Extending "Margaret"

            In Kenneth Lonergan’s play The Starry Messenger, Matthew Broderick’s character comments, “"Opera treats every human life as a tremendous event, a gigantic drama, something of monumental importance, which is why opera is ridiculous, and why it’s true.” And what better way to describe how Lisa, the protagonist of Lonergan’s Margaret, sees her life. Witness to, and partially the cause of, a woman’s accidental death by a bus, Lisa sees and experiences the world around her in a search for meaning. She is the protagonist of her world (and our’s by the fact the film follows her). Her self-awareness constantly rivals her naiveté, and as the strings and voices of Don Giovanni and the Tales of Hoffman echo throughout the score, we see Lisa attempt to navigate the land of 25 million, each with their own story.

            Yes, this is that film Margaret. The one I have written about on every occasion possible (and tweeted about much more). And finally, last night at a special screening in New York (and a DVD release today), Lonergan’s Margaret has arrived in a longer, alternate cut. Lonergan has not claimed this “Extended Edition” to be his director’s cut, instead advocating both cuts. I certainly agree, this new Margaret is richer and deeper, often much more avant-garde in its attempts to create and deconstruct the idea of a personal epic. But it’s also even messier than before, though much of it seems again the product of “not enough time” (It was explained before the screening that is was very much a work print cut that had not been mastered or finalized, but was as close as they were going to come).

Screening Log: Before #TeamMargaret Edition

         Another good week at the movies, cut short by a couple of issues. I must discuss one disappointment, however. On Thursday, I was excited to head down to Anthology Film Archives to see The Candidate, a classic 1970s political film with Robert Redford that has eluded me so far. That was until critic and film programmer C. Mason Welles posted to Twitter that Anthology had scraped the 35mm for a projected DVD. Not caring to pay to watch a projection of bad quality, I skipped out (the same thing happened to Kenji Fujishima in seeing Face to Face at Film Society this week). Next week, I’ll be discussing Film Forum’s “This is DCP” series, which is far different than just a projected DVD, but the increasing scarcity of 35mm is no longer an impending threat for the future. It’s here folks. 

Also worth reading: Andrew Welch, a fellow critic down in Dallas, wrote a small piece on why he doesn't like No Country for Old Men and thinks it's one where Oscar got it "wrong." I responded in the comments; both are worth a read.

If you wondering where any of my Oscar coverage is, I'll be tweeting throughout the night while drowning myself in wine. My one hope is that the dinosaurs from Tree of Life decide to go by the way of nature and smash Uggie's poor head in.

Anyways, onto the log, which includes one theatrical performance as well.

-You Can Count On Me, 2000: Directed By Kenneth Lonergan. Online Streaming Via Netflix Instant.

-Life is Sweet, 1990: Directed By Mike Leigh. 35mm Screening at Film Society of Lincoln Center.

-Track of the Cat, 1954: Directed By William Wellman. 35mm Screening at Film Forum.

-Westward the Women, 1951: Directed By William Wellman. 35mm Screening at Film Forum.

-Richard III, 2012: Directed By Sam Mendes and the Bridge Theater Project. Performed at the Harvey Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

-The Tree of Life, 2011. Directed By Terrence Malick. Blu-Ray on HDTV.

My Oscar Ballot: 2012 Edition

Certified Copy

While everyone gets hyped up about tomorrow morning’s Academy Award nominations, I could probably be less interested this year. While Oscar pundits get excited over some of the middling films that will populate the lists tomorrow, I’m hoping that some years down the roads, the films that dominate my own top films list will become cherished classics. For fun, I’ve submitted my own ballot, following the style of the Academy Awards (ten films ranked for Best Picture, five nominations for all other categories). I’ve presented it without comment—again, go to my top 15 list for commentary on most of these picks.

Best Picture

1.      Certified Copy

2.      Martha Marcy May Marlene

3.      A Separation

4.      Meek’s Cutoff

5.      The Interrupters

6.      Margaret

7.      Mysteries of Lisbon

8.      Take Shelter

9.      Tuesday, After Christmas

10.    The Tree of Life

Best Director

·         Sean Durkin, Martha Marcy May Marlene

·         Asghar Farhadi, A Separation

·         Abba Kiraostami, Certified Copy

·         Kelly Reichardt, Meek’s Cutoff

·         Raúl Ruiz, Mysteries of Lisbon

Best Actor

·         Woody Harrelson, Rampart

·         Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

·         Brad Pitt, Moneyball

·         Peyman Moaadi, A Separation

·         Michael Shannon, Take Shelter

Best Actress

·         Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy

·         Kirstin Dunst, Melancholia

·         Elizabeth Olson, Martha Marcy May Marlene

·         Anna Paquin, Margaret

·         Kristin Wiig, Bridesmaids

This Is The End: The Best Films of 2011

            In probably the pitch-perfect cinematic moment of the 2011, Curtis, the tall and constantly in-check protagonist of Take Shelter, watches lighting dance across the sky while his wife and daughter sleep in the back of the car. “Is anyone else seeing this?” he exclaims. If this is the end, we need to know we’re not the only ones out there realizing the world is about the change.

            Which is perhaps what all these apocalyptic films—Margin Call (fiscal), Contagion (viral), Rise of the Planet of the Apes (special), and Melancholia (literal)—are all about. Even if we’re prepared to face the end, we can’t do it alone. We need to be sure of who we are and understand ourselves, which is why so many films not specifically about the end are about the minor apocalypses within our lives. The strange protagonist of Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In must come to terms with a completely new identity. Werner Herzog explored both the birth of spiritual life (Cave of Forgotten Dreams) and the end of an actual life (Into the Abyss). Attack the Block gave us teenagers who must redeem themselves and their way of life by defeating forces greater than our world. And so many films explored the state of the family and the trials and often failure resulting in those who cannot manage it: A Separation, The Descendants, Take Shelter, Margaret. Apocalypse isn’t about the end of the world, as the idiotic villain (Michael Nyqvist) from Mission Impossible — Ghost Protocol lectures. It’s about what comes after, which is why so many films have focused on our uncertainty to face something new.

            It was also a ridiculously excellent year for film, easily the best since I started writing in 2004. Perhaps not in the Hollywood sphere, where mainstream cinema continues to lead down a series of franchise reboots and post-3D conversions, as much as in the independent and world cinema. This year was simply impossible to narrow down to the best films of the year, and deciding where to stop (20? 25? 40?) made the usual business of top 10s even harder. I decided on 15 films, and any of the top six or seven would have probably been my #1 film last year, showing the quality of excellent cinema today, as long as you know where to find it.

            So for honorable mentions, any of these could have made the top 15 on a different day: The Arbor, Bridesmaids, City of Life and Death, Contagion, Coriolanus, Film Socialisme, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, The Ides of March, Jane Eyre, J. Edgar, Of Gods and Men, Melancholia, Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, Moneyball, Pina, Project Nim, The Skin I Live In, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and War Horse.

Margaret and the Dragon Tattoo: Or Recent Going-Ons in Film Criticism

            Two big stories relating to film critics are once again bringing up questions about the role of film criticism today. Because the world needs another piece on the state of film criticism, I found this a most dire subject to write on, though I think one story highlights the other, so bear with me. The two stories individually have been getting a lot of notoriety, one for its complete idiocy and the other for its idealistic advocacy. I’ll start with the more banal story first.

            If you picked up a New Yorker yesterday and flipped to the movie section, you may have read David Denby’s review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the highly anticipated adaptation of the Stieg Larson novel from Social Network director David Fincher and produced by Scott Rudin. In publishing the review, however, Denby broke perhaps the one big rule film critics have to follow: don’t publish your reviews until the studio says so, a so-called “embargo.” A series of emails, published by The Playlist, follow the back and forth between Denby and Rudin, which highlight the triviality on both sides. 

            To be frank, the whole thing feels like a schoolyard dick-measuring contest. But Rudin’s point to Denby that the film “has been badly damaged” by the early review is something to really scoff at. When you have a huge blockbuster like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, one knows people are going to go to it, whether or not reviews are good. How many teenage girls decided to skip out on Twilight: Breaking Dawn because David Edelstein gave it a middling review? Embargos on films let studios control the press on their films to give it the most exposure, but when it comes to a film that is going to be plastered on billboards everywhere, Rudin’s anger seems misplaced. 

            However, that doesn’t mean film critics don’t have their place, which brings me to the story of Margaret, Kenneth Lonergan’s ambitious masterpiece that came and went without much notice when released in September. Because of the film’s legal troubles, the distributor, Fox Searchlight more or less dumped the film, while the few major trades that did review somewhat dismissed it. But soon, other critics—Ben Keningsberg, Alison Wilmore, Matt Singer, Richard Brody, and Glenn Kenny, among others—caught up with it during its release and herald it a masterpiece, or at least something of merit worth more than two weeks and little advertizing. I managed to catch up with it during the second-to-last day of its theatrical release and went particularly over the moon as well.

            As Margaret disappeared from existence, however, #teammargaret, a Twitter hashtag to fight for the film’s existence was born. The whole thing played like an inside joke for film critics until last week, on the eve of the film’s UK release. With raves coming from London film critics, including a pair of five star reviews from The Guardian and The Telegraph, Slant film critic Jamie Christley launched a petition to Fox Searchlight to get the film back in discussion by making the film accessible for critics for their end-of-year awards. While that doesn’t necessarily help people who don’t get press invites, the wave of buzz led to staggering numbers in the United Kingdom--The Guardian reports a weekend gross of £4,595 ($7,170). “That number gave Margaret the highest screen average of any film on release, by some margin. This, despite the film only receiving one evening showtime per day (at 8pm), due to its hefty duration of 150 minutes.” Next weekend, Searchlight has decided to expand the film to ten screens in the UK, which rivals the entire number of screens it played in the United States.

Margaret: Now No Matter Child, The Name, Sorrow's Springs Are The Same

Margaret

Written and Directed By: Kenneth Lonergan

Starring: Anna Paquin, J. Smith-Cameron, Jeannie Berlin, Jean Reno, Allison Janey, Kieran Culkin, Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, John Gallagher Jr., Rosemarie DeWitt, Matthew Broderick, Hina Abdullah, Kenneth Lonergan, Michael Ealy, and Krystin Ritter.

Director of Photography: Ryszard Lenczewski, Editor: Anne McCabe, Production Designer: Dan Leigh, Original Music: Nico Muhly

Rated: R for language, sex, drugs, and a bit of violence.

            The key scene in Margaret, an epic yet personal drama of trauma and grief in New York City, involves a class discussion of a poignant line from Shakespeare’s King Lear. The teacher (Matthew Broderick) asks for an interpretation of the line “As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods.” A couple of students give the usual interpretation: our lives might seem important to us, but perhaps in a greater scheme of things, we are nothing. But one student disagrees. If we are nothing to the gods, then why do they give us so much attention? Perhaps we are more, he demands. But the teacher won’t have it, “A number of scholars,” he decrees, “Have confirmed this interpretation.” “But why?” the student fights back, as if he’s fighting for his life. Why must our lives be so small and so feeble in the large scheme of things?

            It’s one of a dozen bravura scenes in the second feature by Kenneth Lonergan, who made a splash in 2000 with his drama You Can Count On Me. You may note the 11 year gap, and if you see Margaret (which Fox Searchlight has quietly shoved into theaters as quickly and quietly as possible), you may notice how young stars like Anna Paquin and Matt Damon look. Mr. Lonergan shot this messy drama back in 2005, with a contractual obligation to bring the film in at two and a half hours. For years, he struggled to find the right cut, and things got messy with two lawsuits, and even Martin Scorsese coming in to help him find that perfect cut. After years of battle, Mr. Lonergan has finally, unsatisfactory, found a cut that runs in the legal running time, though perhaps not his final vision. And it’s a shame, because as messy and disjointed as Margaret is, it’s a fascinating deeply confused film about the loss of innocence and the transformation of guilt.