Sunday 18 September 2016

Margaret | Kenneth Lonergan, 2011


"We all have feelings."

Passing detail in Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret: a subway ad for a broadway play with the words "sold out" emblazoned on it, as if the only way to make something successful is to tell people they can't have it to make them want it, and to give them the impression that they're part of the conversation if they go after it — and isn't that what we all want? It makes sense, then, that a large portion of this movie takes place in high-school classrooms filled with heated discussions about art and politics. Everyone wants to feel like they've been heard, that they have something worth listening to, that they mean something. Yet, individually, we still see the world through a personal lens. Lonergan shows us countless NYC streets, stretching back to the horizon, surrounded by high-rises and filled with vehicles. There are a million lives in every shot. All we see are lights and windows.