Delayed Reaction: Margaret

The Pitch: Follow the life of a teenage girl as she works through some shit after a traumatic experience.

This is the movie I thought I was going to get when I saw Manchester by the Sea. I hadn't seen a Kenneth Lonnergan film before Manchester, but based on what I did know about the plot of Manchester, I expected a film with a lot of big emotional moments and a character who is transparently working through his grief. That's not Manchester though. Casey Affleck internalized most of his performance. Anna Paquin in Margatet did not. She's constantly babbling and being awful, primarily to her mother.

I mostly knew of this film as the one that Kenneth Lonnergan couldn't stop tinkering with. It was released 6 years after it was filmed due to numerous legal battles and an extended editing process. That shows. At 150 minutes, the run time is already fairly bloated. Apparently, there's a 186 minute cut out there as well. It's a tricky problem for Lonnergan. The film has a number of narrative dead ends like the stuff with Kieran Culkin or Paquin's teachers. Those add to the experience though. There's no way to fake time spent with a characters. For something like Paquin's emotional breakdown at the end in the lawyer's office during the conference call or with her mom at the opera to have the desired effect, you need to commit some time with the character. As a 90 minute film, I don't see how that could work.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend