Margaret (2011)
Directed by Kenneth Lonergan
17-year-old Lisa feels certain that she inadvertently played a role in causing a traffic accident that claimed a woman's life. In her attempts to set things right, she meets with opposition at every step. Torn apart with frustration, she begins emotionally brutalizing her family, her friends, her teachers, and, most of all, herself. She has been confronted quite unexpectedly with a basic truth: that her youthful ideals are on a collision course with the realities and compromises of the adult world.
6 connections found
View:
6 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Margaret to
But this story is just the first of several morbid twists in a multi-generational, multi-chapter saga of schmaltz, set into motion by a Manhattan bus accident, à la Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret .
One of Kenneth Lonergan’s keenest insights about teenagers in his great 2011 film Margaret was that, bereft of the kind of broader view of life and people that comes with maturity, teens have a tendency to think of themselves as the stars of their own personal dramas, regardless of whether an event was truly as earth-shattering as they believed it was.
In Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld), we encounter the most abrasive, needy, solipsistic teen character since Anna Paquin’s lead in Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret .
I don’t think audiences and critics are wowed by anything Nicole and Charlie actually say (see Kenneth Lonergan’s director’s cut of Margaret for revelatory pipelines to the psyche) but the fact that they’re saying it at such a high, theatrical pitch, in ways that make crews applaud when “cut” is called.
Filled with the innocent arrogance of youth, she's practically a loaded gun, the scariest teen since Evan Rachel Wood in Thirteen.
Advertisement
Don’t get me wrong, I’d be interested in seeing The Master 2: Ghost Protocol or Look Who’s Master Now , but as with Kenneth Lonergan’s highly flawed theatrical cut of Margaret ******, it appears that most of this material needs not just elaboration, but a complete overhaul.
In the same way that the characters in Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret (2011) can be very easily read as representing aspects of the American psyche post-9/11, the characters of The Master similarly represent aspects of the American psyche post-World War II.
The reason why Lonergan needs a “Departed” of his own is that (as my colleague Rebecca Mead wrote, in her recent Profile of Lonergan for the magazine) his previous film, “ Margaret ,” which was released in 2011 and is among the best films of recent years, was, despite its critical acclaim, a commercial and professional disaster.
Lonergan has made two other classics, " You Can Count on Me " and "Margaret"; the latter was released to theaters in a butchered though still compelling version, so if you haven't seen it yet, watch the expanded cut, which is available on DVD and online.
Writer-director Lonergan, best known for 2000’s Oscar-nominated “You Can Count on Me” and the more recent “Margaret,” has a phenomenal ear for intimate, authentic dialogue, for how people really talk, not how movies think they do.
It’s only Lonergan’s third film after “You Can Count on Me” and “Margaret,” but it exhibits a level of artistry suggesting a master builder.
Manchester by the Sea sees him do just that as he teams up with Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count on Me, Margaret), a writer-director who suits Affleck Junior to a T with his blend of high drama, quirky characterisations and incidental detail.
Lonergan has demonstrated his ability as a writer through the years, going back to You Can Count on Me and continuing with Margaret, movies that also seem ordinary until you realize you’ve been thinking about them for weeks afterward (Laura Linney’s “You suck” to Mark Ruffalo in You Can Count on Me has to be one of the realest moments I’ve ever seen in a movie).