Cast: Anna Paquin, Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo
Director: Kenneth Lonergan
Country: USA
Genre: Drama
Official Trailer: Here
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
French: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Editor’s Notes: Margaret was released on July 10th on DVD and Blu Ray by Fox Searchlight.
Margaret is something of a time capsule. Shot and originally scheduled for a release in 2007, director Kenneth Lonergan struggled for years in the editing booth to find a cut he was satisfied with, leading to multiple lawsuits that delayed the release of the film even further. Four years later, the film was quietly released in the fall of 2011 in a 150-minute cut that Fox Searchlight demanded he trim the film down to. Unfortunately, the scars of the lengthy post-production hell the film went through are apparent in the theatrical cut. The editing is choppy at best, and while certain sections, particularly in the first 100 minutes, benefit from it, the last 50 suffer greatly and stunt the impact of the film. The script, direction, and performances are firing on all cylinders, but the film becomes something of a beautiful mess in this rendition of it. The good news is that for this Blu-Ray release, Fox Searchlight saw fit to release an extra DVD disc with the film that houses the long awaited extended cut. Running at 186 minutes, this cut was apparently closer to Lonergan’s original vision. The result is something of a masterpiece.
…Fox Searchlight saw fit to release an extra DVD disc with the film that houses the long awaited extended cut. Running at 186 minutes, this cut was apparently closer to Lonergan’s original vision. The result is something of a masterpiece.
The film chronicles Lisa Cohen, a teenager in New York who witnesses a terrible bus accident that she played a crucial role in, and spends the better part of a year trying to come to terms with what transpired. While this sounds limited in scope, the film is anything but. Episodic, sprawling, and ultimately transcendent, Lonergan’s film is the kind of once-in-a-generation distillation of an era. Unlike most films that have attempted to capture the post-911 American state of mind, the film isn’t overtly dealing with those things. Instead, we simply observe and absorb the way a people move through the city and interact in their daily lives. The story is centered on Lisa, but this is truly a movie about Manhattan. She’s the anchor that holds this lofty tale down, and even she isn’t apparently stable enough to do it all by herself.
Beautifully acted, the film is a true ensemble piece of the highest caliber. Anna Paquin embodies the insufferable teenager just trying to make sense of her own self while being thrust into the real world and asked to deal with the harsh, cold realities of it. Veterans like Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, Matthew Broderick, and Jeannie Berlin all make great use of their smaller roles, none of them attempting to hog the spotlight, just offering honest, down to earth portrayals of real people. But it’s J. Smith Cameron who truly owns the film in a raw, unforgettable portrait of a single mother just trying to understand her daughter while attempting to live her own life. Never missing a beat, Cameron is the heart and soul of the story, and had the film gotten a proper release, she would’ve easily been in contention for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
Never missing a beat, Cameron is the heart and soul of the story, and had the film gotten a proper release, she would’ve easily been in contention for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
What initially struck me about the extended cut was just how much breathing room the story is allowed in the 186-minute running time. Usually, that kind of length is reserved for films of grander scale. But Margaret has all the scope and ambition of a historical epic and then some. Tackling the mindset of a post-9/11 world, the script touches on so many ideas that it’s a wonder none of it feels force-fed at all. How do we deal with senseless tragedy when there’s no one to blame? Who can we trust? What is and isn’t ok for us to say? Margaret takes its time exploring all these ideas and more, in an organic and ambitious way rarely seen in American cinema these days. The film isn’t looking to make you feel one way or another about anything. It isn’t trying to be a tearjerker or socio-political analysis, it simply aims for truthful storytelling, and it delivers in spades.
Fox Searchlight’s Blu-Ray package for Margaret contains no supplemental features whatsoever, just the DVD copy of the extended cut. The picture and sound quality is solid, on the Blu-Ray, but nothing to write home about. The extended cut is only available on the DVD copy, which is unfortunate, because it looks and sounds really rough in that format. While it’s great that Fox even saw fit to let this see the light of day, films like this are why the Criterion Collection exists: to take on releases even the film’s distributor doesn’t want to touch. Ultimately though, it’s just great that we even have the two cuts available, albeit as an Amazon exclusive, so that fans can watch and decide which cut they prefer. Highly recommended on the strength of the film alone.
[notification type=”star”]95/100 ~ AMAZING. Margaret takes its time exploring all these ideas and more, in an organic and ambitious way rarely seen in American cinema these days. The film isn’t looking to make you feel one way or another about anything. It isn’t trying to be a tearjerker or socio-political analysis, it simply aims for truthful storytelling, and it delivers in spades.[/notification]
