Margaret

Saw Margaret, a well-written drama about a New York city highschool girl, Lisa, who plays a part in the accidental death of a stranger. She distracts a bus driver who plows into a woman crossing the street. Wracked with guilt, she lies in her police report and then, wracked with guilt about the lie, tries to make amends. Like The Graduate, this film has a great sense of the frustration of being young, unsure, and easily dismissed. Every person Lisa talks to about the event starts off the conversation with a puzzled look and "I don't understand." To them the matter is done with, but to Lisa her guilt, and her inability to "fix" her guilt, is a reflection of a major flaw in the universe. Throughout the film she is slowly but surely disabused of the notion of a just universe.

The film is preoccupied with idealism versus pragmatism and with justice and guilt. Side-characters in the highschool passionately argue Israel vs Palestine, 9/11, and, broadly, the justice of the world. One boy, for example, cannot believe that Shakespeare's quote "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods." is supposed to convey the unknowable cruelty of life. He balks at the notion of cruel gods and falls back on a "mysterious ways" argument, claiming that this is what Shakespeare really intended. He is wrong but, typically for this movie, the teacher throws his authority around and strong-arms him into silence. Lisa turns to look at the boy, but what she sees when she looks at him at that point is not known.

Lisa meets the bus driver to see if maybe he's just such a nice guy that her initial lie to save his job is made okay in some sense. She discovers he's completely self-deceiving about the incident, claiming to remember exactly nothing about the incident except what's in the police report. She also attends the funeral of the victim and befriends one of her (the victim's) friends, a woman named Emily. I liked Emily. She was feisty and sensible. Lisa tries to treat her a surrogate mother, her own mother being a slightly emotionally needy actress. Emily is willing to be kind, but is unwilling to actually be a mother to her. Once again, Lisa is on her own.

Perhaps now is a good time to point out that Lisa is a very well-drawn protagonist with flaws who makes mistakes. Some of her mistakes involve sex. She is sometimes horrible to people and sometimes people are horrible to her. This is the kind of cocktail of moral ambiguity which drives many viewers insane, trying desperately to figure out if the character is fundamentally Good or Bad. Do not fall into this trap. It runs counter to the entire thesis of the film.

The film is a tour-de-force of acting. There are many quiet conversations with undertones conveyed in glances and pauses. There are also glorious melt-down scenes and mighty arguments where fundamental truths are declaimed ("You don't care more, you care more easily! There's a difference!") The film is mostly character driven which, if you're not attentive, leads to some confusion about motivations and agendas (see the end of the second paragraph above,) but this is almost thematic. The film is fundamentally about how the world is a confusing and very busy place and that merely communicating what's going on inside of our heads is almost impossible in a day-to-day sense. It is little wonder that justice is not done in this world, for it is almost all we can do to convey that an injustice has occurred. The film ends with Lisa at the opera, sobbing as she realizes that the simple world of the opera and of her ideals will never be real life, and that the beauty of the opera is a lie.