In the shadow of September 11, a movie unfolds of an adolescent girl whose life is changed by an event she finds hard to cope with. In his second feature, Kenneth Lonergan, cowriter of Gangs of New York, sensitively constructs the world of an obstinate yet fragile heroine. Starring Anna Paquin, Mark Ruffalo, and Matt Damon.
Margaret is an energetic girl with average problems, countless dreams, a typical tendency to bicker, and a talent for deep empathy. But then an accident shatters everything and dramatically impacts her life, just as the portrayal of the tragedy itself sets the mood for the film as a whole. In this way, the director asks viewers to help carry the protagonist’s burden, making the audience all the better able to handle subsequent ambiguous events. Margaret tries to come to terms with what’s happened and to get back some semblance of her former carefree life. The spontaneous girl has been waylaid not only by the weight of responsibility but also by the sudden loss of the delight she once derived from communicating with others. Possessed of an exceptional sense of detail and an awareness that, beyond its more blatant situations, true drama derives from moments of silence and uncertainty, the film offers the story of a mixed-up girl whom it is ultimately hard to judge. Thanks to the overall care taken and to an understanding of the characters, the faces in the final scene are more than figures in a drama. They are alive.
150 min / Color, DCP
Director Kenneth Lonergan
/ Screenplay Kenneth Lonegran
/ Dir. of Photography Ryszard Lenczewski
/ Music Nico Muhly
/ Editor Anne McCabe, Michael Fay
/ Producer Sydney Pollack, Gary Gilbert, Scott Rudin
/ Production Fox Searchlight Pictures UK
/ Cast Anna Paquin, J. Smith-Cameron, Jean Reno, Jeannie Berlin, Allison Janney, Matthew Broderick, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon
/ Contact Hollywood Classics
Kenneth Lonergan (b. 1962, New York City) is best known as a dramatist (The Waverly Gallery was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize), but he also writes and directs for film. His feature debut, You Can Count on Me (2000), earned an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay and took the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. In 1999 he was invited to cooperate on the successful gangster comedy starring Robert De Niro, Analyze This, and he worked on the 2002 sequel as well. He cowrote Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002), which was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including screenplay. Margaret represents his second attempt at the helm.
Hollywood Classics
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United Kingdom
Phone: +44 207 517 7525
E-mail: [email protected]
Marek Jeníček
Distributor, Producer
Melanie Tebb
Kenneth Lonergan
Film Director
Aleš Danielis
Distributor
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