Margaret

The opening moments of Margaret capture an element of modern life, particularly of life in New York (as Bilge Ebiri points out), that no other film has ever really conveyed before with such clarity. Mainly, it shows the the overwhelming amount of people in the city. Whether they’re long time New Yorkers or just passing by, New York is packed. The opening shots of Margaret simply show the streets of the city: alive, colorful, busy. 

Most of these people just walk by, without exchanging a word, without impacting one another. Several individuals walk every which way. They come into view and leave, quietly. None of them is the subject of the film. Once we do meet Lisa, the young protagonist of the film, we see that she too, walks endlessly around the city. Almost no one she passes by makes an impression. She’s just a part of the crowd, merely the protagonist of the story the director, Kenneth Lonergan, chose to tell among the many other millions he could have.

I kept thinking about a scene from Shoot the Piano Player in which the camera completely abandons the main character as he enters a room and, in a beautiful tracking shot, follows a woman who just exited the room the main character just entered. It is as if the movie could simply abandon all of its characters to be about her, simply because she’s human, and thus worthy of her own film. I love the way Margaret treats its characters, and several other hypothetical New Yorkers it could have followed, in this way. They are all essential. They are all flawed. They are all human.

It’s sad, then, to see the many ways in which these wounded people fail to meaningfully connect with one another. The film is full of miscommunications (both accidental and intentional) that come mostly from characters making false assumptions about people, or groups of people, they don’t fully understand. Take the scene in which one of Lisa’s class discusses the September 11 attacks and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. The conversation starts with one seemingly benign comment, but soon everyone starts chiming in, becoming increasingly infuriated, until finally everyone is yelling their opinions at the top of their lungs (as unfortunately happens with so many adults, especially in the era of internet commenting) so that no one can hear what his neighbor has to say. 

For a second, it seems like the whole conflict could stop when a young woman tries to change the conversation: "I’m only saying I think it’s pathetic the way people in this class treated Angie just for saying something they don’t agree with.” “Pathetic” is probably the word most of the characters in the scene take away from the statement, instead of its overall sentiment, which tries to shed light on the real issue: the student’s inability to have a civilized conversation. In another scene, one character regrets the fact that he used the wrong adjective to express himself, which he feels changed the outcome of a conversation and an important dinner. 

In the end, no one comes away with any clearer understanding of the issue, but only with anger. In yet another class — the film is a series of symphonic variations on the same theme — one professor stubbornly repeats to a student “That’s not what Shakespeare meant!” even when the student had a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the work they were reading, which the teacher would have known had he just listened. It’s fitting that the movie’s soundtrack consists of other people’s half-heard conversation, of street noise. 

What’s remarkable about the film is the way it cuts through this noise (as well as through several narrative conventions and teenager cliches), and very incisively hones into the life and experiences of young Lisa and, to a degree, the circle of people around her. Margaret is one of the most intriguing explorations of a single character I have seen. The plot of the film essentially begins when Lisa witnesses, and perhaps causes, a bus accident in which a woman dies. It’s a mess. Poor Lisa has no idea what to do, and all the woman (played with chilling effect by Allison Janney) wants is for Lisa to hold on to her as she dies. Shellshocked, Lisa obeys, remaining with the woman until her death. In a magnificent shot, Lisa cleanses herself from the blood, and water just keeps pouring over her for a long time, until every speck of blood disappears (at least physically, since she later has a terrifying Lady Macbeth moment later in the movie). We don’t exactly know what kind of person she was before — we barely get a few glimpses of that — but it’s evident this experience has changed her. 

In this way, we come into her daily life as she experiences it in a completely different way from before, and we also accompany her into the legal mess that follows the accident, something which both Lisa and the audience are unfamiliar with. Because she’s so out of her depth, she becomes easy to empathize, particularly as it becomes more and more clear, throughout the 150 minutes of the film, that what she is struggling with is really her guilt over her role in the accident. I don’t even know how to describe Anna Paquin’s incredible performance, except to say that she manages to make Lisa fully human in a way very few actors manage. I can only think of the leads in The Best of Youth a movie that gave its two main actors six hours to explore and reveal the complex layers of their character’s humanity. Paquin does it in less than three. I was reminded of Roger Ebert's review of The Best of Youth, which he opens with this paragraph:

Every review of "The Best of Youth" begins with the information that it is six hours long. No good movie is too long, just as no bad movie is short enough. I dropped outside of time and was carried along by the narrative flow; when the film was over, I had no particular desire to leave the theater, and would happily have stayed another three hours. The two-hour limit on most films makes them essentially short stories. "The Best of Youth" is a novel.

I’m sure there’s a lot more to be said about this wonderful, novelistic, work of art, particularly after finding out that there is an even longer, 186 minute, version out there to be explored. Is it smoother? Does it make the story more comprehensible? Could it possibly be better than the version I watched, as I have heard from many critics? I doubt it, but I’m willing to give it a shot. Yes, Margaret is imperfect, but it’s as good as movies get. 

Verdict- 4/4

Margaret 2h 30 min. R