Margaret

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.

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 – CATCH IT (B+) Margaret is very interesting movie about a teenage girl partially involved in woman death in a brutal accident. The movie deals with how she is wants the bus driver to at least accept his mistake too and have some remorse or gilt. The movie takes to her journey how she tries to deal with her conscious. She is now torn apart with frustration and begins to emotionally brutalizing her family, her friends, her teachers, and most of all, herself. Anna Paquin's performance as Margaret is terrific. She literally lived the role. From start to finish you won't be able to take your eyes off her, she may now always be remembered as Sookie Stackhouse but here she shows how incredible emotional range she has as an artist. Alison Janney is her death sequence was amazing. It maybe was a 5mintse scene but she sold her death to us and we can now imagine why Lisa was so heartbroken because of her death. J.Smith-Cameron is superb as Lisa's mom. Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, John Gallager JR, Kieran Culkin, Rosemarie DeWitt, Jene Rene and Matthew Broderick did a decent job in their respective small yet pivotal roles. In the end Margaret is a nice movie and only flaw it has is its incredibly long without any reason. The movie could have been easily cut into hour and half by eliminating extra scenes or views of New York City.

Am I the only one who feels that Anna Paquin's acting is not the best, but probably the worst aspect of this film? For the entirety of the overlong runtime, but most markedly in the several outlandish scenes with Mr. Aaron, a strangely cast Matt Damon, her reading of the lines was overdone and unnatural. The intonation and pitch, among other things, seemed extremely forced and, well, like acting! In one scene, she accuses Emily of being "strident" and when she gets upset, modifies it to "emphatic". Official dictionary definitions would tell us that the key difference between the two words is the negative connotation that accompanies the former. Well, Paquin's acting and delivery of her lines can be described as strident, not emphatic.

The aforementioned scene is actually an example of the cleverness and wit found in Kenneth Lonergan's script, and I am confident that a book version of this film would garner a much higher rating from me. The premise is ingenious and the story engaging. The relevant scenes were insightful and thought provoking, inviting hours of discussion. Unfortunately, the critical word in that sentence is "relevant", because this lost potential of a masterpiece film was full of irrelevant scenes. Even irrelevant characters. A significant amount of time is dedicated to some high school classroom political debates, which would be quite compelling in another context, but distracting and confusing here, given its inapplicability to Lisa Cohen's narrative. Even the film title is irrelevant! I am actually partial to clever or not obvious film titles, but "Margaret" is neither of these. It refers to yet another inconsequential scene that should have been edited out, more specifically to the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem read aloud in her English class. The narrator in the poem speaks to a young girl named Margaret, who is grieving the death of autumn leaves as if they were dying friends explaining to her that although it feels profound, grieving is an inescapable part of the human condition. This scene is not long enough, nor the message prolific enough to warrant the naming of the entire 3 hour film.

From Salon: Rarely has a film with such a great cast and so many moments of terrific writing and such high dramatic goals, overdone but beautiful cinematography, been so messy and disorganized and fundamentally bad... like going to a friend's house for dinner to discover that they've apparently had a breakdown, and bought all sorts of delicious ingredients with no recipe in mind: Ice cream followed by lentil soup followed by sashimi followed by uncooked root vegetables, with half-kneaded bread dough and Pinot Noir poured over your head.

True, I watched the 36 minutes longer extended 3 hours and 6 minutes version, but I suspect I would have actually been even more dissatisfied with the shorter versions, since even more subplots were left hanging. Even in this full extended version, too much was left unresolved. Not surprising, given the labyrinth mess of plots and subplots, arbitrary detours and illogical tangents. "Margaret" is a film that would have dearly benefited from some serious killing of the darlings. And one look into the long process and legal drama surrounding the release of this film will indicate that I'm far from alone in this thinking!

Such loss of potential. Could have been a masterpiece. Alas, the best I can grant is a 6/10, and that's even with the extra points that come with any Mark Ruffalo film (stellar as always, even in his limited character time)!

"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.