Margaret (2011) [Blu-ray]
Drama

A young woman witnesses a bus accident, and is caught up in the aftermath, where the question of whether or not it was intentional affects many people's lives.

Film's History: In the time since Margaret was filmed, way back when in 2005, two of its producers-Sidney Pollack and Anthony Minghella-died, its young star Anna Paquin went on to True Blood fame, numerous lawsuits were batted about between Fox Searchlight Pictures and writer/director Kenneth Lonergan, and none other than Martin Scorsese and his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker were brought in to help shape the film in the cutting room. Margaret was initially scheduled for release in 2007, but only got a limited theatrical showing in September of last year, its six-year delay from shoot to screen the product of studio disputes and presumed perfectionism on the part of Lonegan, a playwright-turned- director whose first film, 2000's moving You Can Count on Me, won numerous awards and established him as a filmmaker to watch. It's perhaps unfair to call Margaret a sophomore slump, but it undeniably suffers all of the symptoms of a less-than-successful follow-up to a well- regarded debut-it's too long and too ambitious by half, jam-packed with ideas but poorly organized. The film feels over-deliberated, like a painting done by an artist who doesn't know when to stop and ends up marring the piece's original beauty.

Margaret centers on a 17-year-old New York City high-school student who feels certain that she inadvertently played a role in a traffic accident that has claimed a woman's life. In her attempts to set things right she meets with opposition at every step. Torn apart with frustration, she begins emotionally brutalizing her family, her friends, her teachers, and most of all, herself. She has been confronted quite unexpectedly with a basic truth: that her youthful ideals are on a collision course against the realities and compromises of the adult world.

User Comment: abneuman from New York City, 27 July 2006 • A truly heart wrenching story, "Margaret" reiterates Kenneth Lonergan's gifts for dialogue, story, and his ability to treat the most dramatic themes with artful humor, awareness and perception. The acting is exceptional; even relatively small parts, (played by actors such as Matthew Broderick, Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, and Allison Janey) showcase both the actors' own remarkable abilities as well as Lonergan's attention to detail. It is Matthew Broderick's character who is the only one to utter the movie's title as he recites a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. J. Smith Cameron and Anna Paquin, who play mother and daughter, both deliver fierce performances which form the relationship that serves as the backbone of the film. Taking on issues from abortion, divorce, and death to the inherent isolation of being human, the movie has a life and humor to it which cannot be brought down by the weightiness of these issues.

Summary: A tragic accident sends one New York City teenager into the throws of a moral dilemma which serves as a catalyst for her own transformation.

User Comment: mporde from United States, 27 January 2007 • This movie showcases Lonergan's genius for dialog and his gift for articulating the human predicament. The story, centered around a girl who witnesses a horrible accident (Anna Paquin), is an operatic tour de force. Paquin a and J. Smith Cameron (her mother in the film)\ are absolutely brilliant, and the supporting cast is so strong that this movie should sweep multiple Oscars. Lonergan's pacing and tone are well suited to what is both a heartrending and funny complex drama.The sweeping grandeur of New York City comes across more realistically, and beautifully, than it has in any other recent film. So much of what makes us human is articulated in the movie that everything is real, everything is believable, and one can't help but to be moved to tears, to laughter, and back again. Margaret is a perfect follow up to Lonergan's superb first film You Can Count on Me.

Summary: A fantastic movie and a sure bet Oscar for best picture and actress.

User Comment: rooee from United Kingdom, 21 December 2011 • 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.

Summary: Hope opera.

User Comment: Greig from United Kingdom, 21 March 2012 • For me it was more of a stressful experience than sitting and enjoying a movie.

The cast boasts Anna Paquin (of True Blood fame), Hollywood heavyweight Matt Damon, Jean Reno from Leon and Matthew Broderick. I've got a real soft spot for Broderick because of Election, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off is one of my favourite films, but even the presence of the righteous dude couldn't redeem this film for me. Mark Ruffalo is a favourite of mine too (Shutter Island, The Kids Are Alright, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Ruffalo, Damon and Broderick are scarcely in the film though.

It's really all about Lisa: a hormonal teenager who seeks to satisfy her insatiable desire for conflict and drama by pestering all of the people who were involved or affected by a horrific bus accident that she witnessed. Paquin gives a powerful and convincing performance throughout so you can't really blame her for the films failure. You can't simply blame the fact that the character is especially detestable either – we've seen anti-heroes and super villains time and time again in cinema, and they can be some of the most engrossing characters to watch.

The film's problem is that it focuses entirely on this high-strung, volatile, bitchy adolescent as she goes about a mundane course of day-to-day life, seeking attention and rubbing people up the wrong way. There's no real point to all this. The conclusion resolves to say nothing more than "she's probably like this because of her age and she doesn't get along with her mum" or something.

Margaret is nothing more than a character study of a stereotypically hostile, obnoxious teenager. There's no clear controlling idea, it wallows in ambiguity and the attempts to reference Shakespeare are laughably pretentious. It's too long, entirely stressful to sit through and has no real payoff at the end.

Summary: Stressful cinema you can do without.

[CSW] -2.8- Margaret is odd, funny, and a mess. It isn't a bad movie in fact it's easy to recommend because you won't be bored by it (no matter who you are) and it's just too obtuse to not enjoy (either as an all out train wreck, wacky misfire or over-caffeinated thesis). The highlights include an all over the place performance by Paquin (she's screaming, she's crying, she's doing coke, she's precocious), dialogue ("I got hit by a bus? Are you kidding me?"), and satirizations of West Coast vs East Coast phone calls, private school politics, know-it-all teens, misplaced moralism, and the stupidity of outraged liberalism this movie has it all...you just have to get your hands dirty to find it. On a final point it's worth noting this movie was made over 6 years ago and so the rollercoaster/bi-polar emotions of the scenes are most likely the work of desperate editing as opposed to Lonergan's (who apparently had no idea what he made and sat there for years trying to figure it out) vision. It is just one of those wacky dramas, and it is a drama, that you just have to see to believe.
[V3.5-A3.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.

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