: composed of incongruous parts
: of different colors ; spotted or blotched with black and white
Today is one of the year's great days...
JULIA's BIRTHDAY!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEAUTIFUL WIFE!
It would be impossible to have a better wife than her, truly impossible.
Gabriel and I will try to give her the best day possible. Too bad she has to go to school.
*
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
- "Spring and Fall (to a Young Child)."
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1918
There is no title character in Kenneth Lonergan's wonderful Margaret (2011), destined to be one of the decade's best films, but the movie takes its name from Hopkins' poem, which invokes a season of confusion and loss. At the center of this story is Lisa and she is played, in a tour-de-force, by Anna Paquin. (Though it might seem strange that Paquin, who's 30 now, is playing a teenager, keep in mind that the film was shot in 2005 - when Paquin was 23-24. The film has had more delays, post-production problems, lawsuits, etc. than seems possible.)
I haven't seen a movie over the last year that confounded, enthralled, and moved me more. Lisa is a headstrong, opinionated, budding, manipulative student at private New York high school who ensnares the attention of a bus driver (played, in a few powerful scenes, by Mark Ruffalo), causing him to run a green light and kill a woman. Over the course of the ensuing weeks and months, Lisaseeks various outlets for the guilt and responsibility - neither of which is owned up to by the bus driver - in various means: losing her virginity to a boy she doesn't really care about (Kieran Culkin); expressing her thoughts in class on Arab-Israel conflict; watching her relationship with her own mother, played brilliantly by the wonderful character actress J.Smith Cameron, dissolve into argument after testy argument; having meaningless conversations with her distracted west coast dad (played by Lonergan); coming on to her teacher (Matt Damon), a truly nice guy who seems to understand her. Finally, she meets the best friend of the woman who died (a terrific turn by Jeannie Berlin) and decides to start a lawsuit against the MTA and the bus driver. Anything, anything, to get justice, closure, resolve, retribution in a world that seems random and untidy.
This is not a film with easy answers. The characters are complex and can't be summed up by one or two adjectives. Lonergan - writer and director of 2000's great You Can Count on Me - writes the best dialogue in the business; the characters sound so real and intelligent, it's almost startling. The movie feels at times like a messy symphony - grand and loud, then quiet, sometimes oblique. It's also an ode to how hard it is deal to with tragedy and to grow up. All the facets of a tragedy - including the litigious sprawl that can drag on for years - are dealt with clearly and thoroughly. What a film! I didn't like all of it, but there's so much good about it, from the editing to the camerawork, to the actors, that it just feels like a masterpiece. I generally have little to no interest in seeing the unedited version of a film, but I would actually curious to see the 4-hour version out there somewhere. As the film stands now (the current two-and-a-half-hour version was edited by Martin Scorsese and his great longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker), it's startlingly good. Paquin gives a performance as good as anything an actress has done over the last few years. We all can recognize the character of Lisa - a little brazen, moody, hormonal, melodramatic - and, what's more, we can see ourselves in her too. Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Olivia Thirlby, and Michael Ealy are excellent in support.
*
One of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time, in my humble opinion?
Natalie Portman
as Nina Sayers in Black Swan (2010)
I liked half of this lurid, overwrought, at times spellbinding drama about a nice, shy, cooped-up ballerina who gives in to the dark side in Darren Aronofsky's acclaimed, must-see drama. Nevertheless, I'd be hard-pressed to deny that the Oscar-winning Portman gives the performance of her life in the title role. There's something old-school Gothic about the role - I could easily see Better Davis or Jennifer Jones in the part - and Portman acts up a storm, but there's never a moment when we don't connect with her. More importantly, there's never a moment when we want to stop watching her - even as we (okay, I) feel more and more removed from the story as it plays out. Portman is physically impressive here and she delineates every expression and mood swing clearly and forcefully.
*
I should have my new blog, devoted to books, books, and only books, up later today!
Again,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WIFE!
Images courtesy of:
http://yeeeah.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/natalie-portman-black-swan.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IAbKgCPp2MA/UALJmRT3H7I/AAAAAAAAH5w/PJ6_-vsNi44/s1600/margaret.jpg
Information:
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw29.html
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