Margaret, written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count on Me), starring Anna Paquin with key supporting performances from Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo, is the best film of 2011. Chances are very, very good that you haven't seen it — or were even aware that it was something you could see. And right now, it isn't.
A scene from The Tree of Life
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Written in 2003, shot in 2005, and mired in post-production troubles and subsequent lawsuits, Margaret was not theatrically released until September of this year — and almost as soon as it arrived in theaters (very few theaters), it disappeared. A coming-of-age tale infused with post-9/11 anxiety, Margaret features Paquin — in the performance of the year — as Lisa, a Manhattan high-schooler whose role in a fatal bus accident leads to a battle with her self-absorbed actress single mom, a few reckless (if awkward) seductions, and the obsessive pursuit of retribution on behalf of the accident victim.
Margaret opened in Los Angeles on September 30, on a single screen, and closed two weeks later. In many cities, it never opened at all. Given its production history, it's something of a miracle that it played anywhere.
So what happened? According to the Los Angeles Times, after spending years in the editing room and seeking counsel from friends such as Martin Scorsese (who called an early cut of Margaret "a masterpiece"), Lonergan was unable to produce a version that would, per his contractual obligation with Fox Searchlight, come in at under 21/2 hours. Searchlight demanded that Lonergan turn in an edit in 2008; he gave them his director's cut, which was longer than the 149-minute film eventually released. Why did it take three years to get from the director's cut to this year's film? Financier Gary Gilbert and distributor Fox Searchlight sued each other and settled; then Gilbert sued Lonergan, a case that is due in court later this year.
Lonergan has given exactly one interview during all of this, to Time's Mary Pols, and even that was monitored by his attorney due to the ongoing litigation. "I love this movie," he told Pols. "I have never worked harder or longer on anything in my professional life. It would mean everything to me if the film could at least have a fair chance at a life of its own."
Embracing the film and giving its cause some year-end awards momentum, some critics and bloggers are trying to provide that chance. (#teammargaret has become a bona fide Twitter meme.) But it's pretty clear that Fox Searchlight had and has no real incentive to spend energy or advertising dollars on Margaret, and if asked to explain why the film so quickly disappeared from theaters in the few major cities where it did open and why it failed to expand to other markets, Searchlight can fairly point to dismal box-office returns. (The film grossed a total of $46,495.) The argument against this, of course, is that the audience could hardly have shown up for a movie they didn't know existed. A film given a blink-and-you'll-miss-it release in a highly competitive market like New York or Los Angeles, deprived of the benefit of significant advertising or media coverage, might as well not be released at all.
There is also the matter of reception. Margaret is a divisive movie, and not all critics are boosting it. The New York Times's A.O. Scott wrote that in Margaret's second half, "the sense that anything is really at stake, or that anything even makes sense, dwindles before your eyes." This is not a totally inaccurate assessment of the film — though I would say it's a willful rejection of the film's deliberate climate of confusion.
If Margaret is a mess, it only makes us conscious of the messiness that we somehow manage to navigate every moment of our lives. Maybe it's imperfect; maybe it's not for everyone. Maybe nothing worth paying attention to is. I hope that you get a chance to judge for yourself.
1. Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, U.S.)
2. Melancholia (Lars von Trier, Denmark): The beauty and depth of Lars von Trier's triangle of depression, anxiety, and cosmic apocalypse has been well documented. What has been overlooked, I think — and what pushes Melancholia into masterpiece realm, for me — is its subversion of Hollywood's two primary currencies: the special-effects epic and, in the casting of Kirsten Dunst as von Trier's alter ego, the celebrity confessional.
3. Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, U.S.): Has a better American film than Kelly Reichardt's gorgeously unsettling Oregon Trail tale been made about survival instincts in the face of economic desperation since the start of the downturn? In a great year for supporting actors, Bruce Greenwood's incredible transformation into the rugged titular character is the most unjustly overlooked.
4. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, U.S.): At Cannes, it was tempting to pick a side between Tree of Life and Melancholia — Team Terry's earnest theological questioning versus Team Lars' Dogme dystopia. But even in their wildly diverging stylistic and philosophical approaches to life, death, and the mysteries of the universe, the two films defined the year in film with their implicit dialogue between one another.
