matt hurst
After hearing of the lawsuit that delayed this film's release for 4 years, I was intrigued. The director claimed to have been granted the final say on the film's cut, but the studio was not having it. Another Alien 3, where studio mettling adversely altered the final product? No, not at all. This is just a very bad film.90% of the scenes are conversations filmed in shot reverse shot. These conversations also retread the same subject matter constantly. The other 10% are shots of the NYC skyline with opera music playing. This is not a viable method to give a vapid movie substance. I watched the 3 hour extended cut, and felt every second of its run time.Also worth mentioning are the two extended cameos by the director where he has meaningless conversations with the protagonist (I saw this as if there was a plot) over the telephone.There is absolutely nothing to be gleaned from watching this. There is no underlying message or any substance to speak of. Avoid it like the plague.
Michael Radny
Margaret is a sad and darkly compelling story which situates on a teenage girls difficult struggle to come to terms with her lies and post-traumatic stress of a grueling accident. It's beautifully shot, terrifically acted and told in such a sophisticated way that makes you glue your eyes to the screen and makes it feel like it's two hour plus runtime is under an hour. The story itself has little faults, only being too smart for its own good, drawing out its runtime with a few mindless fillers. Margaret does a brilliant job of captivating the audience that I can't help feel why this film slipped under my radar for such a long time. A fantastic cult gem that makes indie films get a good name.
tedg
Okay, I've been through both edits of this now, after recommendations from several readers. I get what he is trying to do. I am writing as someone who prefers the Cannes edit of Brown bunny and who eagerly sat through 3 1/2 hours of The Falls.I think this is a failure, a failure is the sense that the filmmaker had ambitions that may have been unachievable. What he wanted, I think is to have two films merged. One that carried a narrative that mattered and conveyed transformation. And another that conveyed situation, and not just surroundings but an environment that collectively has agency of the same power. You have to see both edits to see this man's struggle; you can compress the first of these because we have all sorts of narrative enzymes in our digestive system. We can fill in things and often are better off with less.It is also the case that you can make an environmental movie with scant narrative. Greenaway does it all the time. Ruiz. Kar-Wai Wong. And if you are willing to have a smaller, more engaged audience, this is achievable in 150 minutes. What Lonergan wanted to do was to have both and have each drive the other. Moreover, he placed himself and his wife as the contacts, a dual fulcrum between the two.There are so many dynamics that are necessary to bind this, to make all the parts affect each other the way he designed that taking any one out ruins the structure. If you did not know his ambition, a viewer would hardly see anything wrong. The Paquin character is great, as are the surrounding actors. The city, the tone, the environment is as richly presented as the best Woody Allen Manhattan-anchored movie. But the environment does not have the coherent agency it needs to do what he clearly intended.I think we have to have a much longer version than 3 hours to accomplish what he attempted. But gosh, the ambition is admirable and all the pieces I can see are amazingly promising. It is no wonder that first rate talent was eager to participate.
stock-1
After a long sit through, i finished watching, and I must thank the director for his courage to release this to the theater. It's sometimes very slow pace seems to have become outlawed these days. Also thanks for the very beautiful snippets of top class opera. Well actually we should thank Mr. Jean Reno for this to happen. So please be advised and take to heart that when a man like Reno has to ponder something about Palestine, Israel and the jews, as a jewisch citizen of New York with an apartment looking down at Central Park, at least try to be a humble person instead of throwing wine on his nice suit. This can be most damaging to the heart for a man like Reno and where he is coming from. And indeed the next day Reno had a heart attack and the funeral thereafter. You simply don't treat people like this. It reminds me of that Russian mob boss who in rage killed his own chef and the next day is forced to have dinner out. The movie certainly has struck a nerve of recent days and times, when Lisa tries to tell her story in good faith, she is only heading for trouble and gets kicked out, She even gets expelled from class when yet another baseless discussion row is started with her class mate from Syria. Margaret is a very nice shot movie about a young jewisch girl triggered into teenage trouble by being a first responder witness to a traumatic bus accident.
AD
