Margaret

source: Margaret

I don't know where to begin except WHAT were Matt Damon, Mathew Broderick and Jean Reno doing being attached to this film? Very little made sense here.. WAY too dramatic in some ugly ways. If your a pre-teen who can appreciate every single emotion 'vexed' out on this film - perhaps you will find something useful here. In my view, not one female actress had anything positive or pleasant about their character. The idealism of the young girl didn't count as something positive considering the rest of her character. I felt like I was experiencing a real bad day at work (the kind you can't even imagine) with ALL the female employees having "that time" - at the SAME time - for the majority of the film! This film is definitely not an escape from reality - so if your going to approach some "issues" - do the majority today really watch movies to enjoy THIS kind of reality? I'm sure they made a real effort but imho - just another case of how badly Hollywood tries to reach some 'uber-level' of a 'discussion of moral clarity/levity' and yet fails. Or has this truly become our 'new reality' and the pulse of the nation really is this messed up? I really hope not.. Hollywood is FAST losing the pulse of the nation with fewer and fewer truly 'good' movies imo - apparently ever since corporate heads took over more control from the lead artists (whether or not that is the case here). This was painful to watch - just spare yourself the headache I received...I've already spent too much time with this... On a positive note - of course the acting of the aforementioned male leads was credible - especially Jean Reno.

Here's a description of the entire movie in 3 sentences: High school girl distracts bus driver, who runs someone over. She then spends the rest of the movie arguing with everyone about nothing, and generally being an asshole. You have a choice between putting up with this for 2 1/2 hours, or 3 hours, depending on which cut you're watching. Seriously, how could this movie get any stars, much less accolades of "Masterpiece!" and "Brilliant!"? It's boring as hell and is like reliving all of the worst, most aggravating, most awkward and banal parts of being a teenager, with none of the good parts to break up the monotony. The accident scene is the best in the movie. It's highly dramatic and full of feeling. Once that scene is over, just do yourself a favor and turn the movie off. There is no exploration of the main character's feelings about the accident, no personal crisis, no self-realization. She just goes on with her life, except now she's more of a pain in the ass. If you just can't pass that up, you could experience the drama yourself by picking a fight with your own kids, and at least that would be more entertaining and relevant than watching Anna Paquin do it. And don't get me wrong, I like Anna Paquin. But as star-studded as this cast is, nothing can save it from the fact that this movie just isn't about anything. Some reviewers wrote that it's an accurate portrayal of life as it is--well, who wants to watch that?! Why don't I set up a video camera in my living room and people can watch 3 hours of me playing video games, talking on the phone and scratching my butt? I'm sure that would be very lifelike and realistic too, but frankly, most of life doesn't make a good story---and neither does this movie.

As was so ably and succinctly said elsewhere "Margaret is nothing more than a character study of a stereotypically hostile, obnoxious teenager." Anna Paquin's acting is brilliant inasmuch as she portrays a "stereotypically hostile, obnoxious teenager" flawlessly. Personally, I couldn't stand Lisa -- the character she portrays. A self-obsessed, shallow, hormonal teenager boring us all to death with her "issues" does not a fun film make. One and a half hours I'll never get back but as that was more than enough time to spend in the horrible Lisa's company and the fact that the film is a turgid two and a half hours long then I'm one hour up. A result of sorts! It's a horrible film with talented actors squandering said talent on utter garbage. I hope Anna's career doesn't stall as a result. She deserves so much better.

If Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret, his first film since You Can Count on Me, establishes anything it is that unless we can acknowledge responsibility and forgive ourselves for any real or perceived wrongdoing, we are caught in an endless cycle of denial and recrimination, potentially causing great damage to ourselves and others by internalizing our guilt. The title is derived not from a character in the movie but from the poem Spring and Fall: To a Young Child, by Gerard Manly Hopkins which is read in class by English teacher John (Matthew Broderick). It is a poem addressed to a child named Margaret that seeks to comfort her cries "over the lovely golden leaves of the autumn forest, all fallen to the ground." If you think Matt Damon looks thin and others have gotten younger, it's only because the film was completed in 2005 but held up for six years in legal battles over its length, which was finally cut by one-half hour. Margaret centers on Lisa (Anna Paquin), a bright but self-absorbed teenage student at a New York private school. She is grieving after a bus accident she witnessed that caused the death of a pedestrian (Allison Janney). It was an accident that was mainly caused by her distracting the driver (Mark Ruffalo) to try and ask him about his cowboy hat, a distraction that caused him to run a red light. Beating herself up for giving a false statement to the police because she didn't want to get the bus driver fired, Lisa takes out her anger on those around her. One of her easy targets is her mother Joan (J. Smith-Cameron), a stage actress who is already nervous about a new play she is starring in and a new boyfriend Ramon (Jean Reno). Growing more shrill each day, Lisa is a disaster waiting to happen and her school classmates and her teachers are not spared from her acrimony, especially Mr. Aaron (Matt Damon) who is teased into a compromising situation. Her behavior becomes increasingly inappropriate as she turns to drugs and sex with an experienced school friend (Kieran Culkin), but these provide no escape from her trauma. Eventually she takes a step in the right direction by contacting Emily (Jeanne Berlin), a close friend of the deceased, the bus driver, and the police detective to amend her original statement; however, it does not seem to help her anguish. The plot lurches in different directions with lawsuits, trips to the opera, and increasingly hostile relationships between the main protagonists, and the film becomes more unpleasant and histrionic as it labors towards its conclusion. There are some excellent scenes, however, in Margaret and the recital of several poems, a passage from Shakespeare, and scenes from the operas Norma and Tales of Hoffman, pays tribute to the city and culture of New York. One of the best scenes is one in which a highly intelligent student challenges the teacher's interpretation of a passage from Shakespeare, only to be met with a brush off and a reference to the "scholarly consensus," a moment very relevant to debates of the present day. Unfortunately, there are few such moments or likable characters in Margaret, and when Lisa, negating her awakening of conscience, takes out her frustration against the bus driver, the film becomes more of a case study of sociopaths than a family drama. Ultimately, Margaret should have remained on the shelf.

The travails involved in getting this movie released at all are well enough known by now that the fact that it is a flawed masterpiece shouldn't come as a surprise. Above all, it is a masterclass in how to write dialogue. Virtually every character is given a credible and compelling voice, from the bus driver to the lawyer, from the mother's suitor to Lisa's "boyfriend". As the father of a daughter, now in her early 20's, I can say that Lisa Cohen's character is as realistic a portrayal of the insecurities and self-righteousness of female adolescence as I have seen. All aspiring screenwriters should be forced to watch this movie and then be given a 3-hour oral and written exam before being allowed to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard). The acting is also superb. The feel is more of a stage play, an ensemble piece, than a film. Perhaps the fact that one of the characters - Lisa's mother - is a stage actress struggling to support her daughter is partially responsible. But you can tell that this team of seasoned actors relished the opportunity to stretch out with an intelligent well-written script and a supportive director. The only flaw in Margaret has already been well expressed by others. The film does meander and, while I recognize that this is partly the point of the exercise, there are times at which you long for a more conventional, and taut, storyline. I would gladly have spent more time in the company of these well-drawn, articulate and interesting people. Maybe next time HBO wants to do a miniseries it will let Kenneth Lonergan loose on a story rather than subject us to another preachy, wordy effort from Aaron Sorkin.

I gave this movie a try because of the 6.6 rating. I wish I hadn't bothered. I found this movie to be a complete waste of time. I kept waiting for a reason to like the heroin, I kept wanting to find a character to like and connect with, but it didn't happen. I watched and waited to be pulled into the story, waiting for the movie to get better, but it didn't. Things happen that don't move the plot forward, loose ends aren't tied up, characters are self absorbed and unlikeable. Nothing happened to make me care about them. It's hard to understand the origin of the tension between mom and daughter. Characters appear and disappear and you are left wondering what relevance they really had. And in the end I'm left feeling like I've waisted my time.

This movie is 3 hours long which is already a bad starting point for a story. It seems to go around and around about a girl who is disillusioned with society for defending the driver of a coach. In fact the girl IMHO is completely at fault for the accident. Why run after the coach waving your hands and think this is acceptable behaviour? Any sane person knows this is going to end badly, it's just a pity this girl did not run into another car herself and then we would have been saved the pain of this movie. She then spends most of the movie trying to get the driver convicted? Finally she sleeps with that fat guy without a condom and gets pregnant...why? She is annoyingly stupid! Why not go for the nicer boy she is seeing? It's only a story I know, but annoying and drawn out on many levels!

OK… I am not particularly proud of it, but I had such a boring experience watching this thing I actually created an account just to post this review. This movie is awful. I just can't believe that anyone could have actually enjoyed it, and get something out of it. It is one of the most boring, over-played, pompous movie I have ever seen. It is just a pathetically elongated drama who tries very very, very hard to be a metaphorical display of big obnoxious pseudo-intellectual themes, seasoned with an overdose of teenagers hormones and unhappiness. Death, suffering, guilt, absurdity of life, guilt, every big human unanswerable question thrown at the face of this unbearable brat who screams all the time instead of just go and sign for 20 years of therapy or shoot herself. Problem is, Shakespearian drama without the drama… is just a boring overrated portray of a troubled teen. I suspect the intentions of the filmmakers were to make the viewers think "oooh poor thing, it must be hard to live after such a trauma; yes it is difficult to grow and make life-changing decisions, etc." instead, I just wanted the main character to throw herself under the next bus. I waited desperately for something interesting to happen, for a twist that would make this whole nonsensical agitation more than a big waste of time… but no. If you are not 13 and right in the middle of "everything is so important I scream all the time and think I am gonna die if you dare contradict me, my life is so miserable you know…", you better pass on this one

"Margaret" is an absolute masterpiece. It's thematically going for the tone of a grandiose opera, but in a modern day context, filtered through the emotions of a teenage girl in association with a tragedy. It expresses the emotional teenage mind-set like no other. Every performance is astounding and every character it so compelling and fully-realized. I would compare it to the likes of "Requiem for a Dream," "Magnolia," "There Will Be Blood," "Synecdoche, New York," "The Tree of Life," and other movies that tell sprawling emotional melodramas that just hook you in and don't let you go. If you're into that kind of thing, this is for you. There's no doubt in my mind that if this movie hadn't been tangled up in lawsuits years ago, it would have been a huge Oscar contender and Anna Paquin surely would be winning tons of awards for her performance. It's such a shame that a movie of this size and scope was overlooked.