Somewhere

Pop culture detritus.

Margaret (2011)

Margaret’s troubled production history, during which director Kenneth Lonergan and Fox were unable to agree on a final cut of the film, and a limited release in both the UK and US, would suggest that there’s nothing worth seeing here.  Instead, Lonergan’s film feels fully formed in its messiness, an almost-masterpiece of anger, grief and heartache.  Anna Paquin is a revelation as Lisa, the seventeen year-old schoolgirl whose involvement in a tragic accident sends her into an emotional tailspin that she drags progressively more people into.  To reveal more about the exact nature of the plot would be to spoil some of Margaret’s inherent pleasure (and the accident that sets things in motion is an instant classic scene of anguish and mounting dread), but suffice to say that Lonergan continually finds ways to pull the rug out from under his audience in unexpected ways.  Think you’ve reached the point of emotional catharsis the script has been inching towards all along?  Think again.   Think that a subplot featuring Matt Damon’s naive teacher is going to lead to some sort of larger revelation?  Fooled again.  What’s marvellous about Margaret is the way in which its messiness informs its point of view, as well as reflecting Lisa’s mental state.  Whilst the nominal driving force of the story is a litigation brought against the bus company involved in the accident, Lonergan’s script also devotes itself to Lisa’s relationship with her mother (J. Smith Cameron), her teachers, and her high school crushes in a series of subplots that would feel aimless were they not so well-written, and did they not feed into the alternately nervous and righteous anger that fuels the film.  To this purpose, the story returns rather liberally to the classroom debates that give Lisa space to air her myriad frustrations with the world presented to her, twice with a Muslim student over the terrorist attacks in 9/11 and, memorably, watching on as a fellow student argues with Matthew Broderick’s irascible teacher over the “true” meaning of Shakespeare’s contention that “as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods – they kill us for their sport.”  A film with so many stand-out moments would seem disjointed were it not for Paquin’s committed performance.  Ably supported by a cast that is excellent across the board, Lisa could appear as a grab-bag of emotional impulses were it not for the through line of impassioned anger that informs the character’s every move.  Rarely sympathetic, and often bracing, it’s the most fascinating study of adolescent pain to make its way onto cinema screens this year.  Hyper-literate in terms of expressing her most fleeting of feelings, Lisa is frustrating and believable in a way that might seem cruel were it not for the even-handedness and respect with which Lonergan treats his subject.  Margaret operates as both a furious expression of post-9/11 grief that is no less powerful for being released four years later than expected.  But it also works as a character study, an examination of a psyche not yet fully formed and already fractured, mounted around a fearless central performance from Paquin, complimented and complicated by the expert work at its fringes.

  1. dukeofyorks reblogged this from kingtobes
  2. kingtobes reblogged this from stripyhorse23 and added:
    week….a really great, unexpected movie...year on!...
  3. stripyhorse23 posted this