So, as much as I love movies, one thing I've never done is rented from Redbox. Well, seeing as I was at Wal*Mart today and had just started this new blog, I thought why not try it out. And while there were tons of movies to choose from (NOTE: this is not a review of Redbox though it was pretty cool), there were only a couple I had been really wanting to see. One was THE RAID: REDEMPTION (which is my reward for actually finishing this post) and Kenneth Lonergan's MARGARET.
I don't know how many of you know all the shit surrounding MARGARET, but it was originally scheduled to be released in 2007. However, Fox Searchlight had told Kenneth Lonergan that his cut of the film could not exceed 150 minutes. Unfortunately, he had immense trouble cutting down the film to anything close to that and where it sat was around three hours. So, that's what it did. Sit. It sat and sat and was the catalyst for many lawsuits. Eventually, Fox brought in Martin Scorsese to do a cut of the film, Lonergan finally acquiesced and the film got an extremely (and I mean to the XTREME) limited release. Eventually (recently) it was released on DVD and Blu-ray with a longer, near three hour cut (the one I saw) and everyone was kind of done with it. Well, almost everyone.
So, here I am. After watching MARGARET I have to say that I'm not sure exactly what to say. That being said (or not), I think it might be one of the best films I've ever seen. I usually don't like that kind of hyperbolic statement, but it seems deserving. A film that's been basically discarded as trash for the greater part of 5 years seems to deserve a little hyperbole (OR THE GREATEST PRAISE IN THE WORLD!). The problem is, I don't know exactly how to do it. Trying to write about this movie seems like such a task that I don't know if I can even do it justice. The film left me feeling kind of like the main character, Lisa; so filled with emotion and completely unable to express it. But after thinking about it for most of the day, I still want to try. And I think the best way to do that is to come at it at a few different ways (this could end up being a long one).
But before any of that, I guess I need to try and explain the plot (which, in and of itself, is a challenge). IMDb's plot summary goes, "A young woman witnesses a bus accident, and is caught up in the aftermath" and I guess that's fine. Granted, that does happen. But it doesn't really get at what's going on with the film or how it works. It doesn't give any explanation as to why the movie resonated so deeply with me. So, I'm going to try my best.
In MARGARET, Anna Paquin plays Lisa Cohen. She didn't ask to thrown into the middle of this tragic event. She just wanted to find an authentic cowboy hat on the Upper West Side. She wasn't trying to flirt with the bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) when he ran that red light and completely smashed that poor woman crossing the street; she just wanted to know where the driver got his cowboy hat. Well, maybe she was flirting some. Maybe he was too. But Lisa didn't intend to give a false statement to the police. She was just distraught over just having that poor woman die in her arms. She didn't want any of this to happen. And she is going to make damn sure it doesn't happen again. Ever.
You see, MARGARET is an epic (in the real sense of the word) about a young girl's reckless search for justice. She knows that bus driver is at fault and she resents that he was flirting with her before he ran down that woman (regardless of the fact that she, Lisa, initiated the flirting). She is also very affected by the fact that the woman speaks her daughter's (also named Lisa) name before passing away. Lisa's parents also happen to be deeply involved in drama (her mother a stage actress and her father a screenwriter in California) and, given this background, it's easy to see how she can take this, in relation, small scale tragedy and turn it into an opera. She's a young, 17 year old girl. She's also self-absorbed as they come and isn't going to stop until she feels better about this whole thing.
Even reading that it seems kind of messy, but I think it (sort of) gets at what the film is trying to do in my opinion. And that is to express the inexpressible. The value of the film is in its ability to articulate something that's never quite been articulated in that way before. It's the recognition and expression of that something; something deep within ourselves that makes truly great films, like MARGARET, great.
So, now that I've babbled on and on and probably made no sense, let me briefly (ha ha ha, right?) talk about what the movie does for a second.
Two ideas (of many, these are not the only two) that have been instilled in our society for generations are that women are insane and teenagers are idiots. And both of these share one thing in common: they're completely moronic. But they've been with us forever. And why? Because to get past these ideas you have to change the way you look at them. Just a little nuance is all we need, but society tends to not be so swift at that. But it seems like this is really something that should be done, doesn't it? Looking past these common misconceptions is a very important step in societal growth but we don't really seem to care. And then there's MARGARET. You see, MARGARET does try to engage these ideas, wrestle with them, move past them and express something inexpressible. It wants to find the truth about the psychology of teenage women and I think it does a pretty good job at it.
You see, as much as adults would like to believe otherwise, teenagers are pretty complicated, multifaceted beings. It's not that they're stupid. They totally know things. Probably more than most adults, technically, because they're actually still in school and learning all the time. It has more to do with the fact that they don't have any real life experiences with the putting important feelings they have about the things they learn into practice. They also don't really have much experience at keeping their emotions checked and they don't have much skill at judging which kinds of events and injustices really matter in the big picture. For my money, that's pretty much the difference between teenagers and adults. And MARGARET portrays this brilliantly.
That being said, as much as the film does show how teenagers behave differently (most of the time worse), it makes sure to show many ways in which adults can be and act just the same. From Lisa's dad backing out of a promised vacation because it's just easier that way, to Lisa's mother using awful names when she gets frustrated with Lisa, to a conversation between two adults that gets terribly racist, the film is very even handed. We all do it, the films says, adults just do it less.
And I could go on and on. How the film handles women, how it handles teenagers, how it handles just about every emotion there is, through it all there's one main thing that makes it all work. It feels real. New York feels real, the characters feel real, their relationships and how the characters behave feels real. Every single character feels fully realized, down to their psychologies, looks, desires, and how they dress and sound, it's all textured so beautifully and fully that by the end of the film, I understood everyone. Not just the main characters either. Every. Single. One.
And that's just it. The difference between real life and make-believe is that make-believe has to make sense (I know, I just blew my mind too). You see, when you write something dramatic, there's always a reason why things happen. Simple cause and effect. This happened which caused this, but this happened which caused this and so on and so on. But with real life it's not that simple. And that's something that MARGARET just gets. At first it may not seem like half the things Lisa does make sense, but if you really think about, there's a reason why behind everything you see (and every shot) and it all makes perfect sense. It's not that simple to work out because it's not operating like we're used to. It's operating along with how Lisa thinks. Her mind makes leaps, so does the film. She responds with anger to someone she shouldn't, gives a pass to another person who deserves the anger and it makes sense in the film because it makes sense to her and her psyche. She has her reasons, whether they be good or not, for everything she does. And you know what that makes her? Human. It just happens to be a teenage human who can't really process what the hell is happening to them.
One last thing I'll say about the film is that despite it being an epic journey through the twists and turns of a teenage girl's psyche as she's trying to deal with all this stuff, the film still has a framing device that works pretty darn well. Near the beginning of the film, Lisa's mom asks her if she wants to go to the opera and Lisa replies that she dislikes the opera because "It's like their entire reason for existing is to prove how loud they can be. I really don't find it all that interesting." And then they have an EPIC argument (I'm just enjoying using that word at this point). You see, that's just it. The two of them are opera (Say whaaaaaaaat?!). That's right, and we spend the next couple of hours watching them prove it to us. And then the end comes, and where are we? Yep. At the opera (AND THERE ARE SOME SUPER SERIOUS SPOILERS COMING UP). Sure, the events leading to them both going have been extremely harrowing and depressing. They have both been on the emotional roller coaster from hell and here they are. Listening to gorgeous people trying to prove how loud they can be. And Lisa starts to weep. Then she begins to sob. And then she has a breakdown. And then her mother sees this. And she begins to weep. Then sob. Then break down. And they both just sit there, hugging and crying into each other: a combination of grief, hysteria, "I'm sorry"'s, and raw human emotion. And there you have it. The culmination of the entire movie in one compact, beautiful ending.
Oh, and the "Margaret" in MARGARET? Well, there's no real character named Margaret in the movie. The name comes from the poem "Spring and Fall" by Gerard Manley. I won't go into the poem or recite it here. But it's performed by Matthew Broderick's character to Lisa's class. And where is Lisa? Not paying attention, with much more important (in her mind) things to think about. But if only she had listened. Because as the poem concludes, it's clear that it was herself for which Lisa was mourning. This is a young woman's first real glimpse of adulthood and the horrors it can force us into.
And it might just be a masterpiece.
