Movies: Margaret

I viewed Margaret 20 years after it was made and 14 years after it was released. The distinct gap between the film’s completion and release was due to an artistic and production dispute, a great example of how the film world and business world make for an odd couple.

This gives the film an added layer of interpretation given the setting, backdrop and cultural journey. As someone who was a teenager at the time of the September 11th terrorist attacks and is now in their 40s, having experienced the transition of the (Western) world from before 9/11 and after provides a useful perspective in reading this film. That pivotal event in time is integral to Margaret, set and made a few years after and in the same location. The film centres on Lisa, a middle class, half Jewish teenager on the cusp of adulthood. A child of a broken home, she is living with her mother and much younger brother in their Manhattan apartment, holding a telephone based relationship with her father, whilst attending a Jewish private school. Her spare time consists of her navigating a typical life for someone her age, but which becomes disrupted by a monumentally traumatic event.

The title of the film refers to a character in the poem Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins, detailing the transition of a girl into a young woman, akin to the changing of seasons, which she observes with a sorrowful finality incomprehensible to the poem's adult narrator. Much like what is described in this poem can be attributed to Lisa’s character and journey throughout the film, with the narrator’s perspective attributed to the adult characters. As Margaret may mourn the changing and dying of leaves over time, as if they were her friends, her childhood, her innocence; Lisa’s experience as a growing young woman surrounded by the last vestiges of her childhood, mourns a sudden and dramatic loss of her innocence. The first 20 minutes establishes her typical teenage life of social first and school later, interactions with male and female friends, accusations of cheating on a test by her teacher, smoking, flirting, giving attitude. She appears relatively carefree, without direction and a juvenility that will serve crucial to her being the witness of a shocking accident involving a distracted bus driver hitting and killing a pedestrian. Her carelessness, flirtation and disregard for others leads to a tragedy and at this point, still early on in the film, you can practically see Lisa’s world changing as plain as Margaret’s seasons.

Up to this point, the film has played out quite low key, perhaps for the purpose of establishing Lisa’s life as relatively normal and unspectacular. However, the graphic depiction of pedestrian Monica being run down, horribly injured and dying is not phoned in, nor should it be since it is significant to the changing of the course of Lisa’s life and personality. One moment she is without a care, then within an instant a traumatic and horrific incident strikes, as instantly and out of nowhere as planes hitting buildings and a fireball suddenly obscuring the sun and clear blue sky on a regular, seemingly unextraordinary day in New York City.

From then on, Lisa’s shock and trauma carries through the film and she is now on a quest to make sense of it all. Her justice seeking voyage is fueled by her guilt at having been partly responsible for the accident and brings her into contact with an array of adult characters she looks to for answers and some redemption. Not only do they fail to satisfy her needs, but they can’t seem to grasp why she is treating the accident as such a big deal. Again in relation to the poem, this represents the narrator’s (the adult’s) perspective of apathy towards the changing of the seasons, a sense of numbness, or a desensitisation towards death, or simply the course of life. Monica’s cousin Abigail is a good representation of this, with her seemingly apathetic response to the death of her relative turned cynical concern once she sees the opportunity for monetary gain. Alongside Lisa’s trauma, they too may be trying to make sense of a terrorist attack on their city and lives, but perhaps they have seen too much already and become undeterred.

This theme is represented by numerous adults throughout the film. The bus driver takes no responsibility, a pattern as we learn this isn’t the first time he’s been involved in reckless driving; Joan prioritises her career and romance over being an attentive mother; Lisa’s father seems preoccupied with less important matters and struggles to make the simplest of decisions; and teacher Aaron crosses the line with his student. There are many adults in Lisa’s life, people she should be able to turn to and confide in, but none seem capable of helping her. They are as lost and complicated as teenagers who look to them for guidance, answers and hope. Adults have experienced life and disappointment and it has left them nonchalant. Much like Lisa’s quest for release and temporary relief from her pain with drinking, drug taking, sex and arguing with her classmates, adults look for it elsewhere, unwilling to address their responsibilities, pay attention to and take care of the children.

The lack of reliable family members and close friends leaves Lisa lost. Her brother is too young to understand, or take much notice of her, their age gap offering little compatibility, and in the character of Paul, who is closer to Lisa’s age and who she looks to for drugs and losing her virginity, her search for the confidant absent in her life is misguided. It is possible despite Paul’s experience and penchant for reading highbrow literature, that he is not necessarily ahead of her in life, with an awkward and premature end to their intercourse suggesting it too may have been his first time.

There is also evidence that looking to adults for all the answers is naive. At one point during an English class, one student’s attempt to decipher a passage from Shakespeare has his teacher almost foaming at the mouth insisting he is wrong. By all accounts this student is making a rare effort to engage in the class, thinking for himself and expressing his own interpretation, but the teacher will have none of it and instead reiterates a standard understanding of the passage he has always been conditioned to believe in. This butting of heads shows up in Lisa’s debate class, where a discussion on Israel and Palestine blows up when Lisa cannot accept an argument from the perspective of someone whose support falls to the latter. In navigating life, especially during confusing circumstances, no one can provide answers.

Lisa wants to act more mature and learn more in order to become so, but this often conflicts with her understanding of what it means to be an adult. She thinks she knows the law well enough to secure justice for Monica, Monica’s loved ones and to soothe her own guilt, however her best laid plans reach an impasse when confronting authorities and professionals. Why can’t the case just be reopened, her new statement be taken and the bus driver be held accountable? Why can’t the city take responsibility and cough up compensation? If she were older, wiser and guided better, she might understand the complexities of life. Only Monica’s closest friend Emily, who Lisa becomes well acquainted with during her quest for justice, gives her a dose of reality. When Lisa tries to insinuate something spiritual occurred when Monica was dying in her arms, Emily erupts with some hard truths about how Monica and her death is not to be used as a means of creating fantasy. Previously, Emily meets Joan and observes the dynamic between mother and daughter, but there is also discussion about Joan’s profession as an actress, perhaps leading to Emily picking up that Lisa has a flair for the dramatic. And whilst Lisa wants to be grown up, she often doesn’t take into consideration adult, mature behaviour, be it interfering in a working class bus driver’s life, her teacher’s career, or generally injecting herself into the lives of people she doesn’t know anything about.

Scenes between Lisa and Joan often give a further glimpse into their relationship and show a different side of Lisa. For the most part, Lisa bloats her own experiences, however, when the spotlight is placed on Joan, she will deny her mother the satisfaction by behaving disinterested. Joan tries to discuss her new relationship with Ramon, or tries to share pride about her new play, two significant moments in her middle aged life, but to which Lisa responds ambivalently. It again reminds us of Lisa’s young age and despite her experiences thus far, she is still very much living in immaturity.

For all the dramatics, this film isn’t without a sense of humor with certain scenes played out comically: Darren crying uncontrollably after being jilted by Lisa; Karl struggling between holding a telephone conversation with Lisa and calming down his rambling partner; Joan’s awkward interaction with Ramon’s son at his funeral. There is even certain humor in the more serious moments of the film: though hard hitting, there is something absurdist about the graphic depiction of Monica’s death, notably the excessive, spurting blood flying in the face of passersby haplessly providing aid. In a seemingly random scene later on, Lisa announces to Aaron and another teacher out of the blue that she had an abortion and whether unsatisfied with their response, or simply creating more drama for herself, she promptly drops the matter leaving them bewildered and taken aback. These might seem out of place, but allow for some relief from the tragedies and what otherwise might have just been an ordeal of a lengthy film.

Equally, with a backdrop of the terrorist attacks, it places the film in perspective by highlighting a lot of first world problems. These characters behave within a bubble (on an island), rich and privileged where their problems are minimal compared to everyday tragedies, war, devastation, or humanitarian crises, which they seem to take for granted. Lisa herself could be reduced to simply having a hormonal driven propensity for bi-polar like outbursts, bringing up serious matters one moment only to check out moments later, making her hard to like, or take seriously, which might be responsible for the reluctance of others to help her. Despite still living within the echoes of the attack, it is as if everyone has already forgotten.

Tragic tales become mixed with bourgeoisie entertainment, the latter exemplified in the final scene of Lisa and Joan attending the opera, an emotionally heightened moment helping to tie up the movie.

Through this character driven film we experience the behaviours of varying people, of varying ages, but all who are living in a city with a shared tragedy. Much like the poem, their confusion and complexity could be an allegory for different generations who are living in a newly emerging, previously unknown world of unreconciled trauma, inner rage and associative survivors guilt.