The story behind Margaret’s tumultuous journey to theaters (summed up in this article) threatens to overshadow the film itself. Kenneth Lonergan’s follow-up
to his 2000 art-house hit You Can Count On Me has finally arrived after wrapping shooting in 2005
and becoming mired in legal-wrangling, creative disputes and various cuts of
the film (including one by Martin Scorcese’s longtime editor, Thelma
Schoonmaker), apparently all stemming from the fact that Lonergan was awarded
final cut and remained unwilling or unable to finish the film. Six years later
we are presented with this two and a half hour version, finally affording
audiences the chance to bear witness to Lonergan’s vision.
Or is this Lonergan’s vision? It’s hard to tell based on the
version of Margaret currently playing in
limited release. In some ways it feels like an uncompleted work; scenes end
abruptly, major character developments happen suddenly only to remain
inconsequential to the narrative and several plot strands are left hanging by
the end of the film. But what is so frustrating and, ultimately, so rewarding
about Margaret is that it is
unclear how many of these issues stem from its troubled post-production history
and how many are intended by Lonergan himself. For you see, Margaret is that rarest kind of film in the current American
cinematic landscape: A project that aims to be as dense and thematically rich
as a novel. It’s a film that, in its sprawl and messiness, attempts to ruminate
on the turbulent experiences of adolescence, shared trauma and the fear and confusion
that accompanies tragedy, all wrapped up in an exploration of the emotional
landscape of post-9/11 America. The ambition (or hubris, if you like) on
display here is more than a little impressive and the fact that it works at all
is a testament to Lonergan and his wonderful cast.
Margaret is the story
of Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin), a precocious, hyper-articulate New York teenager
who leads a life typical to someone her age: attending school, dealing with her
busy mother (J. Smith-Cameron) and estranged father and hanging about with
friends. One day, while searching for a cowboy hat for an upcoming trip, she
distracts a bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) enough to cause him to run over a
pedestrian (Alison Janney, phenomenal in her one scene turn). Reeling from this
turn of events, Lisa tries to find a way to cope, painfully attempting to
process this trauma and accompanying guilt while dealing with her emerging
sense of self and the myriad conflicting impulses and emotions that are
beginning to arise in her.
That basic plot synopsis doesn’t really do justice to the
scale that Margaret is aiming for. While
Lisa’s tragic encounter remains the story’s heart and narrative backbone, the
film is constantly spinning off in different directions. There’s Lisa’s mother,
a stage-actress, who is simultaneously enjoying newfound acclaim in her career
and being courted by a dashing gentleman (Jean Reno). There’s Lisa’s too-close
relationship with a kindly teacher (Matt Damon), her reckless yet awkward foray
into the realm of sexuality and her constant debates about the efficacy of the
War of Terror in her classes. These plotlines are introduced with little
fanfare and are returned to infrequently, fading in and out of the narrative as
Lisa sinks further into confusion and angst. One storyline that does eventually
develop into something more is Lisa’s relationship with a friend of the bus
accident victim. As played (wonderfully) by Jeannie Berlin, she somewhat
guardedly lets the volatile Lisa into her life, eventually deciding to hire a
lawyer and pursue a fruitless civil suit against the bus driver who was behind
the wheel on that day. The resolution to that story is fitting and fits in with
Lonergan’s overall theme of the untidiness of human interaction.
This messiness isn’t just evidenced through the diffuse
plotting; cinematically speaking the film also seems to sprawl. As our
protagonist is walking down a crowded street we hear scattered passerby having
conversations of their own, fractured reminders that these people all have lives
and complications of their very own. Once or twice Lisa has a minor encounter
with a little-seen character and the camera then follows that new character
instead, as if threatening to make that person into the film’s next main
subject. And more than once we see Lisa disappear into a sea of city-dwellers,
losing our main character amongst the everyday business of everybody else.
As I said before, it s somewhat difficult to discern how
much of this is intent and how much is due to a compromised cut of the film.
Sometimes it feels like whole scenes are missing and plot developments (such as
one character’s supposed abortion) are introduced without rhyme or reason. At
best these elements contribute to the overall feel of the film, other times it
feels like they never found out how to integrate what they shot into a cohesive
whole, but it always remains interesting and often thrilling to watch.
Much credit for the overall success of the film goes to the
performances. Anna Paquin, who has recently made herself more known on TV’s True
Blood, delivers one of the most honest
portraits of teenage vulnerability and angst that I’ve ever seen in a film. She
is able to shift effortlessly between scenes of naïve self-assurance and
overwhelming, self-doubting fear and she tracks the emotional development of
Lisa flawlessly. The film’s strange release probably precludes any Oscar
nominations, which is a shame, as Paquin’s performance is easily amongst the
best of the year (male or female). The rest of the cast isn’t given as much to
do, but most manage to make an impression. Matt Damon (in his 2005,
slimmed-down Bourne incarnation) projects warmth tempered by meekness in his
few scenes. Mark Ruffalo makes the most of his time on screen, making us feel
sympathy for his character even as we witness Lisa conspiring to transfer all
of the blame to him. Jean Reno is fine, if a bit broad, as the man wooing
Lisa’s mother. Besides Paquin and the aforementioned Jeannie Berlin, the
standout performance of the film easily belongs to J. Smith-Cameron, who
invests Lisa’s mother with the air of someone who is truly doing the best they
can, juggling work career and a family while genuinely trying (and often
failing) to communicate to the volatile teen she is raising. She and Paquin’s scenes
together are some of the film’s best, concluding with a scene in an opera house
that is as moving and genuinely touching as anything you’re likely to see in
theaters this year.
Margaret feels like
an unfinished film. Within this 150-minute film is a three to three and a half
hour masterpiece waiting to be revealed (the shooting script was apparently a
whopping 300 pages). Even with the sometimes troublesome editing and plotting,
however, one can see the greatness that Lonergan and company were reaching
for. This level of ambition is
something that should be rewarded, not punished, and for my money the film is
far more successful than not. In addressing a nation tangled in the
destabilizing aftermath of tragedy, Margaret gives us a world filled with imperfection, a place
with humans trying and failing to do what they think is right and people taking
past, rather than to, one another. It’s a vision of the world, as chaotic and
unfair as it can seem, that finds beauty and hope in the imperfect, tangled mess
of people that populate it. It is a view that seems fitting for a film as
sprawling and sincere as Margaret.
