Margaret (****)

I suppose fans of HBO’s True Blood, or at least of Anna Paquin being in it, should be happy this sat on the shelf so long before getting a little-publicized release. The actress had had a few good roles since winning her Oscar in 1993, but not too many leads as a young adult. But I think had this come out around 2005, when it was filmed, it’s easy to imagine she would have been deluged with film roles that might have kept her off the small screen. The film also partly answers the question of what filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan, whose other movie was 2000’s terrific You Can Count on Me, has been up to since Gangs of New York (2002), on which he is one of the credited screenwriters.

Given its novelistic sweep—it has just one main character, Paquin’s, and takes place over only a few months, yet there is a lot of stuff stuffed into the film, which clocks in at 160 minutes—I’d want to ask Lonergan several questions if I could. But if I were to pick one, I’d be tempted to ask about one two-second shot in particular. This is after Paquin’s character—Lisa, not Margaret—a Manhattan high school student, tells a young man who’s called her that she isn’t in the mood to talk. Lonergan then cuts away to the suitor, who’s shown breaking down in tears. He’s a minor character who plays no part in the rest of the story. Maybe it’s only there to show what sort of boy she’s rejected. Or maybe it’s there because quite a lot of the film is about how people react to other people. But I kind of think it’s there because Lonergan wants to show us everything. This may have had something to do with why it took so long to finish the film.

If I were to tell you what the movie is about, I would say it’s about this young woman whose chance flirtation with a bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) leads to a tragic accident. Yet it’s also about her relationship with her divorced parents (she plans to visit her father in California), her classmates (the Jewish Lisa and a Muslim classmate clash over foreign policy in history class), a teacher (Matt Damon), and a woman she encounters as a result of the tragedy. Mired in editing problems for years, the released version has been criticized for being messy, and it is.

IMDB link

viewed 10/19/11 at Ritz East and reviewed 10/19/11