Movie Diary 6/10/2024

Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011). The three-hour director’s cut, screened last night at the Paris Theatre as part of a “Bleak Week” program. My top film of 2012, for what that’s worth, and not a bleak film at all, but I get where they’re coming from. The director, J. Cameron-Smith, and Anna Paquin attended and provided a warm, thoughtful, but also fierce Q&A after the movie. One thing: For an event like this, the movie should’ve looked better. I do not know what was being projected, but the film deserves more – and for the opening ten minutes, it was even masked incorrectly, leading Lonergan himself to pop out of his seat and run back to tell somebody. There is no excuse for that.