Margaret

"Margaret" took years to get to us, seemingly even longer to play out, but tells a story so poetic and heartbreakingly real that you couldn't imagine it any other way. Lisa (Anna Paquin) is a teenager; she's lost in her own world by her own misguided arrogance, but she must come to terms with death and the true nature of a tragic accident.

The film starts with Lisa in high school determinedly getting her way even though she probably doesn't deserve to. Nonchalantly waiting 'til class is over and wearing a skirt too short, she saunters her way to the front where her math teacher, Mr. Aaron (Matt Damon), chastises her for her poor grades. But with a slightly flirtatious tone, Lisa settles the matter with a supposedly shared understanding that it's okay because math won't factor into her future.

Later, Lisa sets out to find a stylish but functional cowboy hat in the middle of New York City. She is unsuccessful until she spies one on the head of a boyishly handsome bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) and jauntily jogs beside it determined to get his attention to both: find out where he got his hat; and also to quench a teenage girl's desire of just getting his attention. She succeeds; he drives through a red light, and kills a pedestrian in the process.

Lisa immediately feels the pain, guilt and remorse and tries to ease the woman's passage into the afterlife. The film then becomes a character study of a teenage girl determined to get past the pain and aftermath of a tragedy caused by a simple accident. The fascinating parts of this film involve how our lead character becomes less sympathetic but more fragile while remaining equally reckless.

Questions about the cause and nature of mortality are raised, and most interestingly what are the moral and immoral ways to respond to it. The film's title comes from the poem "Spring and Fall: (Margaret, Are You Grieving?)" written by Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1880. Margaret is a child who must come to terms with the loss of her innocence. "… And yet you will weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name; Sorrow's springs are the same." Lisa's English teacher (Matthew Broderick) recites this poem to the class. Lisa is, at times, a typical teenager, bent on having things her way, always having her point heard. But now the shaky foundations which her arrogance is based on begin to crumble and we don't know and she doesn't know if she's still innocent or where she lost it.

The shortened released version of "Margaret" clocks in at over two and a half hours; edited down from the three-hour director's cut. But because of the universal tale of life and death that it tells, it needs the length. It doesn't have a simple plot, and Lisa is not a simple character. It can definitely seem errant with its uneven editing, but that's probably going to be an expected outcome of 6 years' worth of legal and creative battles going on behind the scenes.

Broderick and Ruffalo re-team from Lonergan's previous indie success "You Can Count on Me" (2000), but don't expect any actor to show more range or emotion than Anna Paquin. Everything goes through Lisa.

On the day of its cinema release, Kenneth Lonergan's long-gestating drama was the most successful film in the UK. Problem was, it only opened on one screen. The story of Margaret's production is likely a fascinating story in itself, not least because of Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker's input into the final edit, which was presumably a return favour for Lonergan's work on the screenplay for Gangs of New York. But I'll focus on the fascinating story that Lonergan has told with this film.

Ostensibly the tale centres on a New York schoolgirl named Lisa (Anna Paquin, defining her young adulthood just as she defined herself in childhood with The Piano), who inadvertently causes a fatal road accident. What follows is the emotional aftermath, fought outwardly with her mother, as a moral and ethical war wages within her hormone-ravaged body.

The performances are excellent throughout, particularly Paquin and J. Smith-Cameron as the daughter and mother caught in gravitational flux. Jean Reno gives fine support as the sad-sack Ramon, while Matthew Broderick delivers the poem (by Gerard Manley Hopkins) that provides the film's title, while suggesting the entire life of his character by the way he eats a sandwich. It's that kind of film.

I recently wrote a review of Winter's Bone, which I described as an anti-youth movie. Margaret could be a companion piece in this regard, cautioning against the bright-eyed naivety of youthful independence, and promoting the importance of family. Like Winter's Ree, Lisa is a lost soul; unlike Ree, Lisa is not someone we admire. But she is always in focus; Lonergan expects not for us to like her, only to understand her. In maintaining this focus, Lonergan himself achieves the admirable: weaving a narrative whose minute details and labyrinthine arguments mirror the broader existential vista against which they are dwarfed.

Margaret goes deeper than Winter's Bone, delivering something pleasingly unexpected: a kind of Sartrean modern fable about the isolating nature of subjectivity. Like her actor mother on the stage, and like us all in our semi-waking lives, Lisa is the main player in her great opera. She performs the social functions that enable her to cling to a sense of belongingness, but something gnaws at her soul. And when, after the accident, she seeks some kind of meaning, she is met at once by indifference, before being seduced by those very institutions that make indifference normal. Nothing in the material world satisfies Lisa; nothing can match her aspirations. The suggestion here, I feel, is that our despair emerges from the disparity between that which we hope for and that which reality can deliver.

No wonder it took so long to find its way to a single UK screen: a three-hour existentialist play is a tough sell. Ten years after the towers sank to Ground Zero, Margaret joins There Will Be Blood, The Assassination of Richard Nixon, and (for some) Zodiac in the pantheon of modern classics that map the American psyche in the post-9/11 world.

The travails involved in getting this movie released at all are well enough known by now that the fact that it is a flawed masterpiece shouldn't come as a surprise. Above all, it is a masterclass in how to write dialogue. Virtually every character is given a credible and compelling voice, from the bus driver to the lawyer, from the mother's suitor to Lisa's "boyfriend". As the father of a daughter, now in her early 20's, I can say that Lisa Cohen's character is as realistic a portrayal of the insecurities and self-righteousness of female adolescence as I have seen. All aspiring screenwriters should be forced to watch this movie and then be given a 3-hour oral and written exam before being allowed to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard).

The acting is also superb. The feel is more of a stage play, an ensemble piece, than a film. Perhaps the fact that one of the characters - Lisa's mother - is a stage actress struggling to support her daughter is partially responsible. But you can tell that this team of seasoned actors relished the opportunity to stretch out with an intelligent well-written script and a supportive director.

The only flaw in Margaret has already been well expressed by others. The film does meander and, while I recognize that this is partly the point of the exercise, there are times at which you long for a more conventional, and taut, storyline. I would gladly have spent more time in the company of these well-drawn, articulate and interesting people. Maybe next time HBO wants to do a miniseries it will let Kenneth Lonergan loose on a story rather than subject us to another preachy, wordy effort from Aaron Sorkin.

Shot back in 2005, after a long history of editing problems, this film finally got released in 2011, and debuted on DVD in 2012, with an extended director's cut (I guess) included. Unfortunately, I accidentally watched the shorter (still two and a half hour) version. I'm not sure I'd want to sit through another half hour of this. It's a good film, at its heart. The story is very good, anyway. My big problem with it is that the central character, played by Anna Paquin, is such an unlikeable, pretentious little snot I eventually just stopped caring about what was going on. It's a totally realistic depiction of a teenager, but it reminds me how much I hate teenagers, or at least teenagers like her. Frankly, most of the rest of the characters are equally as obnoxious. I was extremely glad to see Jeannie Berlin call Paquin out on her bullcrap, but she's just as detestable. I found it hilarious that Paquin mistakenly calls her "strident," which she thinks means "pig-headed" or something but which actually means "shrill." The whole film is honestly pretty shrill. The story revolves around Paquin causing a bus accident. At first, she lies about it, then later she feels bad about it and tries to recant her statement.

Margaret (2011)

A terrific, evolving, and in-obvious story line mixed with a lead performance by Anna Paquin to die for makes "Margaret" fabulous. See it for her performance alone.

If you think this is a new movie you'll notice some famous actors who look rather young--Matt Damon in particular in his role as a likable high school teacher. That's because it was filmed in 2005 (and got held up in post-production). Even so it doesn't feel dated. The main themes hold up really well, and are told with unusually frank terms. Many people really are just greedy and selfish at heart.

The key event happens early on and in a way can't even be mentioned here. But it's safe to say that Paquin, who's character is called Lisa Cohen, at first takes a false stance in a moment of crisis and compassion. But the truth of the matter eats at her, and against the rising tide of people who prefer the lie she becomes increasingly principled. In the end it is almost everyone who is morally corrupt, even in his own way her teacher.

There is one lurking problem to the movie that really hurt it. One is the way the initial crisis is filmed (with Mark Ruffalo as a bus driver). It is exaggerated and makes the circumstances leading to tragedy unlikely just when the rest of the movie depends on likelihood. Since this is the lynchpin of everyone's reactions later on, it matters rather too much to ignore.

But the rest of it, from the main plot and Paquin to the various sub-plots including a romantic affair her mother has and some political conflicts about Arab-Israeli relations and the 9/11 events, is all really sharply delineated and well acted. And it's written with a good ear for dialog. It simply makes sense. The fact that there is no silver lining here, and that people are shown so obviously ugly below the surface, is harder to do than you might think. All admirable stuff.