to be from the year 2054. She
appears to be unwell, allergic to early 21st century living, and is
on dialysis/requires blood transfusions. Peter begins to fall gradually under
the cult leader’s spell, while Lorna grows uneasy.
The turning point comes when Maggie asks Peter
to kidnap a girl in the class he teaches, whom Maggie claims is her mother. We
have already seen that the girl is unwell (Peter wonders if she is narcoleptic,
but we are privy to scenes where her father injects her, and others that lend
an ominous sense that he is abusing her). This suggests a link to Maggie’s
sickness (but then we see her smoking, suggesting that she is not all she
claims to be). In and earlier scene, the focus that she gives to Peter’s own
past where he may have been abused (he tells his girlfriend he made this up,
but this is not very convincing) suggests another thematic link.
The scenes within the cult are immersive
and claustrophobic, cleverly shifting points-of-view and identification, but
the plot thread of a Department of Justice officer who enlists Lorna to help
ensnare Maggie ends up muddying the waters even further.
Various interpretations would make sense if
they didn’t leave other elements dangling; that Maggie was a junkie and the
girl is her daughter/sister whom she wants to reclaim from abuse (this would be
why the girl knows the special cult handshake, assuming she will not one day become Maggie’s mum). Except
that doesn’t account for the boy we see let into Maggie’s room at the
beginning. And while that tallies
with the DoJ story (she asks the Lorna if they’ve asked for a child yet), the
DoJ officer behaves more as if she is under surveillance (checking her room for
bugs) than in pursuit of criminals (and why is the Peter left with the girl at
the end, after Maggie has been apprehended – it doesn’t seem very professional).
The desire to evade a coherent
interpretation ends up lessening the most effective part of the film; the
seductive trappings of the cult itself. It’s an intriguing picture, but it ends
up pushing the inscrutability a little bit too far, extending itself from (a
relatively straightforward) “Is she or isn’t she?” to “What are these other
people up to?” The director (and co-writer with Marling), Zal Batmanglij,
insists that they knew all the specifics, and that a sequel is planned. It will
be interesting to revisit this one subsequently, if it gets made.
***1/2
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