Margaret 2011

Damn, this film is polarizing. Many say it’s a masterpiece and many say it’s total shite. I say that the biggest issue is that the main character is total shite.

I mean, I sat through the 2.5 hours not actually caring about Lisa or what she wanted. I wanted her to fail miserably at the misguided mission she bestowed upon herself. She took the guilt she felt over her involvement in the death of Monica and she turned that into energy for the purpose of placing full blame on Maretti. She was a strongly unlikable person from start to finish.

Throughout the film, she never tried to better herself, she didn’t become kinder to others, and while she did make some poor decisions involving sex and drugs, she certainly wasn’t at all hard on herself for the tragedy she helped cause. She never once reevaluated what kind of person she was or considered her own place in the world. She thought she was all that and a can of cheesy Pringles and kept considering her own comfort and her own self interests over everyone else’s. It’s not as though she began as a brat and then by the end redeemed herself somehow. No, nothing like that ever happened. The final scenes with her breaking down and hugging her mom when emotion hit her during the opera didn’t mean she grew as a person or anything. I’m almost certain she continued being her shitty self afterwards.

Lisa’s mother was just about the only likable character in my opinion. (The guy Lisa talked to that took her statement seemed all right too. His reaction to her trying to change it was perfect.) The storyline on IMDb describes Joan as a self-absorbed actress and that she deserved the treatment she received from her daughter. Of course, it also says that the bus hit a blind senior, sooo. But it does seem other people had that same perception of Joan.

There were only two things Joan did that I couldn’t get behind. For one, she kept telling Lisa that she was proud of her for going after Maretti, and to me that was just misguided support given in hopes that her daughter would actually begin to give a damn about her mother. Two, the night that Lisa came back covered in blood from the accident Joan asked if she should skip work and stay home with her. Of course she should have stayed home; she shouldn’t have even asked or made it an option! Although, she may have done so because it made her uncomfortable to try and be comforting towards her daughter, given how Lisa was. So, she asked because she knew it was the right thing to do, but was glad to just go because it was an excuse to avoid the awkwardness and potential backlash she'd receive about nearly anything, at no fault of her own.

Past that though, I found Joan to be a very sane and thoughtfully communicative character. Oh, Joan absolutely lost her cool on occasion; like when she started throwing things at the dinner table when Lisa brought up moving to California. There was also an instance in which she called Lisa a cunt. I couldn’t agree more though; Lisa was 100% being one.

Honestly, the fact that Joan never hauled off and slapped Lisa across the face was hella surprising, and to me just further illustrates what a decent human being she was. Her daughter had a neverending horrible attitude and was just absolutely horrible towards her mother in general, no matter how carefully or kindly she would approach Lisa about any subject matter. Maybe those reactions weren’t the most appropriate ways for Joan to handle her hurt and anger, but good god, there’s got to be a breaking point and I’m really not able to place even half an ounce of blame on her.

That poor woman just needed a single shred of support. It’s no wonder she kept hanging in there with Ramon. Even when she’d try to connect with him on a deeper level and discuss what was important to her he’d dodge it all as if it were a bullet, but she put on a tired smile and carried on. A hard truth is that sometimes something feels better than nothing, and she probably would have had even less patience for Lisa’s bullshit had she not had someone at all in her corner. Her reaction to being told how much Ramon had loved her after his death was perfect. She was touched but uncomfortable and it was just so genuine and very well done.

Outside of Joan, some of the very best parts of this movie were when people called Lisa out on her crap. An example outside her mother giving it to her is when Monica’s friend, Emily, blew up on her after Lisa spouted that utter nonsense about her daydreaming that she got to be Monica’s dead daughter for her there at the end as she died. Damn, that woman really gave it to her and didn’t back down once. It was great. I wanted to high five that lady.

I felt that there was some misuse of nudity and sexuality. It wasn’t the absolute worst but one scene was especially bad. Early on, not long after the accident, they had Lisa walk through a crowd and brush past some young guys while looking distraught and lost in her head. It wasn’t that she was wearing a skimpy outfit, because she was wearing a skirt so short it nearly didn’t cover the bottom of her ass when she was introduced in the beginning, so it was obviously just a way she chose to regularly dress. It was that they showed her walking in slow motion with her breasts bouncing and nipples not at all subtly showing through her top, coupled with another short skirt showing off her bare legs. It was completely inappropriate to the tone of the movie at that juncture. If they wanted to continually show off Anna Paquin’s body they had many other far more fitting opportunities to do so. They could have used such a strong and striking visual like that when she strutted up to her teacher and gushed about being in love with him, or when she was getting ready to seduce him. It would have made sense and fit the mood of those particular scenes.

Also, I really dislike when movies show nudity just to show nudity, and this one didn’t overdo that aspect by any means, but from my perspective it did happen very obviously in one specific instance. There was a very short scene where Joan is shown in the bathroom looking at her topless self in a mirror. Now there was also a scene where Joan was getting off by herself in bed in obvious excited response to having met a new man (Roman) with obvious interest in her, and nudity would have been fine and perfectly relevant then. I would not have been surprised to see her heaving bare breasts in those moments. They didn’t use that opportunity though. The mirror scene, it just seemed to be an excuse to be like, “oh hey, full frontal tits!” Which I find especially annoying in a film that’s supposed to be so deep and intellectual. With further consideration I guess it could have been meant to imply that Joan was looking at her body while considering Ramon’s possible future enjoyment of it, but that’s not an immediate conclusion; I had to dig for that. The masturbation scene I understood the purpose of right away. It was making it clear that Joan had interest in Roman as well.

The pregnancy and abortion storyline could have been left out entirely. It wasn’t a shocker considering Lisa’s reckless behavior, but it was kind of just tossed in there and there was so little about it. I’m surprised she didn’t freak out and act out more over that particular situation; it was kind of glossed over briefly as if the whole thing was just an afterthought on the writer’s part. It definitely only added to my disdain for her character. For all the shit Lisa was giving the deceased woman’s cousin for only being in on her little game for the chance at money, I’m pretty sure Lisa brought up that the abortion cost $400 to her teacher in hopes that he’d feel guilty and give her that money. When Mr. Aaron slept with Lisa I was sitting there literally about to say aloud that he was a fucking idiot and he said it for me! I was so disappointed in him. He seemed like such a smart, stand up character, but all that went out the window when he decided it’d be even remotely reasonable to allow her into his apartment. He had to know what she was up to; he was disgusting for allowing the mere opportunity for it to happen.

Now, there’s a video on YouTube about Margaret I was given the link to titled “How This Film Was Ruined in Editing” by This Guy Edits. In it, it’s said that Joan’s line about it being Lisa’s body and Lisa’s choice was incompassionate. What?! How the hell was that incompassionate? I found it supportive and as it should be. It should have been Lisa’s choice whether she chose to end the pregnancy or not. It shouldn’t have been up to her mother. If Lisa wanted to discuss her options further and have her mom’s guidance, that’d been one thing, but she just pushed her mom to tell her what to do and she’d already pushed her mom enough as it was. Fuck being patient with her any more than she had to. Making that decision was a consequence of her actions and only she should have been making it, whether she wanted to or not. She was 17, not 7. Insist on doing adult things, fucking face the adult consequences. She was attempting to pick and choose when she wanted to be treated like a grown up or like a child.

It was also stated in the YouTube video that Joan gave Lisa bad advice by merely suggesting her think about the fact that her actions could ruin the bus driver’s life. Why would it be wrong to at least consider that aspect of it? Lisa distracted Maretti. Should he have done his best to ignore her and focus on driving? Yes. Should Lisa have known better than to attempt conversation with the driver of a moving bus? Also, yes. Maretti was not the only one at fault. Both of them made a huge mistake. It was a horrible accident. What a bitch she was to turn around and go after him like that. What made her so damn special that she could decide to absolve herself of that sin and put it all on him; and push for him to suffer more and be punished further? As if it didn’t haunt him. As if he didn’t give a damn that he killed a woman. Whose to say he didn’t immediately become a much more conscientious driver? Sure, yeah, we find out later that the guy had previously been in two other accidents in two years, but Lisa was hellbent on going after him before knowing that. What. a. Bitch.

I feel that the school debate scenes could have been left out pretty much entirely too. They were really just another way for a lot of yelling to go on. Besides, high schoolers don’t have discussions like that in general anyway; most of them aren’t knowledgeable enough about politics and the state of the world in order to be able to in the first place. Maybe more so now with so much being plastered all over the interwebs that adults and children alike are far too overly consumed by, but not so much back when this was being made.

I liked the opera scenes. I think it’s quite amazing what they are capable of with their voices and it can be very beautiful. I’ve always wanted to go see at least one show to experience what it’s like, although I doubt it’d become a regular activity. But others I’ve been close to have never held the same interest (were adamantly against the idea, in fact) and I don’t think I’d ever bother going alone.

By the way, there were 3 minutes of dreadfully boring slow motion credits at the start. We totally skipped through them. There was also this one scene I recall, in the second half of the movie I believe, where it was just this long, drawn out shot of Lisa walking with her back to the camera through a crowd of people on the streets. It was like one of those popular scenes that are used at the actual endings of many films; where the credits often begin to roll. Then, there were lots of slow panning shots shown of the buildings. What was that? It was completely pointless. It was almost as if it were a trick to lead you to believe the movie was over, but I knew it wasn’t because I was already too painfully aware of its full duration.

I have to wonder if all the big names in this expected so much more. Let’s be real though; if you’ve gotta make 4 versions of the same story in the hopes that one will stick, it must not be all that.

I’m afraid to give Manchester by the Sea a chance, but the presence of Michelle Williams is tempting me.