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.

Dog Day Afternoon: Hot Day with Some Hot Temperaments

After a long career in movies, the great director Sidney Lumet passed away on April 9th this year. A director of a unique filmmaker that combined documentary style with a true understanding of the power of the script and performers, Mr. Lumet made a number of masterpieces, including 12 Angry Men, Network, and The Verdict. This reprint of an essay I wrote in 2009 revisits perhaps the best film Mr. Lumet directed, Dog Day Afternoon.

I recently sat down with one of my very good friends to rewatch Dog Day Afternoon, the 1975 thriller about a Brooklyn bank heist gone wrong starring Al Pacino and directed by Sidney Lumet. I had chose the film because my friend often remarks that his favorite film is Spike Lee’s 2006 bank thriller Inside Man, which has many homages to Dog Day Afternoon. But as I watched the film again, something struck me that the films had more than a ban heist at their core—both films are about the control and taking of power. Who has power? How does power switch? What are the tools of power?

Dog Day Afternoon is truly one of the greatest films to come out of the 1970s. With its authentic Brooklyn location and utter intensity, not a single false moment rings through the film. The film opens with a montage of shots of Brooklyn in all its detestable glory. The town is dirty—dogs roam the street, trash is everywhere. Also look at how Lumet chooses the shoot these scenes—he gives us a horizontal New York. Think about the opening shots of Robert Wise’s West Side Story—those high vertical shots that give such a structure of power. Lumet puts us right into the action, the real New York where people actually have to live and work.