It's clear why Fox Searchlight considered Margaret to be unreleasable. The Dickensian abundance of plot and characters suggests a poorly condensed miniseries, not a movie. While it is hardly necessary for loose ends to be tied up, there are so many throwaway scenes here that at some point it hardly seems like Margaret required salvaging. Whatever movie Lonergan initially intended to make would have barely been topical or interesting six years ago. All this time later, it's dated, plodding, and fails to make much of an impact.
The few scenes that work play well only because Lonergan is letting the melodrama run amok. Jeannie Berlin, in particular, has no restraint. While her performance is silly at times, she brings a joy to Margaret that's otherwise lacking. Anna Paquin handles herself quite well, taking Lonergan's grossly unbelievable, misshapen dialogue and giving it a bit of a life. Her character is written to be rather unlikable, but Paquin has an incredible, natural charisma. During Allison Janney's early death scene, Paquin shows a first spark that suggests she'll steal the show and it's not particularly surprising when she continues on that hot streak. She screams and cries like a pro. If the script wasn't so godawful, Paquin might've been in Oscar consideration.
Subplots involving Matt Damon and several brief classroom scenes do not work whatsoever. They're Lonergan's attempts at heavy-handed political commentary. Family scenes with J. Smith-Cameron and Paquin have much more intensity and truth to them. There is a certain beauty in some of the tearful, angry arguments and in the final scenes where Smith-Cameron and Paquin finally find common ground. But these are fleeting moments in a film where almost all of it could've been on the cutting room floor. Even Mark Ruffalo's big scene which puts the entire second act into motion is somewhat underwhelming.
Enumerating failures in Margaret is difficult since the film fails on almost every basic level. With unfathomably clumsy writing and editing that forcefully, desperately tries to give shape to a shapeless story, it's immediately clear this is a disaster. But like the film's bus crash that sets the plot into motion, it's hard to turn away. Even when the film consistently enters laughable, over-the-top territory, it's a fascinating monstrosity.
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