Kenneth Lonergan's MARGARET, starring Anna Paquin as a teenager in turmoil

that sounds like a terribly difficult watch, circa. my instinct was to argue w/you over the ratio of legal-minutiae/rapid-fire-tragedy, because for me the pairing of & dynamic between those was really powerful - how frustrating the labyrinth of irrelevant legal shit was, & the treatment of the relationship between a horrific accident & its dry, bureaucratic resolution, paired as if they were some kind of natural balance. the lightness of the circumstances in which the accident happened felt appropriate, to me, but i can't imagine watching it with any personal frame of reference, so.

so much time spent detailing legal minutiae while rapid fire tragedy is just casually flipped through

thought the stuff centered around the kids was a lot more compelling than most of the adult drama

^^^ on this. First half of the movie is pretty incredible, but thought that the Jean Reno-as-Snidely Whiplash subplot diluted what could have been pretty compelling.

http://d3j5vwomefv46c.cloudfront.net/photos/large/614281167.jpg?key=32641840&Expires=1347654835&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIYVGSUJFNRFZBBTA&Signature=nCaZAjwRartgT3wApzSPbSDAG95hyVgyjff1fPzsvv2A6PIQnp-unrmebBA2RrsUJZpVbzz8xxuz6S8-fL5MGmk7ISxDMFPTNYKOWDLRG~jwfvA7c7AkN9DxGCkvj7R9sx3QVnjfQZDOkQxYWhnd2dEue6JX0fCKT~rFDl8Sg78_

need to see this new edit

lol

whoa armed bus driver

extra half hour of footage in which it turns out ruffalo shot janney

wheres that pic from

"GREAT MOVIE"

No Transfer for Old Men

hahaha

I found this film maddening, tbh. There were interesting things about it

wheres that pic from

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i only watched it until just after the crash and thought it seemed almost inept. the crash itself was badly directed imo and i found the part where she was running beside the bus asking ruffalo where he got his cowboy hat kind of crass. i may return to it at some point.

ps i'm a huge fan of you can count on me.

i don't mean a crass thing for paquin's character to do but a crass thing for lonergan to do.

on the King Lear classroom scene:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/a-seemingly-superfluous-scene-says-a-lot-about-mar,85264/

i loved that scene, and found the student's take weird but interesting.

Saw the extended cut. Loved it, a beautiful mess. Not having seen the 2.5 hour version, I don't know what was cut, and there isn't much I could imagine cutting (would maybe lose the Matt Damon/abortion stuff, but obviously that stayed in the shorter version). Fave scene: Matthew Broderick (at his best when playing wearied teachers) arguing King Lear with a student while sipping from his juice box.

good portion of the abortion arc - less the involvement w/damon - is cut in the shorter version, fyi. that & some of the high-school theater, some of which i found a little much.

I loved the high school drama scene cause it was so high school.

It's time for end-of-year lists. Fresh Air movie critic David Edelstein stubbornly refuses to either place his top picks in numerical order or make his list an even number of 10. Instead, he places his 12 favorite films from 2012 in alphabetical order, from Amour to Zero Dark Thirty.

Of the 12 films he picked for 2012, not one, Edelstein says, would he call the "M"-word — a masterpiece. That designation he reserves for the new extended DVD cut of Kenneth Lonergan's film Margaret.

When he first saw that movie, Edelstein says, "I thought the first half was brilliant and the second half was a fiasco. Lonergan got hold of it. He extended it by at least 45 minutes. He clarified certain things. I think that the film that exists now on DVD is an absolutely bona fide masterpiece. The story of a young woman's moral and emotional coming of age, unlike I think any that we've seen on-screen in decades and decades. People must rent it or buy it. They must see it, but they must see the extended cut. It really is the greatest film of the year."

new Lonergan interview

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/feature/interview-kenneth-lonergan/343

When he first saw that movie, Edelstein says, "I thought the first half was brilliant and the second half was a fiasco. Lonergan got hold of it. He extended it by at least 45 minutes. He clarified certain things.

love the implied chronology of lonergan deferentially reacting to edelstein's tentative thumbs up

Should I track down the director's cut DVD instead of watching the 2:30 cut that's on HBO Go currently?

didn't love the director's cut

watch it though

I'd like to see it. It really turned some people around.

Prefer the longer cut

I just don't believe the people who think the director's cut suddenly turns it into a good movie or whatever. It's all there in the theatrical

Haven't seen the shorter version, but from what I've read, there's things in the longer cut that I couldn't imagine losing, so yeah, track down the directors cut.

short version is a masterpiece, need to get hold of long, before long

Saw the longer cut over the weekend and don't know which bits got cut - maybe some of the classroom debates? It probably is too long but I loved it anyway. Paquin gave one of the best portrayals of neurotic, reckless, self-dramatising adolescence I've ever seen. Incredible performance. Jeannie Berlin too. Their argument about Monica's dead daughter ("This is not an opera!") was the heart of the movie for me.

the only thing I thought that misfired completely in the last act was Jean Reno's resolution.

Morbs otm

the two big cuts that i can remember are the abortion scene and the play rehearsal/therapy session

Ah, thanks. I guess both could go without hurting the narrative but the play rehearsal is so important to the theme of adolescent navel-gazing. I love how Kieran Culkin's character finds all of it, and by extension everything that drives Lisa, just unnecessary hassle.

obv i'll never know what i would have thought w/out knowing the backstory but boy howdy could you tell they had a hard time putting this together.

can't really call it 100% successful but the things it does well it does amazingly well.

Watched this this morning (in one sitting, a miracle for me). I thought I was watching the extended version, but I guess the 150-minute cut is...what? longer than the theatrical, but shorter than the full thing? Very ambitious--the only recent American films I can think of with comparable sprawl are The Tree of Life and The Master. I liked Margaret better than either of those, flaws and all. Found the central dilemma fascinating; took the whole film, but was glad that Paquin finally verbalized her own complicity. The classroom scenes were great--as someone pointed out earlier, my favorite was Broderick's exasperation with the one student's Shakespeare interpretation (even though I think most any teacher would have welcomed the alternate reading). Paquin's confrontation with Ruffalo was excellent. Disagree with someone else upthread: I thought the big cathartic scene with Paquin and Berlin (while looking at pictures) was the film's most overwrought. Agree with Morbius that the Damon business at the end came out of left field and didn't really seem necessary. And I thought the ending was weak. But, already a big fan of You Can Count on Me, I hope Lonergan keeps aiming this high.

the theatrical was 150

I thought the big cathartic scene with Paquin and Berlin (while looking at pictures) was the film's most overwrought

i didnt read any catharsis there...

Yeah, I just checked and that was the theatrical. I hope I didn't miss an icon for the longer version on the DVD menu.

I know you were one a few people who found that scene to be the film's most important. It just seemed very shrill to me, and the kind of scene where people start screaming at each other because it's time for a scene where people start screaming at each other. But, going by this thread, I'm in the minority there.

Didn't they do something wacky with the release like put the theatrical cut on blu-ray and the extended one on dvd and released it as a DVD/Blu-ray combo?

yep thats what they did

That's actually what I thought I was renting--there were three little tags affixed to the shelf--but it seems I was given a DVD-only version. I wouldn't watch it again for the missing 36 minutes; I was able to glean a couple of things I missed from the posts above.

Rental dvds are theatrical cut-only, which I think is the only way that versin is availible in that format.

The Canadian combo pack said it contained both versions... but the blu-ray and dvd contained the same shorter version.

clemenza, have you been to NYC? We scream at each other a lot.

I checked the Blu ray out of the library not knowing about how it was packaged the film but only got the DVD. After finding out I'd watched the extended cut, I was happier for it.

(xpost) A couple of times, yes; no one screamed at me, possibly because everyone sensed I was from out of town.

I meant to mention what I thought was the funniest line in the film (paraphrasing from memory): Kieran Culkin's "Yeah, but we're gonna skip that for now and keep moving ahead." And I think my favorite performance, admittedly a small part, was Jeannie Berlin's lawyer friend.

Damn, I was trying to figure out where I'd seen Paquin's younger brother--as himself in Mad Hot Ballroom!

Just saw this last night, the extended version (which was the only one they had at the actual, physical video rental store we got it from). It's exceptional. Has anyone compared it to the Sweet Hereafter? Both are about bus accidents, both about about the decision a young female must make for her witness statement.

I saw whatever version was on HBO and really liked it.

such a perfect movie for HBO - lots of stars, episodic, easy to get sucked in if you're flipping by, starring Anna Paquin as a young Lena Dunham