The indie film “Sound of My Voice” is both striking and contradictory: Stuffed full of ideas and twists and turns, it also plays a little thin and fragile, more like a haiku than a novel. Starring and co-written by Brit Marling (“Another Earth“), the film begins (and it’s not giving away too much to say this, as the film’s first 12 minutes are online as a kind of mega-trailer) as a young couple are finally being initiated to the inner circle of the cult they’ve joined. They’re taken from one unknown place to another in a series of cars to maintain secrecy, through the cul-de-sac anonymity of San Fernando Valley suburban homes. There, they are asked to clean and scour themselves raw before they finally meet the cult’s leader, Maggie (Marling). Maggie has a message of sacrifice and struggle, and warns of hard times to come. This isn’t prophecy, for Maggie, but rather memory. Maggie’s most outrageous claim, made matter-of-factly, is that she’s been sent from 2054 to warn anyone brave enough to listen about the collapse soon to come …
