Kenneth Lonergan's MARGARET, starring Anna Paquin as a teenager in turmoil

After five years in the editing room, and the courts, it's out -- just barely -- and Paquin and Jeannie Berlin are both great in it. Catch it while you can:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2011/10/margaret-builds-momentum-with-critics-but-will-audiences-find-it.html

http://newyork.timeout.com/arts-culture/film/2002495/review-margaret

Nice one, Dr M. I loved You Can Count On Me, for a long time it looked like this would never get released.

Glenn Kenny also liked it.

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2011/10/margaret.html

v interested in this, assume i wont see it for months

YES!!!

consumer warning: There are no characters named Margaret in the film.

Yeah, I really want to see this.

(except in Matthew Broderick's English class)

xp

as of friday you all won't be seeing this until next year, unless you're in philly or boston

the critical reaction seems much stronger than the studio anticipated

it's also playing in Montreal till at least next Thursday!

i think the situation is a little more complicated than that xpost

i've been meaning to bump the sidney pollack thread re: this, but it deserves its own thread. it was much better than i expected (WAY better), but at the same time you can tell its a really fucked up version of what lonergan wanted it to be... there's some brilliant stuff in it though (the scene where emily tears into lisa) (morbs otm - jeannie berlin is great)

austin, atlanta, and toronto next week as well

its already playing in atlanta

she fuck any vampires in this?

oh sorry, congrats to those cities

our market is shut out, like it's absolutely not happening

Jeannie Berlin gets an ace film part once every 39 years.

Huh, looks like tomorrow's my last chance to see it.

The reviews have been mixed, but the box office not good -- less than $1000 per screen last weekend in 14 theaters.

I found the UWS classroom donnybrooks over history and terrorism entirely convincing.

Liked this a lot, though I'd be be eager to see the "non-Scorsese cut" (if it indeed exists).

xp I found them unconvincing at first, before I realized they were taking place in a classroom full of "privileged liberal Jews."

Sympathetic to Lonergan's vision, but I find it hard to imagine what an extra half-hour would've done for this film.

Yeah, it was long enough. While I find Matt Damon more enticing as a geometry teacher than as an action hero, I think going where they did was a mistake, one plot strand too many.

I'm gonna see this tonight in Austin. Hopefully I can time my bathroom break correctly.

149 minutes ain't no thing

Yeah the real fools are the ones planning to catch Turin Horse and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia back-to-back at a local fest here in Mtl this weekend. That takes some kinda perseverance I can't match (having only seen the former).

I missed the four-hour Mysteries of Lisbon last weekend because its only showing interfered with dinner plans.

I'm guessing most of you recognized Lonergan as Lisa's dad? I didn't know he was in it, and probably haven't seen a photo or interview in years, but he has an Irish-artist lumpenness about him.

I recognized him.

I really, really liked this. Been thinking about it a lot since I saw it last weekend. I hope we get to see a "director's cut" at some point.

I wasn't 100% sure it was him right away, but yeah. He's in YCCOM, too, as the priest.

this movie is still buzzing around in my head.

i think, though, that in large measure that it's about the perils of empathy, and the ways we protect ourselves from it. (witness every single political discussion revolves around rejecting the very possibility of the other's real suffering or grievances.) Lisa's initiation into adult life is then, i guess, about developing this capacity for rejecting empathy, perhaps? (or the ways empathy gets refracted into things like opera..)

that's just a first pass at it, as I'm sure there's other things going on.

I recenrly saw A Seperation and I kept thinking back to this film - intense family-related dramas that also comment on their societies at large, both revolving around injury/accident (to varying degrees). I think this is by far the richer movie, though.

*A Separation

that's high praise. psyched to catch this/if i can ever catch this.

Bear in mind I don't like A Saparation as much as virtually everyone else seems to.

hence the constant misspelling.

huh. just didn't love it or had problems with it? cause part of its strength was it just being unindictably thorough & well put together, to me, so i can understand how not being sold on the contents would change things somewhat.

Just didn't love it.

duuude

i wouldve watched 4 hours of this

yeah me too, easily.

word. i was going to SPOILER reference a scene i wanted to mention, but i don't have to, because you can just choose any scene from the last third of the film and it still applies: it was so rich & multifaceted, everything was just laden with the dimensions & weight of everyone and everything involved.

SPOILER-ESQUE: so say the phone conference in the lawyer's office, there were these unfurling threads of money & blame & responsibility & guilt & mis-connecting & law & anguish & self-awareness. i kinda feel like the distributors for this should be tried for unamerican activities, it just felt crucial, useful.

quietly entered the canon of best-films-about-being-a-teenager, also.

This is, IMO, the best American movie since Mulholland Drive, and the best film I've ever seen on an initial screening run. As Ryan says upthread, empathy and solipsism are its primary concerns, but it finds a far more intangible paradigm amongst the drama: society as a mental construct, built and fractured within each character's mind, where everybody has their reasons and their righteousness but where conflict bears the subtle grace of inevitability.

I mean, quite apart from its invoking of my favourite poet and its dynamite script (I laughed, I cried etc), it is a film where people's relevant and entirely believable problems interact with one another in a sympathetic, unresolving manner - the other film of recent years to do this (that I've seen) was The White Ribbon (which was, perhaps, less positive about its characters, but which bore the stench of warfare and deprivation to a far higher degree than the metropolitan excoriation of Margaret). The two movies are, I would say, the two best I've seen in the past decade. These are films that operate at the highest pitch of mystery and confluence - a movie must have confluence (or, more crudely, alchemy) for it to work, otherwise it is just screened logic (which sadly constitutes the vast majority of Hollywood and UK film atm). Did not La Regle Du Jeu operate in the same poetically all-embracing, affably intermeshed way as these films? Did not Bunuel's later movies demonstrate the worshipful truth of coincidence and confluence?

Margaret and The White Ribbon are movies of great heart. Each character is given weight, and each character is given their reasons. Of course, Margaret concentrates most rewardingly upon the central figure. Anna Paquin shows integrity, even when she lies. She discovers personal integrity even as everyone and everything around her becomes an extension of herself. And she leads the viewer into a story whose unbalanced complexity resembles their own life, and where resolution is less unrequired, more complete anathema. Such are the greatest of films - where the tale careens onward, beyond the cinema. (Certified Copy is another great ILE recommendation of recent times - my wife & I even had a Certified Copy roleplay evening afterwards, demonstrating the power that an unresolved analysis of pretence and present-moment reality can have. Not as good or exciting as Margaret, though - it's very much limited around a traditional marital paradigm rather than a societal one.)

As a subordinate point, I hope I've conveyed which kind of cinema appeals to me the most, and that some amongst you could suggest further viewing along (or parallel/perpendicular to) such lines. My gratitude besets you.

wtf paquin is like 30

she filmed this just after the piano though

she's so good in this anyway

like your post btw once-a-week, going to chew on it & come back to you when i've some time. this film reminded me of one i've forgotten since coming out of the theatre, but one of the reference points kicked around upthread is farhadi's a separation, which came out last year (or only just, in the states, i think) & topped a lot of lists for being v rounded & sympathetic. think you would dig if you don't already, & that there are probably other iranian routes you'd be into along similar lines

oh ok somehow missed the mention in the OP of it being filmed so long ago

some backstory here if it's of interest:
http://entertainment.time.com/2011/12/02/director-kenneth-lonergan-emerges-to-tell-us-hes-on-team-margaret/

has a play on bway in may, also

white ribbon is such joyless and moralizing film i never wouldve thought of it in comparison to 'maragaret'. the best thing about the latter is how much it shares a teenagers sense of curiosity and freshness towards the world, its interested in how things work w/o really feeling like its trying to explain to you how things work whereas 'the white ribbon' is cynical and didactic imo

anyway once a week you might really like céline sciamma's 'tomboy', from this year, i think its a movie w/ a great sense of empathy and it uses character study to examine big, important qn abt gender/society &c &c

I loved your review but recoiled when you mentioned The White Ribbon.

Is this on DVD yet?

i wasn't crazy about the white ribbon either - i think i liked it well enough, maybe i just thought it was sorta autopilot haneke with a slightly jarring context change - but i could imagine tying in code unknown or cache with margaret, i guess. i'm sorta blanking on films to recommend, particularly re your emphasis on 'confluence', which is very otm, because i feel like there are a lot of well-woven films from the past decade (i just can't think which), the ones that aren't as brash or literal as like babel or w/e

(I laughed, I cried etc)

this bears repeating wrt this film; it was frequently very funny, sharp and rhythmic, & there were parts - kind of strangely separate from or at least dissynchronous with whatever its emotional peaks were - where i was feeling teary (her running across the square downtown after leaving the meeting was one); another example of its range. i also thought it did a much better, bolder job using new york atmospherically than most anything recent i can remember, &, to get a cheap dig in, infinitely better than shame did; its music-&-drifting-camera passages were very effective & exemplary of the kind of purposeful, contributory content that enriched the film as it increased its running time.

still processing slightly, & i guess 'empathy' does encompass a lot of what the film was concerned w/, but i think there's something else, definitely something societal. i think what was so affecting for me about the scene when they're arguing over the phonecall was that it was testament to everyone processing & living with an event that's happened, doing whatever they can to reconstruct, but in very narrative terms, & with that autonomy there being the inevitable butting of heads. like i think it was very concentrated on balance in a lot of ways - obv in those high-school classroom discussions, but also in AP striving for a counterweight to her initial actions.

xp nuh-uh :/, idk whether it's on IFC on demand or something though? dvd date not even announced afaik, i think the guy wants to screen his 3 hr cut somehow

maybe i should say imbalance. like the hilarious argument w/her mom about jean reno (also mainly hilarious)

i dont really know what the white ribbon is - haneke right? - but a lot of once a week's post seems apt to me. margaret seems like too 'big' a movie for me to be able to say something big picture about it, but i can talk about some things i liked

i dont think 'margaret' SHARES a teenagers sense of curiosity/freshness wrt the world - if it did i'd find it unbearable - but i do think it's sensitive to how teenagers feel and experience things, without also valorizing that experience. the clarity with which the movie sees margaret herself is remarkable to me, she bursts at the seams with selfishness and unearned moral certitude, but the film doesnt condemn her - it doesnt need to, because she's barreling headfirst into the adult world, where the consequence-free upper west side private school echo chamber that has cultivated her bullying persona is repeatedly shown to create friction, and then consequences, with the adults who Don't Have To Put Up With Her Shit. no remonstration of margaret on the movie's part is ever required

the reason i could watch basically an infinitely longer version of this, no matter how useless the tangents in it get, is that everything about the movie's world is so sharply observed. the moment we meet the jeannie berlin character in tight close-up, remembering her friend, i knew exactly who this woman was, she's so aptly presented that i had no doubt that lonergan would be capable of 'observing' her in any situation without ever striking a false note

the scene where margaret horrifyingly posits that she was actually inhabited by the ghost of allison janey's daughter or some shit is unbelievable in how observant it is, how it nails that narcissistic grasping-for-maturity moment that this character would clearly find herself settling into, and how berlin (who you could see as a margaret who's actually been around the block a few times) reacts with rage at the way this child is trying to make herself the center of her dead friend's life

i also thought it did a much better, bolder job using new york atmospherically than most anything recent i can remember, &, to get a cheap dig in, infinitely better than shame did; its music-&-drifting-camera passages were very effective & exemplary of the kind of purposeful, contributory content that enriched the film as it increased its running time.

i think this may partly be that the movie deeply understands new york culturally, or at least its particular slice of new york, so its images of the city are naturally more resonant, just as a part of the movie's world. shame displays no particular understanding of new york as anything other than a place that can be photographed prettily

wow yes, definitely. which takes me back slightly to a couple of the points in yr reading of the film; i think you're much harsher on margaret than me (it is possible the weight of my teenage crush on anna paquin makes me over-sympathetic) - so say with the scene in which she's talking about inhabiting the body of the daughter or w/e, &c&c, while it is totally horrifying, & utterly without perspective or sensitivity, to me the real thing about that scene is just the inability to articulate, because there's clearly a thing she's trying to express - that theoretically it could be nice in someone's last moments to have even the confused delusion of feeling as if one were with one's daughter, to have that illusion, & that that's a legitimate thing to wonder, but it exists as an idea basically for the audience and only in between the characters. & when you mention the consequence-free upper west side private school echo chamber that has cultivated her bullying persona - this was another great strand, i thought (which to go on about the phonecall some more seemed to get some sense of pay-off in someone saying maybe $350000 isn't a lot of money to ~you~) that sorta existed from multiple angles.

prior to the film i hadn't really known, beyond a mention in a blurb, in what sense this was a 9/11 film, but it was a powerful element, like i think particularly in scenes like the lunch with the lawyer in which they're weighing the importance of suffering & having to contemplate it & revisit it, weirder still in this strange, removed context it now exists in (in this case, money). or what the other lawyer says, this is how we punish people now.

so good.

like this film for me had a lot of "what then means, now", the lens through which people have to look back on things, even recent things, changes in friendships, stages of relationships with family, & how to deal with that day-to-day. lisa flags under the weight of that, and then the additional weight of global context, people dying &c&c

(it is possible the weight of my teenage crush on anna paquin makes me over-sympathetic)

heh, well its possible my distaste for paquin on true blood makes me overly harsh (i cant front on this performance though)

i havent thought much about the 9/11 stuff. it kinda doesnt interest me, but it's certainly there. the role of jewish identity seems really important in this movie, but im not sure if its a thematic thing or just because it's part of accurately portraying the milieu

i was sure i posted about this film on ilx but it must have been the sandbox. i absolutely loved it, could easily see how it could/should have been longer, would def watch a director's cut. so well observed, lonergan has a real ear for the nuances and details on which conversations turn - all the human interaction felt so recognisable and true to life.

i thought the tonal shifts worked in the film's favour - they also felt true to life, specifically the double-backing criss-crossing random illogic of adolescent life (lisa's life) that nonetheless feels absolutely straight & true at the time. it handled her fundamental dislikeability really well - never condemnatory enough for you to want to turn her off - though the REAL TALK scene that you've been discussing was definitely much needed.

how berlin (who you could see as a margaret who's actually been around the block a few times)

totally!

i really want to read a good in-depth essay on this - nothing i've read so far has quite gotten as into it as i want.

Paquin's name isn't Margaret. The name's only said in English class.

think i simultaneously referred to her as both lisa & m above, oops

consumer warning: There are no characters named Margaret in the film.

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 12 October 2011 19:10 (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Paquin's name isn't Margaret. The name's only said in English class.

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 9, 2012 7:38 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

lol yeah, how could i forget that. i even call her lisa upthread. stupid poem

lol

Lincoln Center has a screening w/ Lonergan & cast members in 3 weeks:

http://www.filmlinc.com/press/entry/fslc-announces-12th-edition-of-film-comment-selects-february-17-march-1

p jeal, i'm unusually psyched for a rewatch anyway, i'm sure that'll be great. i'd be interested to know what paquin thinks about it, & whether there are any updates on other cuts coming out, etc; i read something recently that further obscured the issue, talking about a scorsese cut that lonergan preferred, of similar length (ie not the full 3hr cut), which wasn't the one released.

belongs in the film snob thread but: the rest of the film comment selects season sounds good, also; the whole of gorin's southern california trilogy in a day, the new kore-eda, &c. tix on sale thurs am.

playing in LA this week

want to see this tonight but don't want to get out of the theater at 1:15am : /

This was a quick two and a half hours, and yeah maybe some scenes seem superfluous (Matt Damon?) I wouldn't really do away with any of them, they're all so precisely drawn and evocative and resonant.

All the scenes between Lisa and her mother just wrecked me, all that particular failing-to-communicate that goes on between parents and their teens.

Coming out of the theatre, I overheard one couple talk about their attention being "in and out" while watching it, which is unfathomable to me. I was riveted by every second of this and wish it was longer. Hope to see the Lonergan's cut at some point.

Yeah, this was brilliant and i thought it flew by. My one complaint (and it's just a stupid pet peeve) is that i could have done without a crying at the opera scene. Bit of a cliche, no?

this is hilarious btw

my wife & I even had a Certified Copy roleplay evening afterwards, demonstrating the power that an unresolved analysis of pretence and present-moment reality can have.

absolutely a cliche but I felt like they'd earned it somehow. It felt appropriately grandiose and melodramatic

absolutely a cliche but I felt like they'd earned it somehow. It felt appropriately grandiose and melodramatic

― all the other twinks with their fucked up dicks (billy), Wednesday, 15 February 2012 17:29 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah otm. i think i flagged up the speakerphone call in the lawyer's office, somewhere upthread, as something that was incredibly rich in the earned dynamics it was displaying, regarding each character's motivation & history & failings &c&c&c, & i just loved the crying scene at the end for the same reasons - it isn't even which one of these things does it mean but the unruly mess of motivations for the mother starting to cry soon killed me - a kind of joining in with her daughter, a redress to their distance, a kind of remnant of grief, something that snowballed, something that took over.

While I find Matt Damon more enticing as a geometry teacher than as an action hero, I think going where they did was a mistake, one plot strand too many.

I think Lonergan was working on the basis that there is no such thing as a plot strand too many. I reckon this film could easily have had an hour cut from it. Lots of the film was very good, but there was too much of it, burying the film's essence in a load of superfluous detail.

Bah, I side with the Fox suits - I am a philistine.

then you are on the right board

Lincoln Center has a screening w/ Lonergan & cast members in 3 weeks:

http://www.filmlinc.com/press/entry/fslc-announces-12th-edition-of-film-comment-selects-february-17-march-1

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, January 31, 2012 3:36 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark

did any new yorkers see this? would be curious to hear what kinds of things lonergan said

here's yer video, H4A

http://www.filmlinc.com/blog/entry/video-a-conversation-with-the-cast-and-crew-of-margaret

awesome! thank you

Eugene Hernandez on Twitter wrote:
Tidbit from Searchlight bash (pretty sure I can share it): MARGARET DVD in May will include a directors cut; not finished for theatrical.

'pparently

oOoOoOh

I reckon this film could easily have had an hour cut from it. Lots of the film was very good, but there was too much of it, burying the film's essence in a load of superfluous detail.

Bah, I side with the Fox suits - I am a philistine.

― The New Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, February 22, 2012 1:33 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was my (controversial minority) opinion. Also, the dream sequence was totally WTF???

Also, am I the only one who thought of My So-Called Life in connection with this? (Post-9/11, minus network standards & practices censorship, and turned up to 11, but....)

i have no memory of a dream sequence, which part was that?

Lisa turns on the tap, only to find blood gushing from it. Then the dead woman appears in the mirror behind her. (Possibly some edits of the films don't include this bit?)

Now, I agree throughout the movie Lisa is suffering from guilt and PTSD. But putting this on the screen in so blatant a fashion was irritating.

Soooooo, Fox announced the home video (or whatever they call it these days) release of this film yesterday. The streetdate is July 10th, it will initially be an Amazon exclusive, and the release would be a dvd/blu combo featuring both the theatrical cut and the 186-minute "Lonergan Cut". (linkage)

Then today news broke that what Fox meant by "dvd/blu combo" is the bluray is just the theatrical version and the dvd is just Lonergan's version. (linkage)

fox announced the lonergan cut would be made available in a non-anamorphic highly pixelated CDR with 28kbs soundtrack and burned in cyrillic subtitles

also paquin's lines have been redubbed by fran drescher

...and Ruffalo redubbed his lines in the voice of The Hulk, which explains the title card after the end credits that bears the legend "We should have hired Weadon."

Out in July!

Don't you mean "available"?

I'll look at the KL cut eventually, but yeah, it was long enough already.

It wasn't really long enough at all. There seemed to be a chunk of Matt Damon's scenes that had been cut, making an awkward lurch in that strand. Smilarly with Lisa's lawsuit arc.

Matt Damon = pretty disposable

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/magazine/kenneth-lonergans-thwarted-masterpiece.html

^ just read, ty ned. loved this:

During all this, Lonergan gamely supported the film, attending question-and-answer sessions at screenings of “Margaret” and deflecting questions about the movie’s tortured history. (“Buy me a drink sometime,” he joked grimly to one person who asked about the long delay.)

am genuinely excited about catching the longer version. as much, really, to reimmerse in the languorous stuff i've already seen as for the extras, loose ends & breathing space it might afford.

sorry that's a long article and i just want to know if there's news therein about a dvd release, directors cut or whatever.

is this anything like Rachel Getting Married? i have a fear of seeing something like that again so i'm just checking first.

loved You Can Count On Me, this looks good too.

is this anything like Rachel Getting Married? i have a fear of seeing something like that again

hahahaha holy shit. me too. you are officially now my favourite poster in the history of ilx.

i honestly think i'd rather be waterboarded than see that again. & i only saw half of it the first time because i walked out.

sorry that's a long article and i just want to know if there's news therein about a dvd release, directors cut or whatever.

― jed_, Saturday, June 23, 2012 1:06 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

extended version out in the states on july 9!
no-one knows for sure that it's lonergan's platonic three hour cut, but i think it probably is? that the article details the film being fucked up every which way it's still plausible that it'll be some kind of slo-mo remix of the theatrical release, but it's looking promising.

i honestly think i'd rather be waterboarded than see that again. & i only saw half of it the first time because i walked out.

― jed_, Saturday, June 23, 2012 1:33 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but does the first time mean you went back

it is not very much like RGM, except they are both good films w/ solid lead performances.

This was very good but I'm irked that there was no mention of the bus passengers, or any bystanders, having witnessed anything. And the police never question Lisa's involvement in the crash.

ha, i feel like you're gonna have trouble finding support for your this film needed more viewpoints argument

that oversight hadn't occurred to me, anyhow. really looking forward to seeing it again.

Man, New Yorkers will be arguing about this movie long after the rest of the country forgot they never knew about this movie.

http://cityarts.info/2012/07/11/their-own-private-911/

as we say so often here, "sod the rest of the country, if we are indeed part of it."

Loud and clear.

anyone watch the extended cut yet?

also c'mon, no one is going to waste time arguing with Armond. Isn't this his second pan of the movie?

finally got a firm August release date on Netflix

Streaming or disc?

disc came out yesterday i think? at least my pre-ordered blu ray shipped from amazon~

Isn't this his second pan of the movie?

Well, the movie's fans refuse to let it leave screening rooms.

Netflix release dates don't coincide with everyone else's.

NYC chauvinism can't be the only thing that's making me pull a "Morbs on QT" stance on this movie, can it?

3-hr cut of this is def. superior to the theatrical.

The film shows the Upper West Side to be kind of a horrible place IMO

xp in what ways?

"Subplots" feel much better-integrated and more fleshed out, for starters.

Also, I'm glad I took the time to read a wiki synopsis of The Tales of Hoffmann.

I have seen the Archers' film of it, so how will that help?

Otherwise I'd have not picked up on the neat little parallels, eg. the three lovers.

is the version on itunes the director's cut or the theatrical release?

2 1/2 hours so I guess it's not the directors cut....annoying

Fox has insured that no one will have a good experience acquiring this film.

Bah, stupid phone wouldn't let me mention that I saw on another forum the odd factoid that this film has made more in its limited Australian engagement than in the rest of the world combined.

Maybe Paquin has some weird following there amongst Campion fans or something? I got nothing.

Is Ruffalo:Australia::Hasselhoff:Germany ?

It's playing at Nova which has 15 screens and the management likes to use their surplus screens to push films/distinguish themselves. Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind played there for over a year.

So, I watched the extended cut. I never saw the 2 1/2 hour version, but loved this movie. It sucks that it's so hard to see it correctly.

extended cut turned Edelstein around something fierce: http://www.vulture.com/2012/07/edelstein-dont-miss-margaret-directors-cut.html

damn.... looking fwd to this

can't wait to see the extended cut

So it's an extended cut and not a director's cut, right? That is, the best they can do? Did Lonergan supervise its, er, extension?

well it was probably an earlier cut of Lonergan's or one that was submitted with his approval. The studio are hardly going to ask him to recut the entire movie to his desired version at this stage given all they they have already lost financially. plus he could take another year to do it, i dare say.

can't wait to see the extended cut of this. criminal that it was only released on one screen for 2 weeks in the UK

Does the longer cut shed any more light on the scene where Paquin tells Damon she's had an abortion? Unless I missed something, I think the shorter cut leaves it ambiguous as to whether this is a lie.

According to that Edelstein review it does

i kinda liked that ambiguity.

can't wait to see the extended cut of this. criminal that it was only released on one screen for 2 weeks in the UK

It started out with that run, but ended up extending to many other screens when it was such a sell-out at the Odeon Panton St (where it played for a couple of months I think)

Does the longer cut shed any more light on the scene where Paquin tells Damon she's had an abortion? Unless I missed something, I think the shorter cut leaves it ambiguous as to whether this is a lie.

― Jeff W, Friday, 13 July 2012 14:57 (1 week ago) Bookmark

Having now watched the extended cut, i preferred the ambiguous version

and Edelstein is way off base about the new running time suddenly turning it into a masterpiece or whatever. There's some nice little added moments in there but all the truly great stuff was already present

Sounds sort of like the similarly wrong reaction to the extended cut of "Almost Famous." Some nice stuff put back in, but most of the good stuff was there already, and some of the stuff put back in makes the good stuff not as good.

im v curious 2 watch the shorter cut - feel like i'll give it some more time tho, i just watched the extended cut a few nights ago - i dont think it's a masterpiece but there'er a lot of great scenes - number none, i think you're the 1st person ive read of that prefers the shorter vers

Lonergan was on the radio the other day saying it wasn't true that he intended for it to be longer in the first place – claims that this longer cut just comes from him being asked if he wanted to do one, and thought that it would be interesting to explicitly show some of the stuff that he chose to hint at in the theatrical cut.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kkr4n

Full cut playing here!

So the existing (150-minute) cut is a mixed success. The last half hour made me look away several times.

look away from what? the only thing I thought that misfired completely in the last act was Jean Reno's resolution.

the Damon-Paquin relationship, the resolutions -- a mess

I sisn't think the Damon thing was gonna go there it's true, but I like his "You stupid..."

Yeah that felt like the good sort of ad-lib (whether it actually was or not)

LOL, the conspiracy to keep this from people's eyes continues: Now selling for $999 on Amazon.

Link

Amazon's exclusive and stock ran out. The reissue isn't happening until October.

Huh. Glad I got my copy then! Still haven't had time to watch it.

It's on Netflix (DVD & Bluray, no streaming).

only the shorter version

I mean, that's what it looks like - there's no mention of the extended cut in their listing

Yeah, it looks that way. Which is interesting as the theatrical cut is Blu-only on the commercial release.

maybe I'll order up the DVD and see what I get

will sell my r2 extended cut for £700

think i actually prefer the shorter, pretty much - only one of the additional scenes is enriching in a big way, i think (iirc, anyway - i'm talking about a discussion in a cafe in which the sound design switches around a lot (even by the standards of the new sound mix (which is a real improvement, i think)), though it's possible i just don't remember it from the cinema).

no, i'm pretty sure that scene wasn't in the theatrical

FYI the netflix DVD is the 150 minute cut

Yeah I think the Redbox one is the same. Only way to see the extended is to buy the Blu-ray.

...and the only legal way to see the theatrical at home if you don't do Blu is rent it.

Oh Fox...

looks like amazon is taking backorders now with new stock available on august 27

just saw the three hour cut. half good, half kinda shit. basically starts to dry up and fall apart once Lisa begins her bizarre, "moral" quest to stick it to the bus driver. scenes seem to be awkwardly jammed in all over the place. it's messy and erratic enough to render a lot of the HEAVY SAD SHIT* almost comical. so much time spent detailing legal minutiae while rapid fire tragedy is just casually flipped through. manages to feel both bloated AND rushed.

*also, when you pack this much HEAVY SAD SHIT into a film, it starts losing its weight. it was approaching the absurd and by the end any emotional involvement i had was gone.

thought the stuff centered around the kids was a lot more compelling than most of the adult drama. wished death upon the blunt but "TRUTH DROPPIN'" friend-of-the-deceased nearly every second she was on the screen. liked Damon and the Culkin kid quite a bit. Broderick sipping his orange juice and taking quick, flustered little bites of his sandwich during class discussion was hilarious.

PERSONAL INFO: i witnessed a horrific, fatal pedestrian accident a few weeks ago so some of this was obviously extra difficult to sit through. almost turned it off during that bus scene but persevered because i didn't want that image burned into my brain for the rest of the day. absolutely harrowing, borderline panic attack.

that sounds like a terribly difficult watch, circa. my instinct was to argue w/you over the ratio of legal-minutiae/rapid-fire-tragedy, because for me the pairing of & dynamic between those was really powerful - how frustrating the labyrinth of irrelevant legal shit was, & the treatment of the relationship between a horrific accident & its dry, bureaucratic resolution, paired as if they were some kind of natural balance. the lightness of the circumstances in which the accident happened felt appropriate, to me, but i can't imagine watching it with any personal frame of reference, so.

so much time spent detailing legal minutiae while rapid fire tragedy is just casually flipped through

thought the stuff centered around the kids was a lot more compelling than most of the adult drama

^^^ on this. First half of the movie is pretty incredible, but thought that the Jean Reno-as-Snidely Whiplash subplot diluted what could have been pretty compelling.

http://d3j5vwomefv46c.cloudfront.net/photos/large/614281167.jpg?key=32641840&Expires=1347654835&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIYVGSUJFNRFZBBTA&Signature=nCaZAjwRartgT3wApzSPbSDAG95hyVgyjff1fPzsvv2A6PIQnp-unrmebBA2RrsUJZpVbzz8xxuz6S8-fL5MGmk7ISxDMFPTNYKOWDLRG~jwfvA7c7AkN9DxGCkvj7R9sx3QVnjfQZDOkQxYWhnd2dEue6JX0fCKT~rFDl8Sg78_

need to see this new edit

lol

whoa armed bus driver

extra half hour of footage in which it turns out ruffalo shot janney

wheres that pic from

"GREAT MOVIE"

No Transfer for Old Men

hahaha

I found this film maddening, tbh. There were interesting things about it

wheres that pic from

― Hungry4Ass, Friday, 14 September 2012 17:28 (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://twitter.com/FilmComment/status/222327591036661760

i only watched it until just after the crash and thought it seemed almost inept. the crash itself was badly directed imo and i found the part where she was running beside the bus asking ruffalo where he got his cowboy hat kind of crass. i may return to it at some point.

ps i'm a huge fan of you can count on me.

i don't mean a crass thing for paquin's character to do but a crass thing for lonergan to do.

on the King Lear classroom scene:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/a-seemingly-superfluous-scene-says-a-lot-about-mar,85264/

i loved that scene, and found the student's take weird but interesting.

Saw the extended cut. Loved it, a beautiful mess. Not having seen the 2.5 hour version, I don't know what was cut, and there isn't much I could imagine cutting (would maybe lose the Matt Damon/abortion stuff, but obviously that stayed in the shorter version). Fave scene: Matthew Broderick (at his best when playing wearied teachers) arguing King Lear with a student while sipping from his juice box.

good portion of the abortion arc - less the involvement w/damon - is cut in the shorter version, fyi. that & some of the high-school theater, some of which i found a little much.

I loved the high school drama scene cause it was so high school.

It's time for end-of-year lists. Fresh Air movie critic David Edelstein stubbornly refuses to either place his top picks in numerical order or make his list an even number of 10. Instead, he places his 12 favorite films from 2012 in alphabetical order, from Amour to Zero Dark Thirty.

Of the 12 films he picked for 2012, not one, Edelstein says, would he call the "M"-word — a masterpiece. That designation he reserves for the new extended DVD cut of Kenneth Lonergan's film Margaret.

When he first saw that movie, Edelstein says, "I thought the first half was brilliant and the second half was a fiasco. Lonergan got hold of it. He extended it by at least 45 minutes. He clarified certain things. I think that the film that exists now on DVD is an absolutely bona fide masterpiece. The story of a young woman's moral and emotional coming of age, unlike I think any that we've seen on-screen in decades and decades. People must rent it or buy it. They must see it, but they must see the extended cut. It really is the greatest film of the year."

new Lonergan interview

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/feature/interview-kenneth-lonergan/343

When he first saw that movie, Edelstein says, "I thought the first half was brilliant and the second half was a fiasco. Lonergan got hold of it. He extended it by at least 45 minutes. He clarified certain things.

love the implied chronology of lonergan deferentially reacting to edelstein's tentative thumbs up

Should I track down the director's cut DVD instead of watching the 2:30 cut that's on HBO Go currently?

didn't love the director's cut

watch it though

I'd like to see it. It really turned some people around.

Prefer the longer cut

I just don't believe the people who think the director's cut suddenly turns it into a good movie or whatever. It's all there in the theatrical

Haven't seen the shorter version, but from what I've read, there's things in the longer cut that I couldn't imagine losing, so yeah, track down the directors cut.

short version is a masterpiece, need to get hold of long, before long

Saw the longer cut over the weekend and don't know which bits got cut - maybe some of the classroom debates? It probably is too long but I loved it anyway. Paquin gave one of the best portrayals of neurotic, reckless, self-dramatising adolescence I've ever seen. Incredible performance. Jeannie Berlin too. Their argument about Monica's dead daughter ("This is not an opera!") was the heart of the movie for me.

the only thing I thought that misfired completely in the last act was Jean Reno's resolution.

Morbs otm

the two big cuts that i can remember are the abortion scene and the play rehearsal/therapy session

Ah, thanks. I guess both could go without hurting the narrative but the play rehearsal is so important to the theme of adolescent navel-gazing. I love how Kieran Culkin's character finds all of it, and by extension everything that drives Lisa, just unnecessary hassle.

obv i'll never know what i would have thought w/out knowing the backstory but boy howdy could you tell they had a hard time putting this together.

can't really call it 100% successful but the things it does well it does amazingly well.

Watched this this morning (in one sitting, a miracle for me). I thought I was watching the extended version, but I guess the 150-minute cut is...what? longer than the theatrical, but shorter than the full thing? Very ambitious--the only recent American films I can think of with comparable sprawl are The Tree of Life and The Master. I liked Margaret better than either of those, flaws and all. Found the central dilemma fascinating; took the whole film, but was glad that Paquin finally verbalized her own complicity. The classroom scenes were great--as someone pointed out earlier, my favorite was Broderick's exasperation with the one student's Shakespeare interpretation (even though I think most any teacher would have welcomed the alternate reading). Paquin's confrontation with Ruffalo was excellent. Disagree with someone else upthread: I thought the big cathartic scene with Paquin and Berlin (while looking at pictures) was the film's most overwrought. Agree with Morbius that the Damon business at the end came out of left field and didn't really seem necessary. And I thought the ending was weak. But, already a big fan of You Can Count on Me, I hope Lonergan keeps aiming this high.

the theatrical was 150

I thought the big cathartic scene with Paquin and Berlin (while looking at pictures) was the film's most overwrought

i didnt read any catharsis there...

Yeah, I just checked and that was the theatrical. I hope I didn't miss an icon for the longer version on the DVD menu.

I know you were one a few people who found that scene to be the film's most important. It just seemed very shrill to me, and the kind of scene where people start screaming at each other because it's time for a scene where people start screaming at each other. But, going by this thread, I'm in the minority there.

Didn't they do something wacky with the release like put the theatrical cut on blu-ray and the extended one on dvd and released it as a DVD/Blu-ray combo?

yep thats what they did

That's actually what I thought I was renting--there were three little tags affixed to the shelf--but it seems I was given a DVD-only version. I wouldn't watch it again for the missing 36 minutes; I was able to glean a couple of things I missed from the posts above.

Rental dvds are theatrical cut-only, which I think is the only way that versin is availible in that format.

The Canadian combo pack said it contained both versions... but the blu-ray and dvd contained the same shorter version.

clemenza, have you been to NYC? We scream at each other a lot.

I checked the Blu ray out of the library not knowing about how it was packaged the film but only got the DVD. After finding out I'd watched the extended cut, I was happier for it.

(xpost) A couple of times, yes; no one screamed at me, possibly because everyone sensed I was from out of town.

I meant to mention what I thought was the funniest line in the film (paraphrasing from memory): Kieran Culkin's "Yeah, but we're gonna skip that for now and keep moving ahead." And I think my favorite performance, admittedly a small part, was Jeannie Berlin's lawyer friend.

Damn, I was trying to figure out where I'd seen Paquin's younger brother--as himself in Mad Hot Ballroom!

Just saw this last night, the extended version (which was the only one they had at the actual, physical video rental store we got it from). It's exceptional. Has anyone compared it to the Sweet Hereafter? Both are about bus accidents, both about about the decision a young female must make for her witness statement.

I saw whatever version was on HBO and really liked it.

such a perfect movie for HBO - lots of stars, episodic, easy to get sucked in if you're flipping by, starring Anna Paquin as a young Lena Dunham

Lonergan to adapt Howards End for TV.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/10/kenneth-lonergan-to-script-howards-end-miniseries-bbc-playground-colin-callender/

Sure, why not?

haha damn

http://badassdigest.com/2012/02/16/film-crit-hulk-smash-22-short-thoughts-about-margaret#comment-1137804165

ha ha

this fucking film

Hadn't heard of this film pre the last revive, but read up on it, thought it sounded good, and bought / watched it yesterday. Really great.

Lonergan's play This Is Our Youth to be revived for Chicago and Broadway, starring ageless 'teens' Michael Cera and Kieran Culkin

http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/news/04-2014/michael-cera-to-make-broadway-debut-in-this-is-our_68183.html/

Finally saw this last night, the 3 hour cut. Yes it could do with tightening up but I don't think that detracted too much. Thought the sound design was interesting with overlapping conversations and eg. passing traffic mixed as high as the main dialogue and making it difficult to focus, kind of suggesting how we all have these competing personal narratives struggling to make sense of the world. Really great film.

watched the 3-hr cut and immediately wanted to rewatch

not sure what was cut from it but i don't think anything needed to be. or there were a million things he could cut that were of equal significance/insignificance, because nearly everything seems like a subplot. the film enters this flat, sequential rhythm where every scene, even the Big ones, seem equally important and there's enough there in each that i wouldn't want to lose them. maybe they could've ended the legal drama sooner but then we'd miss the great image of lisa screaming into a machine (maybe the one time in the entire movie where the camera concentrates on something other than a human body or a skyscraper -- it was an impt break in that rhythm for me) or the all the matt damon shit, but i found that whole thing an interesting parallel/practically a retelling of the bus scene. i'm probably caught up in the hype of the whole "directors cut = true vision!!!" thing but i'm tickled (and sympathetic wrt) that lonergan must've found everything he included so necessary to lisa's story. i believe him!

there were at least 3 Great scenes in this

i haven't seen this for awhile, but how far removed the conference call scene is from the accident it's discussing, while still ostensibly being tethered to it, & how much is being folded into the incredibly insubstantial exchange that's happening -- it's so profound, & is such a moment, & yeah is the argument for the film accommodating just such a weight of incident & digression.

new lonergan & matt damon flick forthcoming btw. one day.

just remembered the other inanimate object the movie cared about, the shopping cart -- both stand-ins for human bodies obv

also the wiki cast list insists that ruffalo's wife's name was margaret (it was just "Mrs. Maretti" in the end credits iirc)

totally want to see this again

For This Is Our Youth, does anyone have advice on seating or when to go?

Second viewing, long version. I don't know how much was added, but the one scene that clearly wasn't there the first time I saw it--the drama group getting in touch with their feelings about each other--was pretty awkward (although undercut nicely by Kieran Culkin's benign ridicule). The rest of the film held up fine.

It's such a sprawl...What I thought especially strong this time was the mother-daughter stuff. One scene that bothered me the first time--Jeannie Berlin going off on Paquin--didn't this time. Paqin gives one of those Agnes Moorehead-in-Ambersons (or Julianne Moore-in-Magnolia) performances that is so odd and so intense that you're bound to have a strong reaction in one direction or the other. Liked both lawyers a lot. (The second one has a great deadpan moment, something like "You're going to get a lot of money"/"What's the point of doing this?"/"You're going to get a lot of money.") I've never set foot in a private school, but I found that one class (the one where they scream at each other about terrorism and Israel) a little weird. The teacher runs the class, but he has an assistant there to moderate?

I loved the classroom scenes. Was the getting-in-touch-with-feelings one a different one than the discussion on the "as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods" speech from King Lear (I haven't seen it since it first hit DVD)? Cause if so, that may have been my fave scene in the whole film.

Different scene, yes. The one you're remembering, where Broderick gets into the argument with the student, that's also one of my favourites (even though, as I said a few months ago, I think most teachers would welcome the disagreement). The theatre group is just in the long cut, and it verges on self-parody--Culkin saves it at the end.

New movie:
http://www.rogerebert.com/sundance/sundance-2016-manchester-by-the-sea

That's good news! I look forward to seeing it in 2021.

this one seems fully edited

"Anchored by a breathtaking performance from Casey Affleck"

is this possible

Excited about another film from this guy. Not so much another film starring an afleck as a working class dude from Boston

oh c'mon he's been good in plenty of things xp

Kyle Chandler is kinda cornering the market on small-but-memorable roles in American indies, huh

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/07/the-cinematic-traumas-of-kenneth-lonergan

manchester by the sea is p great imo. loved casey affleck in it

oh cool, we saw Little Men yesterday and I told tt it reminded me a bit of Margaret so we have to watch it now

I'm not sure how I felt about the film overall but jesus christ the big Williams/Affleck scene at the end is just utterly devastating

Surely this deserves a thread of its own?

saw this a few weeks ago & was surprised there wasn't a thread or much discussion (even a post search just revealed a lot of lists of titles on that dreadful tetris thread)

I saw a preview which meant I went in without having seen a trailer, which probably helped. I really liked it, I was chuckling pretty much start to finish while also finding it quite affecting

wasn't too sure about the broderick bit tho, it was funny but at a different pitch to the rest of the film, seemed like?

I liked Manchester by the Sea, but maybe not as much as I think I should have, and definitely not as much as I expected to. Affleck is fantastic, and his scene with Williams towards the end (spoiled a bit by Oscar clips, though far more powerful once you know what it is actually about) is indeed devastating. After a while, though, I started to wonder how it might have played minus all of the flashback scenes (and certainly minus the one brief but terrible dream sequence) which felt a bit too telling-not-showing for me. I did like Broderick's scene, though, mostly because I love Broderick as a middle-aged sad sack (see also, Election, and You Can Count on Me). Also great: Lonergan's cameo, and "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" (!!) scoring a sex scene.

I dunno, though--it may grow on me in time, but Lonergan's already made two of my favourite movies, so this one cannot help but feel like a very minor letdown in comparison.

Broderick has the funniest of his middle-aged schlump roles in awhile in Rules Don't Apply.

The three hour cut of Margaret is on Hulu (even though it says it's the 2 1/2 hour version). Incredible performances all around. We knew nothing about it before watching last night and absolutely loved it.

It's great, one of my all-time favorites.

I still think the original theatrical cut is just about perfect, too. Very lucky to have seen it in 35mm during its one-week Oscar-qualifying run at the Landmark in Los Angeles

and I wonder if Lonergan ever paid Matthew Broderick back that million dollars for extra editing time

Lisa Cohen is the most realistically unbearable precocious teenager in movie history