We’re about to relaunch this column. I hope you all had wonderful holidays. It’s 2021, and since we’re all still stuck indoors, unless you live in Florida, then maybe it’s time that you watch Kenneth Lonergan’s 3-hour extended cut of “Margaret“. Lonergan’s cinematic “spiritual” cannot be more relevant today. It’s about disillusionment. Feeling disenfranchised. Being “red-pilled,” so to speak, if you want it in simpler terms. It was previously only available on DVD. The extended cut is now available to stream on HBO Max as a bonus feature accompanying the two-and-a-half-hour theatrical version.
Lonergan, a legendary playwright, has only released three films as a director (You Can Count on Me, Manchester by the Sea, and Margaret). He painstakingly worked on “Margaret” for years, a film that was supposed to be released in 2005, but Lonergan was taking his time completing his magnum opus in the editing room, this resulted in multiple lawsuits between the filmmaker and Fox Searchlights Studios. Eventually, Fox Searchlight ended up releasing a truncated 150-minute version of the film six years later in 2011. Critics were mixed-to-positive on it; It garnered a 61 on Metacritic and a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Eventually, Lonergan would complete his own three-hour extended version of the film which incorporated extra footage and a revised score. As mentioned, “Margaret” is certainly one of the best movies of the 21st century because it expresses the disillusionment of a post 9/11 America. It’s all seen through the eyes of Lisa, a 17-year-old high-schooler and witness to a tragic bus accident. The aftermath of Lisa’s traumatizing day leads to one darkly weird encounter after another or, as Ann Hornaday called it, a “circuitous journey down the myriad rabbit holes that comprise modern-day Manhattan.”
I put “Margaret” at #4 on my list of the best movies of the past decade. Within the article, I had this to say about it:
“Margaret” is an absolute masterpiece. It thematically is going for the tone of a grandiose opera, but in a modern-day context, filtered through the emotions of a teenage girl associated with a tragedy that she witnessed and for which she felt responsible. It expresses the emotional teenage mindset like no other. Every performance is astounding and every character in it so compelling and fully-realized. There’s no doubt in my mind that if this movie hadn’t been tangled up in lawsuits years ago, Anna Paquin surely would have been winning many awards for her performance. It’s such a shame that a movie of this size and scope was overlooked. Director Kenneth Lonergan asked friend Martin Scorsese for some help in the editing room and what you ended up getting was a movie that could not be explained easily and has only gotten better with time.”