Christopher Denham and Brit Marling
“THE SOUND OF MY VOICE” My rating: B (Opening May 25 at the Tivoli)
85 minutes | MPAA rating: R
“Another Earth” was not a fluke.
Hot on the heels of that mini-masterpiece from Brit Marling comes “The Sound of My Voice,” a brain-knotting thriller in which Marling once again serves as co-writer and star. If there was any doubt about her being independent film’s new golden girl, it’s now a done deal.
Marling plays Maggie, the leader of a religious cult in modern Los Angeles.
Maggie claims to be from the future. She’s been sent back, “Terminator”-style, to collect followers. Those deemed worthy will accompany Maggie to a remote camp where they will hunker down while America is wracked by a civil war so devastating that it will plunge the survivors into 19th-century Luddism.
Her story sounds like total b.s., but Maggie is nothing if not compelling. To every objection she seems to have a more-or-less convincing answer. Moreover, she’s so beautiful and charismatic (and, surprisingly, easy going) that the disaffected types who gravitate toward her are quickly swept into the fantasy.
Although Maggie lives in a basement bunker which she rarely leaves (she claims that our modern atmosphere is poisonous and she requires regular treatment with dialysis-like medical equipment), her story reaches Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius), a couple of young documentary filmmakers.
Posing as new acolytes, the pair allow themselves to undergo indoctrination and training, all with an eye to making a blow-the-lid-off documentary.
Except that Peter finds himself falling under Maggie’s spell (as do those of us in the audience). Lorna, who is also his girlfriend, contemplates drastic action.
Nicole Vicius
As written by Marling and director Zal Batmanglij, “The Sound of My Voice” carefully walks a tightrope between dismissal and belief. This is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Like Peter, our objections are overcome one by one until we no longer know what to think…Marling and Batmanglij’s screenplay is a brilliant example of psychological manipulation.
The film is troubling and tense, shot through with paranoiac elements (Maggie has her own company of white-garbed Praetorians who protect her and stifle dissent). The main drawback is that as Peter, Denham exhibits very little screen presence. Far more effective is Vicisus as the girlfriend moved to heroic action. (But is she a hero…or a Judas?)
Best of all is Marling, who seems to command the screen without even trying.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 
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