Movie Blog: 'Margaret's Meandering Is Pretty, Annoying

You might have heard of Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret due to its tricky and lengthy delivery.

It was supposed to be released in 2007, but Lonergan couldn't cut his baby down to the 150 minuets the studio (Fox Searchlight Pictures) wanted. Instead, the director wrestled with a version that could be called epic – comparable in length to any of the Lord of The Rings films.

After years of delays, the movie finally found its form after Martin Scorsese helped slim it down to 150 minutes. Lonergan approved of Scorsese's cut, and left us with something of a hot, mascara-streaked mess.

However, this is not to say the movie is bad, or even sloppy. The acting is strong and provocative, the writing is solid, although some scenes nosedive into semantics, and the cinematography is fine. It's just the way the story and the movie's length combine into some Megazord of teenage melodrama; that's the crux from which my issues with Margaret stem.

At first, everything seems ripe for drama. We meet Lisa, a smart, sassy, just-so-sexy NYC high school student played by Anna Paquin. While in a quest for a cowgirl hat, she comes across a bus driver wearing one. Lisa tries to get the man's attention so that he might tell her where to find one. She succeeds. In response, the bus driver attempts to answer Lisa's friendly and somewhat flirty entreaties by letting his attention to traffic slide. A street light turns red. The bus runs through it. Lisa lifts her hands to her mouth as a woman's leg is torn from her torso by the tires.

Lisa rushes to help the wounded pedestrian. She holds the woman's head in her arms as the woman bleeds and breathes her last. In the confusion of her final moments, the woman mistakes Lisa for her daughter, whose name is also Lisa. The coincidence forms a deep attachment in Lisa to the incident and the woman.

Strangely, however, Lisa lies to the police, saying that the woman walked against traffic, that the light was still green when the bus hit her. Her testimony, which she later alters, helps close the case, but Lisa becomes deeply troubled by the fact that no one takes responsibility for the woman's senseless death -- an event she contributed to causing.

What starts as sweet and refreshing just gets steeped too long. The hot water goes cold, and after an hour and-a-half goes by, you wonder how to stomach the festering flavor.

In an attempt to give the woman's death some meaning, Lisa and one of the woman's friends try to get the bus driver fired. What ensues is messy and somewhat boring legal process full of tears and arguments and minor self-discoveries. For some, this must sound like a perfect, modern drama. For me, Margaret was hopelessly frustrating, and I hated everybody by the end (except for Jean Reno's worldly and romantic relief character).

I even ended up hating Matt Damon's character -- a math teacher who hails from the Midwest. He tries to help Lisa because (as you might guess) no one can understand her. Before her handsome listener, Lisa removes her emotional armor and (as you also might guess) other items. But not much comes of it. Lisa, despite her intelligence and determination, can't put things in perspective.

She engages in meaningless (and pretty hilarious/awkward) sex; she explodes at classmates when anything comes up regarding terrorism; she breaks the heart of a tender and funny classmate who actually likes her; she does some experimenting with drugs; she drives her caring-but-busy mother crazy; she is just hard to watch for two-and-half hours.

To be fair, Paquin plays Lisa with verve and explosive power. Lonergan also peppers the narrative with lovely touches – especially the part where Lisa cleanses herself of blood in the shower. Unfortunately, such moments are sprinkled in quite sparingly. I wonder if the project might have worked better as a novel.

One last thing: I also found the title annoying. It comes from a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem titled "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child." It's hardly memorable, and I find it just makes the movie snobby in a literary way.

Check out Margaret if you want to see a movie that almost never got out its creator's hands or if you want to get mad at a teenager who thinks she has all the answers – it's almost fun, really.

Margaret is playing at St. Anthony Main. It's rated R.