"Margaret" (2011)

  ☆☆☆☆½ 

In 1999, Paul Thomas Anderson's mesmerizing, confounding, challenging, beautiful, depressing, confounding, polarizing film Magnolia caught the uncertain mood most of the world seemed to be in leading up to the new millennium. That long film might well be called "operatic" both for its grand themes and the way it stops the action every now and then to allow its leading actors a moment to show off their skills, much in the way an aria stops the action of an opera just so we can marvel at talent.

Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret was originally shot six years later, but due to the kind of legal and artistic wrangling that seemingly can only happen in Hollywood, it was finished in 2011. Note that I didn't say "released in 2011," because Margaret was largely never released. For years, Lonergan had been trying to get his film to 150 minutes to satisfy his contractual obligations, finally settled on a 160-minute version, but when he did the studio largely abandoned it, and never giving the film a mainstream theatrical release. Meanwhile, Lonergan continued working on Margaret, and ultimately created a 186-minute "extended director's edition." While available on DVD, Blu-ray and streaming, this version has rarely been seen in theaters.

As part of its annual "Bleak Week" series, the American Cinematheque screened the 186-minute cut of Margaret at the Egyptian theater to a sold-out house. Having at last seen it, the rationale behind the studio's decision not to release Margaret is more discouraging than ever: They denied moviegoers an opportunity to experience an exquisite film, a movie that stands alongside Magnolia as an emotional epic that explores the convoluted inner workings of people just as the world was shifting.

Margaret hits even harder than Magnolia — not an easy task — because it was shot and originally intended to be released just five years after terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center. They did more than destroy buildings; they destroyed a nation's psyche, they made Americans, and New Yorkers in particular, painfully aware of the fragility of life and the ways it's impossible ever to really know what is going to happen next. The next 30 minutes could hold anything, a reality Margaret knows all too well.

Lonergan's script for Margaret contains no characters named "Margaret." The film is named after the poem "Spring and Fall," by Gerard Manley Hopkins, which begins:

Margaret are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

The poem is written as an adult asking a troubled child if the simple act of leaves falling in autumn has left her forlorn, and sad about the state of the world.

Lisa Cohen is this film's Margaret. She is played by Anna Paquin in a performance that should have been nominated for every possible award. Paquin is revelatory as a girl who we meet when she is confident and teasing, flirtatious and intelligent, happy and eager and bright. By the end of the movie, she will still be some of those things, but she will not be many of them. In the sort of incident that could happen anywhere at any time, Margaret is involved (just how, it's best not to know) in a bus accident that kills a woman named Monica. She is played by Allison Janney, who has only one scene in the movie — but it's a scene that must stay with us for the entire duration of this long, complicated film. It does. You've seen heartbreaking moments in movies, but if you haven't seen Margaret, you've never seen the definitive one.

The accident is a devastating, life-changing moment for Lisa, but not always in the most obvious ways. As the film progresses, Lisa has a fraught relationships with her actress mother (J. Smith-Cameron), a math teacher (Matt Damon), a boy who likes her (John Gallagher Jr.), a boy who doesn't really care about her (Kieran Culkin), and a woman (Jeannie Berlin) who was close friends with Monica.

Relaying the rest of the story would be pointless—there is too much of it. One of the many wonderful imperfections of Margaret is how much story it wants to pack into its running time. The extended director's cut runs more than three hours but plays like a movie half that length. Paquin is at the center of it all, carrying the film with such effortless confidence that we sometimes forget we're watching a piece of fiction; Lonergan, who loves working in a naturalistic style, has created a film that's often packed to the edges. It demands and earns our attention, even in some very strange and problematic moments when Lonergan decides to play a piece of music too loudly or adds in voices that seem to be coming from another scene.

These directorial flourishes make Margaret distinctive, but what makes it special and unlike any American movie I can remember seeing is the way the audience never knows from one scene to the next how a character might respond. Scenes change on a dime in this film, and what begins as a happy and carefree moment might end a few minutes later with lacerating anger. In that, Lonergan understands the way most people actually communicate with each other—poorly, haltingly, unpredictably. Watching Margaret is a stark reminder of how little we can ever know anyone else, their motives, or their fears.

This is a glowing film. It knows how terribly we have been hurt — not just by September 11, not just by technology and communication (it was filmed before smart phones but released after they became ubiquitous, which makes for an interesting commentary), not just by each other. Rather, we've been hurt by existence. Like Margaret in the poem, we have seen the world dying; confidence that it will return again does us no good. We are grieving for what we have lost, right now.

In its final moments, as if it hadn't already been clear through its frequent use of classical music, Margaret shows us what it means to be: an opera, maybe a tragedy, maybe a comedy, maybe a little bit of both — I was surprised by how funny the film is, despite being shown at "Bleak Week." In any event, it is bigger than life. It takes a seemingly everyday kind of tragedy and infuses it with wild, raw emotion. Watching Margaret, you'll careen from laughter to shock, from outrage to tearful emotion, sometimes within moments. Lonergan does not shy away from the hard stuff here, but Margaret is never angry or depressing.

By the end of this fascinating and emotionally draining (but not bleak) film, it is very much "Margaret" you grieve for — the girl who can never be innocent again, and the world that can never be innocent again. But still both will revive themselves. They will remake themselves. They will grow again. One way or another.

Viewed June 2, 2024 — Egyptian Theater

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