Mourning with Margaret

Recently, I found a note I had written to myself that said “I like mirrors because they are not quite the truth, but just enough of it”. Mirrors remind us we have edges, but everything that happens in front of them is a little bit artificial. It’s practice for something real, or prep for standing in front of another person. There’s an illusion of controlling the uncontrollable in a reflection. For a moment, we perform for ourselves and everything goes as planned. Truthfully, this note didn’t mean much to me until I watched Margaret, the feature-length epic by Kenneth Lonergan, earlier this year. I put it on late one night, aware of its length and not fully expecting to finish it, and quickly became intertwined with all its chaos and turmoil. I could not separate myself from it.

Margaret is a film that was released in 2011, six years after it was filmed, which tells the story of Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin), who was involved in a fatal bus accident. It dives into her grief and her struggle with taking responsibility in the aftermath, while she simultaneously tries to live a normal life as a high school student. For some critics and audience members, Lisa has been viewed as a privileged character that is hard to sympathize with (which is true but limiting). Her vanity and hubris often get the best of her, and at times it almost seems like she only know how to perform for other people, while having no idea who she is to herself. It’s uncomfortable to look at her and admit you see bits of yourself there too, but I think it’s impossible to be a teenager without at some point occupying the same headspace she does. I think it’s for that exact reason I felt so relieved to be able to live beside her. I understood her, even when she was constantly shifting and recoiling from her own nature.

I’m no longer in my teenage years, and they’re getting far enough away that I can observe that period of time without flinching. I was not impulsive, I did my best not to draw attention to myself, and I didn’t have a firm grasp on what people wanted from me, as Lisa often demonstrates. But I know I did (and still do) center myself in most scenarios, and I know being as self-conscious as I was/am/try not to be, stems from a place of self-importance. The believe that each thing I do will mean something, or that my mistakes, flaws, and accomplishments, are being tracked by some mysterious figure. So what is arresting about the film is it wrestles with that exact feeling. Particularly in the director’s cut, scenes of the main characters are often overlapped with other conversations. Background characters bleed in until they eventually take over the dialogue. In the moments when Lisa is explaining the accident to different people, we don’t even hear how she presents that story, which implies that maybe nobody else around her is listening either. But none of this is done in a way that’s unempathetic — quite the opposite. Lonergan is able to present these conversations so they remind us just how complex and vast each human is, and how serious and dramatic day-to-day life can be. We could follow any person Lisa interacts with and find they operate similarly to her, just as absorbed in their own body. Each person is trying to connect, trying to be heard, trying to fill an imaginary gap we believed would be filled once we became adults. But those attempts to be seen get complicated when what you believe about yourself is different from what you present. Lisa is always trying to fix something without ever naming it. It’s not that she isn’t aware of what she’s done, it’s that she believes there is a way she can rid herself of guilt and not be defined by her involvement in the accident without ever saying what she did out loud.

It’s taken me numerous watches to realize the film is not about missed connections. At first, I believed every character was consumed by the same isolation. Characters are constantly misunderstanding each other, their words overlap and float away, never finding a solid place to meet. However, I started to realize how much of that was just in their heads — a feeling I know all too well. It’s when I get too caught up in myself that I erase the possibility of being seen by someone else. There are periods where it seems impossible to reach across any barrier and allow myself, in all my dissatisfaction and illusions, to ask someone to understand me and offer the same in return. Maybe what it really comes down to is this: language is fragile. It’s a truth I know and it’s what leads me to write. Because writing gives me a chance to hold words gently and change them as many times as I need. When I speak I can’t find my rhythm, and I end up interjecting at the wrong moment or allowing too much time before responding. Words tumble, like buttons hitting the side of a dryer. Lonergan is one of our best living writers, so I have to believe he knows this too. There is something uncontainable about the way Lisa speaks, and she realizes it more than anyone else. She comments on her own behavior before someone else has the chance to and is caught off guard when she is met with a response she didn’t anticipate. Each interaction she has seems fine-tuned. She knows how to make people look at her and take an interest in her. But even still, she fumbles her words at times. She misuses the word ‘strident’ and an already tense conversation bubbles over. She takes the reins in multiple class discussions and eventually ends up being asked to leave for becoming too rash. Or perhaps most notably, but quietly, she causes her mother, Joan (J. Smith-Cameron), to break down in the elevator by telling her she’s not interested in having a conversation when she has “one foot out the door”.

Lisa’s not alone in causing chaos with language. It’s what makes everything in the film so theatrical — how a moment can be cut in half with a sentence, words becoming blades. In one scene, Lisa’s English teacher, John (Matthew Broderick), asks his class to interpret a passage from King Lear. What follows is a lengthy discussion on our perception, suffering, and limitations as human beings. A student firmly believes that his interpretation has merit, but John, in between sipping his juice box and taking bites of his sandwich, shuts him down. He decides the student’s understanding of Shakespeare’s text is incorrect, tells the class what conclusions they should actually be drawing, and moves on. Even analyzing words that have existed for centuries causes disagreements. What is written is all we have access to, and yet we think with words alone, we can see inside someone’s brain and know what they felt. Language becomes a prominent topic with Joan’s new partner, Ramon (Jean Reno), as well. After a date at the opera, Joan asks Ramon if he feels people were being superficial by cheering brava or bravi, instead of the more common ‘bravo’. To Joan, it’s just a way for people to draw attention to themselves, but to Ramon, he sees it as an act of politeness. Later on, as their relationship moves forward but fails to make much progress, it is language that finally separates them. Ramon makes a comment at dinner that comes across as insensitive, and Joan breaks things off with him later that evening. Language is so fragile that one word can cause a glass to shatter.

Despite all the delicacy (or lack thereof) in Margaret, there is something that comes through that is honest and unbroken. There is an attempt that never ends. Lisa falters but starts again. In the face of the accident, she wastes no time to rush to the victim and cradle her head and scream on her behalf. My favorite scene in the film is one that only exists in the director’s cut, and it’s when the school’s drama instructor asks everyone to gather and talk to each other about what’s bothering them. Lisa is at the center of many of those interactions, trying to convey what she is holding onto so her friends will forgive her for being distant. Lisa breaks down again and again and wraps her arms around her friends while being on display in front of all her peers. It is theatrical in its own way, but it allows us to see just how desperate Lisa is to be understood. It’s also during that exercise though that Lisa realizes her limitations amongst her peers. Even with forgiveness, she is not understood. Even with wounds exposed, she is not given the tools she needs to heal. So, she looks elsewhere.

Maybe the hardest part of being a teenager is becoming aware of the idea of earning love and affection. What was once thrust upon us becomes complicated as we see ourselves as flawed; as we discover we can be malleable and molded to please someone else. And once we are aware of that option, the thought never really leaves. It’s like always being on an empty stomach. In adulthood, everything we do is like theater, because we are trying to fulfill a need that was once effortless. It’s evident in the way John casts himself in the lead role of the text his class is reading, or in the way Joan doubts an audience’s praise, but is relieved when Lisa reads her a positive review of her performance. It peeks through in the theater therapy session when Paul (Kieran Culkin) releases the emotions hanging in the air by declaring he is not concerned with mending personal issues with everyone, painting himself as easygoing and uninvolved. Everyone, in their own way, is trying to feel deserving of attention. Of adoration. And the smallest miscommunications feel like tragedies because it’s what we base our own worth off of. We rely on others to be mirrors and reflect love back on us, when really what each person is, is a portal.

Another person can show us something we never saw — can offer us a truth we never expected or desired. Each person we stand in front of gives us the opportunity to abandon the idea of a mirror and everything we see in it. Maybe it’s once we start to push past what is artificial and incomplete that we start to feel whole. It’s there that we can forget what was planned — what was calculated — and look at someone else’s face. Suddenly, it’s not about how they see us, but how we see them. Everything is new, conversations start to bleed in because you are curious and attuned, and you start to hear that everyone else is carrying around something too. What binds us, if we let it, is recognizing the fear and hope we all know. The world is not divided by those who have felt pain and those who haven’t, because there’s not a single life that isn’t accompanied by pain of some kind. What separates us is the belief that we have to cover those parts of ourselves up in order to be loved. But look into anyone’s eyes long enough and you will notice something familiar. And you won’t just mourn for Margaret, but mourn with her too.