Margaret

dir. Kenneth Lonergan (2011) USA.

Margaret 

To a young child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1880

The child addressed in Hopkins’ poem inspires the compelling nature of this unusual film, shot in 2006, scheduled for 2007 and controversially only released at the very end of 2011. The youngster in the poem is chastised for making an opera out of childish things and warned of the real grief she will later encounter.

The story’s lead character (hysterical, broken, enchanting Anna Paquin) is in fact named Lisa, not Margaret. This is the first of many subtleties Lonergan (who plays a supporting role as Lisa’s distant father) has nailed. He knows not to patronise the spectator, and within a trajectory that unapologetically launches upon us a turbulent tsunami of hormones and controversy, not once are we spoon fed the details. The script is witty and beautiful and clever, the kind many writers could learn from. It includes toe-curlingly frank dialogues between parent and child, between student and teacher, between strangers. Without divulging too much to someone who is yet to see the film, Margaret is the story of the repercussions of a horrific accident which Lisa feels somewhat responsible for; it details devastating catastrophe that turns the stomach and heart and seizes one’s attention for 150 arresting minutes.

And yet, rapturous as audiences have found the film, its release almost never happened due to the multiple producers’ disagreements over final cuts and edits. Miraculously, after years of legal proceedings and even a global ‘Team Margaret’ campaign started up by audiences desperate to see Lonergan’s follow up to 2000’s You Can Count On Me.And as it turns out, Margaret lives up to its bizarre drumroll of six years. Paquin alone is as beguiling they come. She forces you to feel both livid and empathetic with Lisa. Her performance is one of absolute mastery.

Lisa’s high school English teacher (sweet, amiable, awkward Matthew Broderick) bears a fascinating contrast with her Maths one (suave, young, dashing Matt Damon). Though it is the former who brings Hopkins’ chilling title poem to the attention of the her class, the approachability and virility of the latter appeals to Lisa, seeking intimacy from an experienced elders as she struggles to enter the adulthood she perhaps was on the brink of before the accident. The relationship with her mother is also daring in its honesty and complexity, and reaching its zenith in a in a tender moment shared (fittingly) at the New York opera. On the subject of the film’s Manhattan location, it seemed one of so few tales set in the city that really could only unfold there. The city that poses such agoraphobia for an individual so ironically desperate to connect with all around her is captured to look threatening, smothering and too busy to listen. The film was made in the aftermath of 9/11.

The unexpectedly jarring experience that was Margaret left me feeling emotionally wrought, pondering upon my own mortality and most of all, eternally grateful that the studio lawsuits were settled and Lonergan’s magnum opus has been brought to the fore.

Margaret is showing at Odeon Panton Street until next week.