Review: Margaret (2011)

Anna Paquin as Lisa Cohen

Directed by Kenneth Lonergan
Produced by Gary Gilbert, Sydney Pollack, and Scott Rudin
Written by Kenneth Lonergan
Starring Anna Paquin, J. Smith-Cameron, Jean Reno, Jeannie Berlin, Allison Janney, Matthew Broderick, Mark Ruffalo, and Matt Damon

****

After years of legal delays with the studio, Kenneth Lonergan's masterful film is finally available for purchase, including his 3-hour version and the studio's 2 1/2 hour cut. This drama revolves around Lisa Cohen (Paquin), who is living in post-9/11 New York. She is an opinionated, high-strung teenager struggling to exist in a world of corrupt politics and terrorism. When she inadvertently causes a bus accident that kills a woman (Janney), Lisa alters her story to the police on the scene because she wants to protect the driver (Ruffalo), and she feels as though it is the right thing to do. This mistake weighs on her until she seeks legal action against the driver and the bus company with the aid of the deceased woman's friend Emily (Berlin) and her cousin. While this is going on, her relationship with her mother Joan (Smith-Cameron) deteriorates, and she becomes angrier at the whole situation and the state of the world. On top of everything else, Lisa faces a harsh reality when the case is settled without the result she wanted in the first place, and she is forced to live with the consequences of her actions, as she tries to put her life back together.

This chopped-up masterpiece surprisingly benefits from the studio's tampering, as the theatrical cut fits the back-and-forth movements of the narrative better than Lonergan's longer, more fluid version. Paquin gives a career-best performance, and the entire supporting cast (especially Smith-Cameron and Berlin) are quite good. As Lisa, Paquin lets her character's emotions explode onto the screen, depicting her vulnerability and bewilderment in a rare and incredibly moving feat. Joan and Emily are more world-weary characters that Smith-Cameron and Berlin play with such ease and such heartache. Damon as Lisa's laid-back teacher and Ruffalo as the driver are solid as usual, and Lonergan himself gives a nice supporting performance as Lisa's father. Aside from the exeptional performances, this film also features a writer/director effort from Lonergan that is spot on. Rather than preaching to the viewer, he allows the story unfold, as we watch these people try to relate to one another, to figure it all out. Time removed from the film has only enhanced my love for it. Although it is not without its faults, the film remains a dramatic tour de force by Lonergan and company. Seeing it would be no mistake, even if you only see the theatrical version. It might be the best thing you'll see for quite awhile.

Oscar Tally: None (Sadly.)

MARGARET

Written and Directed by Kenneth Lonergan

Starring Anna Paquin, Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo and Alison Janney

Lisa Cohen: I just need to talk to somebody who doesn’t completely misunderstand who I am or what’s going on inside me.

It isn’t easy growing up, no matter who you are and no matter what you have to live through while you’re doing it. Take Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin) for instance. She is a 17-year-old girl living on the Upper West Side in New York City. She goes to a private school and comes from a broken home. Her pre-occupations are not unlike any other girl’s her age - she bickers with her family, she wants to lose her virginity, she has opinions about worldly subjects she is only beginning to understand. And she is only just realizing that it is up to her to make sense of her own world when she inadvertently causes a fatal traffic accident. Suddenly, the world makes even less sense than it did just moments earlier.

MARGARET is writer/director, Kenneth Lonergan’s highly anticipated follow-up to his Oscar nominated 2001 feature, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME. The film went into production in 2005, when the now 29-year-old star, Paquin, who certainly gives a vibrant and youthful performance, was but 23. It then spent years in turnaround as Lonergan tinkered with the lengthy 3-hour+ runtime, trying to get distributer, Fox Searchlight, to sign off on it. It was scheduled to be released in 2007 but the cut was deemed unreleasable. In the midst of legal battles, Martin Scorsese and his faithful editor, Thelma Schoonmaker came on board to see what they could make of it. Their edit is the official theatrical release and both company and director are apparently happy with the end results.

Indeed all parties should be pleased as MARGARET is an engaging coming of age story. Lisa does not know how to process what she has witnessed and has no idea how to make right what she caused. She looks down every road for solace but constantly runs into walls and subsequently, she begins to act out as a means to make her life about something other than that accident. Perhaps in her own self-destruction, she can eradicate her guilt. If only life were that simple though. If it were, not only would Lisa find a simple path to peace but Lonergan would have found a simpler path to finishing this film. Life allows for things to pass in their own time though and with that, MARGARET needed to take this long to be released. Like Lisa, it too had some growing pains to go through first.

Black Sheep presents The 2011 Fall Film Preview

This past weekend, I stepped out of the house in shorts and a T-shirt and immediately walked right back in, when I realized how cold it actually was outside. It felt different; it felt like fall. While some people hate the fall, I love it! It’s all sweaters and soup and a welcome farewell to the mind numbing fare of the summer movie season. And with those changing autumn leaves comes the long awaited return of the prestige picture.

Speaking of anticipation, fans of the family drama, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME, from writer/director, Kenneth Lonergan, will finally get to see his sophomore project, MARGARET this fall, some eight years after it was originally shot. Anna Paquin plays a 17-year-old girl (she was 21 at the time of filming) who witnesses an accident and begins believing she may have caused it somehow. She proceeds to slowly destroy everything in her life. In 2009, Fox Searchlight deemed the project, which also stars Matt Damon, unreleasable, but somehow, both parties have now found the path to understanding. A small mystery remains as to who had final cut.

What lies ahead isn’t entirely bleak though. Justin Timberlake continues his transition from pop star to leading man with the sci-fi thriller, IN TIME. Andrew Niccol, the writer of THE TRUMAN SHOW and the writer/director of GATTACA, returns with his first film since 2006. At this indeterminate time in our future, people are genetically designed to die at the age of 25. (I for one am glad to live in a world where I have so far had nine years past that.) People who reach this golden age are given one year to either find more time, be that legitimately or otherwise. Timberlake’s character comes into a century’s worth of time and not surprisingly, that makes him a guy a lot of people want to find. The wide-eyed Amanda Seyfried and Olivia Wilde are along for the trip.

The title, TINKER, TAILER, SOLDIER, SPY, rolls off the tongue with ease and might and, from the looks of the incredibly taut trailer, the film itself might unspool with a similar readiness. Tomas Alfredson, the Swedish director behind the 2008 international cult hit, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, marks his first English-language film with an adaptation of the John Le Carre bestselling spy novel of the same name. Gary Oldman stars as George Smiley, a character who has not been tackled since the late Alec Guiness played him in 1982. Smiley must put his retirement plans on hold in order to ascertain the identity of a mole within the deep folds on the British intelligence agency, MI6. And when that mole just might be Tom Hardy or Colin Firth, in his first post-Oscar role, you know Oldman has his work cut out for him.

Come November, it’s time for some very important things to be done. It’s time to put on makeup; it’s time to light the lights. Yes folks, it’s time to get things started with the first Muppets movie in over 20 years. Entitled simply, THE MUPPETS, this caper finds Kermit et al. banding together to save their old theatre from being destroyed by a greedy oil tycoon type. They have enlisted the likes of Amy Adams and Jason Segel to get the job done and there are plenty more cameos crammed into this welcome return to the big screen, from Neil Patrick Harris to Mila Kunis to Zach Galifianakis. Segel offers his aid in more ways than one as well. He essentially spearheaded this entire Muppets renaissance, even going so far as to co-write the screenplay.

One could argue that December is not really the fall still but while looking ahead, I see nothing wrong with looking even a little further past that at the same time. While there are many December releases to get excited about, there is one above them all that I am most drawn to. I’ve never read the THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO but I have seen all three of the Swedish films that were adapted from the Steig Larsson series. Ordinarily, I am not a fan of foreign language films being redone in English for mass market appeal but those films are not usually directed by the man behind THE SOCIAL NETWORK, David Fincher. And from the looks of the trailers, it seems to me that Fincher isn’t the least bit concerned about mass appeal. Rather, he seems intent on keeping it dark and authentic. Just in time for the holidays, no less ...

There are oodles of other movies coming, 100+ between now and the close of the year. A great deal of them will be covered in my upcoming TIFF coverage but here is a rundown of the rest for you: Director Steven Soderbergh kills off several Oscar nominees in CONTAGION; one of the most loved animated films of all time, THE LION KING, returns to theatres for a limited 3D run; Taylor Lautner tries really hard to be a big boy in the thriller, ABDUCTION; Daniel Craig plays creepy house with now wife, Rachel Weisz, in Jim Sheridan's DREAM HOUSE; Anna Faris recycles old boyfriends in WHAT'S YOUR NUMBER?; Hugh Jackman takes on robot boxing in REAL STEAL; the world gets a FOOTLOOSE remake it never wanted; Johnny Depp goes back to the world of Hunter S. Thompson in THE RUM DIARY; Michelle Williams gets her Monroe on in MY WEEK WITH MARILYN; Harold & Kumar return for a third trip in A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS; Clint Eastwood takes on Hoover in J. EDGAR, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and potential love interest, Armie Hammer; Martin Scorsese goes family and 3D with HUGO; oh, and I think there should be another TWILIGHT mess in there somewhere.

Stay tuned for Black Sheep's TIFF preview next weekend and the holiday movie preview will bow near the end of November. In the meantime, bon cinema!