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Of course it's good. What's surprising is just how well it displays grief, sadness, longing, regret.... And pieces it together ever so perfectly to me. The scene that the poster displays (which strangely is in a neighborhood block, not by the sea) is one of the saddest scenes I've ever seen, and the performances are so good there. Too often, these type of scenes display excellent dialog, wherein this one truly has two people who don't know what to say, and it comes out as mumbles, sounds, and held-back tears. It's brilliant, and quite like this throughout.
Um.. yeah, pretty much a masterpiece.
For better or worse (for my tear ducts), and this is becoming something a theme this TIFF, but maybe more than anything else I've seen at the festival, this absolutely destroyed me. I got up at the end of the credits and still saw about a dozen of people still visibly distraught and/or dabbing away tears. And it's all from things that feel so authentic, humanly messy, and entirely earned by Lonergan and every breath of the performances.
Similar to Everybody Wants Some!!, the only disappointment I had was suddenly realizing it was to coming to an end and instantly bumming me out that it had to be over at all.
Fuck, I'm ready for this.
What's the consensus on Margaret? I feel like that flew under the radar the year it came out.
I think about this movie so often, and it just guts me every time.
And then I think about how legitimately funny it also is, and it all feels just as strong, only healing.
Such a perfect, beautiful movie. If it's anywhere near you this weekend, do whatever you can to see it.
Got to see it again tonight. Almost didn't want to go since it was offered to me so last minute, and I mostly just didn't know if I could put myself through the tidal wave of emotions again. At the end of the day, I'm like "C'mon, this might be your favourite movie of the year. How can you pass up the opportunity to see it on the big screen with an audience again?"
But what really stood out on this second viewing was just the amount of humour I mentioned in the post above. I still cried to the point of near dehydration, but I probably laughed even more this time.
I now officially can't think of a more impressive performance this year than Affleck's. He's one of those actors who can convey just as much in silence and stillness as he can when he's strongly emoting. The unfinished sentences, mumbling, and messy, unresolved emotions of the scene Ezee mentioned in the first post.. Affleck, Williams and Lonergan can't be given enough credit for just how extraordinary a piece of filmmaking that is alone. And there are two other great hours.
Can't say enough about this.
Very, very good. It's the type of film that if I read a plot outline, I would think it was overly schematic with the misery pile-ups, but Lonergan is so good with the minutia and humor that everything feels earned.
I think my only nitpicks are a cameo scene by a well known actor (not a huge surprise since he is in all of Lonergan's films) feels undeveloped and a little too "lol Christians amirite?!" and the bar fights felt like they came out of Road House, but just about everything else is spot on.
It speaks volumes about Lonergan's talents as a dramatist and writer that this is his 'worst' film for me, but easily one of the best American films of the year.
Oh, same at TIFF and then my screening last week. I'm not sure that that reaction is a totally bad thing though? []
(The above spoilered stuff is broad but I'd rather not have known them going in. Having said that, the name of the "cameo" is in the opening credits..)
So I know this is the second movie in a row I'm saying this about, but holy shit. Talk about a gut punch of a movie. Watched it this morning, and it strikes such a chord that pretty much all day I've been on the verge of tears just thinking about it. This was incredible.
Between this and Nocturnal Animals, two of the best movies I've seen all year released this weekend, and you really can't go wrong either way.
It's funny thinking about the trailer (which I know by heart by now since it played before every other movie I saw in the past couple of months) in how it kinda tried to make it about something else entirely, and the real story is completely missing from it.
This is just excellent and superbly told, but it does hit a similar note and approach as Margaret, especially on the surface level of "difficult people deal with an unexpected death they're responsible for." Lonergan is deadly with his actors, though. Affleck and O'Brien are so intensely specific in how they come across externally and internally. It's ridiculous how note-perfect these performances are. Michelle Williams comes across as a complete character before and after the incident, showing years of pain and growth and stability, with like a total of what, seven minutes of screen time? Ridiculous.
Hedges? Contrary to popular believe, not every redhead heard with a New England accent is automatically related to Conan. :p
Interestingly, I realized his first big role was as the bully in Moonrise Kingdom, and the first of Patrick's two girlfriends we meet is Kara Hayward from that film as well. (Not to mention her and the other young lead from Moonrise, Jared Gilman, are back together in Jarmusch's Paterson.) The actress who plays his other girlfriend is apparently Mikhail Baryshnikov's daughter?!
I've thought about this so much. Between viewings I seriously wondered if I had forgotten sequences that she was in because she able to make such an impact under Lonergan's design of the film. She has similar screentime to Chandler, who we never actually see in the present of the story. Say she does win major awards over the next little while, would this go down as one of the all-time shortest rewarded performances? (Next to, say, Judi Dench.)
Oh, the kid who plays the younger Patrick in the flashback scenes is Ben O'Brien. I got them confused.
He's good too, though.
At first I honestly felt let down by the ending, but then the more I thought about it, it actually hit me harder than anything else in the film. [] All the performances on display are fantastic with their naturalism, the dialogue is real and authentic, the film's sense of humor acts as a perfect complement for the heavier moments...there's not much else to say about it other than what everyone else has said, it's a fantastic film. The more I think about it, the more I love it...and the harder it hits me.
It's actually the happiest ending, really. []
Very, very good. I can see this one continuing to grow as memory anchors itself to the two exemplary scenes--[]
I'm curious whether anyone felt the reveal that Lee Chandler had [] as fundamentally necessary to the plot? Nothing else suggested that extreme of a dependency and abuse on drugs and I'm curious why Lonergan didn't just opt for more booze. Also, I couldn't get a good read on the party going on at that scene. Was Joe there as well or just someone who looked like him?
Joe was there.
[]
A solid story, for sure, but I'm starting to wonder if Lonergan's style just isn't my jam. To me, his direction accomplishes the rare feat of being simultaneously uninteresting and showy. Casey Affleck is fine as an especially one-note version of Casey Affleck. And for all the praise that has come this film's way for its human drama, I'm not sure it felt especially honest to me. In Margaret, I felt Lonergan came across as being more interested in specific ideas than capturing genuine and nuanced human reactions. I feel the same here, though to a far lesser extent. The much lauded Michelle Williams scene was a stellar performance-reel segment, but it felt over-the-top and unrealistic as a piece of writing. I give her and Lonergan a lot of credit, however, for crafting a relatively full character in a very limited amount of time. On the other hand, Gretchen Mol's character seemed as though she should be far more interesting than she ended up being.
Lucas Hedges's naturalistic performance and his character's sub-story was the film's strongest element. This creation was less cerebral, not overly baked. As opposed to the film's protagonist, there's less sense that it was workshopped to death, and thank goodness his presence was there to eventually provide a reprieve to Affleck's overtly conscious take on Lee Chandler.
It's a good, solid piece of drama. Some aspects worked better for me than others. Ultimately, I'm glad it exists, but it just didn't strike as many chords as I was hoping.
This is by far my least favorite part of the movie. Out of place dream sequences suck, but even worse is when they're redundant. He wakes up and panics about a real life fire. That should have been enough as a major character moment.
Both of these points seem like a misunderstanding of what the film wanted to do with them (if not, it isn't coming across in your criticism). The former is deliberately a choice to contrast Lee, as a point of alienation. The latter is clearly meant to be part of the kid's need to fake some control and convince others (but especially Lee) a facade of independence. Hence the panic attack scene, and the subplot about the alcoholic mother. The whole schtick of the movie is showing these two men from the same family engaging in behaviorally different, but fundamentally same kind of damaging emotional suppression, with their victory at the end of the movie being their marginal acknowledgement of it.Quote:
- Since Affleck lowgears his performance and gives out nothing, almost every other actor overplays their energy level to make up for the deficit. Especially CJ Wilson (George) and Michelle Williams (Randi). I didn't believe anything anybody did in this movie outside of Affleck. It's like nobody is in synch. The scene with Williams at the end is terrible. Williams feels the camera on her and decides to go full throttle because nobody is stopping her.
- I liked Lucas Hedges, the kid, but really? I didn't believe the entire conception of his character. The dude's father dies after a long illness and he barely skips a beat before he goes back to his regular life. That didn't strike me as true, either, although his scenes do keep the movie from becoming unrelentingly grim.
The screenplay is quite good- I loved the way it is structured; the way the dialog plays out, telling the story. It's like a river of information. There's also a lot of dark humor; the shots of Lee driving back and forth to pick up Pat.
Hated the ending though. Would never watch again. It's no Good Will Hunting that's for sure.
It's perfectly crafted, but just not my cup of tea. Two of the least pleasant hours of cinema from the past year.