Playwright Kenneth Lonergan broke through into film with the screenplay for ANALYZE THIS. He made his directing debut with the outstanding 2000 dramedy YOU CAN COUNT ON ME, which provided breakout roles for Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo. In 2005, he began production on his follow-up, which has taken this long to arrive in theaters due to Lonergan's lengthy editing process and two lawsuits. He probably needed more time.
Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin, TV's TRUE BLOOD) is a New York Jewish girl who attends a private school and has a chip on her shoulder. When her teacher Mr. Aaron (Matt Damon, BOURNE IDENTITY) calls her on cheating, she says — it was open book what does it matter if I got the answers from there or another person's test? She gets in heated arguments with her fellow students about terrorism. When speaking to her actress mother Joan (J. Smith-Cameron, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME), she gives only curt statements or outright insults. This is a teen who knows everything.
On a search for a cowboy hat, which she needs for the horseback riding trip she is taking with her writer father Karl (Lonergan), she sees a bus driver named Maretti (Ruffalo, ZODIAC) wearing one. She tries to get his attention. Distracted, he runs a red light and runs over Monica Patterson (Allison Janney, THE HELP), who dies in Lisa's arms.
Scared to get Maretti in trouble, she tells the cop that the light was green. She wants to forget about the whole accident. She starts toying with the nice guy Darren (John Gallagher Jr., WHATEVER WORKS) and then sleeps with the bad boy Paul (Kieran Culkin, SCOTT PILGRAM VS. THE WORLD). If she had a short temper before, now it takes nothing to set her off. Guilt builds and she tries to seek help with what to do. Her mother wants her to protect herself. Mr. Aaron just tries to give her a kind ear. She doesn't want to burden her father with the problem. Eventually she meets Monica's best friend Emily (Jeannie Berlin, THE HEARTBREAK KID), who just wants to find some kind of justice for her friend.
When the film is focused on dealing with Lisa coping with the accident, it is very compelling. But this film suffers from ADD and gets unfocused easily. In a subplot, Joan meets an admirer named Ramon (Jean Reno, LEON: THE PROFESSIONAL). He is boring, but she keeps seeing him because she is lonely. He's successful and nice, but where is the passion? On it's own the story might have worked, but it's the least inspired part of the whole film and distracts from the central plot.
Here is a film that runs 149 minutes and could easily have had another half hour or more cut without losing anything. In addition to the Joan subplot, many of heated debates Lisa gets into at school never connect back to the greater theme. Political debates about terrorism don't really connect to the tragedy of someone getting hit by a bus. Only the discussions in the humanities class really fit the big picture and they are too long as well. The best part of those scenes is getting Matthew Broderick as John, a teacher unwilling to take in opinions that differ from his own.
At one point Lonergan had an even longer cut. Eventually, Fox Searchlight brought on Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker to edit what was being deemed un-releaseable. Lonergan had final cut rights and approved the Scorsese and Schoonmaker cut. And still the film could be used in film schools to teach editing. Give a student the film and ask them to make it tighter. As it stands, the film is self-indulgent. It's interesting to note that Smith-Cameron is Lonergan's wife. One thing is for sure; Lonergan is a great husband.
The title is not a reference to any character in the film, but Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "Spring and Fall." Look it up, because it encapsulates Lisa's character perfectly. She is a teen with big emotions. Her grieving over the tragedy makes her strident. Someone observes that when she grows older she will be not so quick to react, but will feel more deeply. Over the course of the film that is what she wants from herself and others.
I've been waiting a long time for a new film from Lonergan. Even though this is a disappointment, it still shows how talented of a writer and filmmaker he is. He just hasn't learned how to "kill his babies" as they say in order to serve the overall flow and purpose of the film. When you wade through the extraneous material, the core story of Lisa is compelling. This is a film that needs an editor's cut, not a director's cut. In the end you don't mourn for Lonergan. It is MARGARET you mourn for.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
