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Tuesday, July 10, 2012

BLU-RAY REVIEW
Margaret (Extended Cut)
Gulf In Generations, Anguish In Voices, Cries For Justice

J. Smith-Cameron (center) as Joan and Anna Paquin as Lisa in Kenneth Lonergan's epic New York City drama "Margaret".  Myles Aronowitz/Fox Searchlight Pictures
    
by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW                                           
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Kenneth Lonergan's "Margaret" arrived today on Blu-Ray and DVD, an event that will go unheralded compared to next week's theatrical release of "The Dark Knight Rises", but Mr. Lonergan's epic drama -- as dramatic off-screen for the director as on -- is a piece of brilliance waiting to be seen by cineastes thirsting for adult moral drama at its finest.  Anna Paquin fans won't see a better performance from her; her role as Lisa Cohen, an exacting, melodramatic and righteous 17-year-old high school student transitioning to adulthood, is a masterstroke.

Filmed in 2005 and finally completed (at least production-wise) in 2008 before additional years of editing, "Margaret" is named for the young girl in Gerald Manley Hopkins' 1880 poem Spring And Fall: To A Young Child, a poem illustrating that life through an innocent minor's eyes is pitied and tragic, soon to become jaded, blunt and all-too adult.  Lisa feels as responsible as anyone for a horrific accident on the Upper West Side.  As resolutely open and emotionally expressive as Mr. Hopkins' poems, the smart and astute Lisa adopts adult traits even before she's ready to as she eyes the offending bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) who has run a fateful red light.  Lisa's guilt is palpable, and Mr. Lonergan amps up the anguish in her world.  Lisa forges a partnership with the affected Emily (a great Jeannie Berlin) to make sure the driver is held accountable for his actions.

Mr. Lonergan's three-hour and six minute extended cut is sheer opera: set on a New York City stage it's where teenage certainty and rectitude collide with adult lies and abruptness.  It's audacious fairy tale versus finite haunting reality.  Everyone in life has their "drama" -- every character onscreen has a theatrical moment -- and even in its original, undisciplined long form complete with audio drops, awkward sound mixes, mismatched soundtrack and hard scene transitions "Margaret" works so much better than even Mr. Lonergan himself might have hoped.  The ambient noise: a cacophony of chattering voices -- exactly what you'd hear in real life as you walk streets but not typically hear in a film -- immerse us in the film's busy theater of sound. 

New York City is always present: in apartment building windows, in diners and on sidewalks.  Mr. Lonergan is acutely aware of the New Yorkers-as-audience around the characters, and "Margaret" is calculated in such a fashion as to tailor itself to the fact that in that fine city its denizens literally are in very close proximity on any given sidewalk.  Mr. Lonergan has a keen ear for the city and characters that flow through it.  Amidst the incisive parsing of words and semantics the director steeps his film in the power of language and speech.  There are interruptions, misunderstandings, explanations, crosstalk and lots of impatience.  Cinematographer Ryszard Lenczewski takes ample time to absorb views of Manhattan's skyline and tall buildings, often framing them as dwarfing companions to the humans who front and wade amongst and around them.

Often biting, cruel and harsh, the dialogue between Lisa, a stage production assistant, and her award-winning stage-actress mother Joan (an excellent J. Smith-Cameron) highlights the inherent tensions between teenagers and adults.  In "Margaret" who is the "adult" and who is the "child" often shifts even when two characters on screen at any time are either both adults or children.  Each world intrudes rudely upon the other, co-existing uneasily.  Even when heated, intense arguments occur in Lisa's class about 9/11/2001 adults are conspicuous by their very absence (save for two moderating teachers.)  Very few people in "Margaret" seem to do any serious listening to each other even as there are continuous advisories by some to do so.

Adults in "Margaret" have abundant contempt for minors and vice versa.  There's shouting, cursing, screaming and put-downs: verbal sparring at its best.  None of it is idle.  There's context, irony, contradiction, elucidation in the characters and a maturity about the material Mr. Lonergan writes that is authentic, finely observed and intelligently orchestrated.  Every action of a character has deeper meaning, every expression and specific etymological and literal construction resonates.  It's thought dialogue: each spoken sentence makes you think.  Each bit of spoken interaction between players operates as part of a play, a prologue or introduction in its own right. 

Lisa searches for meaning in her dialogue with adults, especially her mother whom she has a volatile relationship with.  Joan and Lisa are very much alike; they could be said to be mirror images of each other, separated by a generation or two.  The film's operatic climax is a consummation or closing, if you will, of the gulf between them.  At all times "Margaret" is alive with an emotional and literal fervor that's fascinating.

On Blu-Ray Mr. Lonergan's theatrical edition of "Margaret" (at two hours and 30 minutes) is sharp, rich and very much alive.  The disc has its standard high-definition and widescreen (1.85:1) but no special features, although a separate DVD disc contains the extended cut -- a special feature all its own -- in 5.1 audio.  The great extended edition is a film that is searching for itself: unwinding, long takes, short takes, ephemeral scenes, messy, junky -- but gloriously bold and beautiful in its unwieldiness.  There's no getting away from it: "Margaret" is an excellent, well-acted film, and a profound triumph.  I hope audiences take a good hard look at it.  "Margaret" is one of the best films you've never seen.

At its core the extended cut of "Margaret" (as well as last September's theatrical edition) is about the death of innocence and the transition from idealism to intransigence and inflexibility.  It is fitting that the victim of the very realistic-looking bus accident says to Lisa that the name of her own daughter is Lisa (whom it turns out had died years earlier).  The utterance is a metaphor for the kind of foreshadowing that Shakespeare himself engineered so well: Lisa has seen her own "death" literally flash before her very eyes, and spends the rest of the film agonizing over it and mourning it, no matter how sincerely invested she is in achieving justice. 

Also with: Jean Reno, Kenneth Lonergan, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Betsy Aidem, Matthew Broderick, Kieran Culkin, John Gallagher Jr., Jonathan Hadary, Hina Abdullah, Sarah Steele, Olivia Thirlby, Michael Ealy, Alison Janney, Rosemarie DeWitt.

 The extended edition of "Margaret" is not rated by the Motion Picture Association Of America.  Its aforementioned running time: three hours and six minutes.  The theatrical edition (Blu-Ray) is rated R by the MPAA for strong language, sexuality, some drug use and disturbing images.  The film's running time is two hours and 30 minutes. 

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