Kenneth Lonergan's 'Margaret' gets September release date after six years of legal battle

It´s been quite an eventful fortnight in terms of cinematic news since I last posted an entry here and jumped on a flight in search of two weeks of self-inflicted isolation. Some of the news were expected (the announcement of the lineups of the Venice and Toronto film festivals), some were sad (Silvio Narizzano's death), but the piece of news that has truly cushioned the always painful end of my holiday has been the announcement of a September release date for Margaret, Kenneth Lonergan's sophomore effort, after six years of seemingly never-ending post-production wrangles, including countless film cuts and two lawsuits.
Almost exactly one year ago I informed here that Fox Searchlight had announced a 2011 release date for the film, but with no news in this respect until now, I had already given up on the idea of ever seeing the follow-up to Lonergan's excellent debut You Can Count on Me. Now, discreetly but diligently, Fox Searchlight has confirmed a September 30 release date for the film, first limited to LA and New York.
The film, which stars Anna Paquin, Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo in the main roles, centers on the consequences a bus accident in NYC has on the life of a teenage girl (played by Paquin) who is indirectly involved in it as a witness, and it's supposed to be a metaphor of the trauma the city had to endure in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, whose 10th anniversary will almost coincide with the film's release.
Margaret was shot back in 2005 from an unusually long 168-page shooting script (effectively the origin of most of the film's woes), and problems started to arise as soon as work in the editing room took off. 
The critical success of You Can Count on Me had granted Lonergan a director's cut status, which allowed him to reject all of the early cuts of the film. Martin Scorsese saw one of those early cuts and famously hailed the film as 'a masterpiece', a comment that has doubtless contributed to the legend of this doomed project. In any case, his intervention has proved pivotal in the search of a satisfactory resolution since he sent in his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who finally came up with a cut everybody, including perfectionist Lonergan, seems to be happy about.
I've been following Margaret's development since the pre-production phase (Margaret-Lonergan-release might well be the three-word combination I've typed out most often on Google over the last five years), not only because I truly loved You Can Count on Me, but also because the film features one of the most appealing casts an independent American film can wish for these days.
Of course, so many things have happened in this 6-year gap since the film's shooting ended that it's hard to know what to expect. Famous co-producers Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella have sadly passed away , and the careers of the cast members have moved on, maybe most dramatically in the case of leading lady Anna Paquin.
I've always admired Paquin for the maturity and wisdom of her film choices, often made at an age at which other child actors jump (or are pushed) to just anything that comes along. To start with, she waited three yeas after her unforgettable, Oscar-winning turn as Holly Hunter's rebellious daughter in The Piano before she appeared in another film. And even after such a long wait she chose a comparatively small part in a prestigious film as she played young Jane Eyre in Franco Zeffirelli's adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's novel. In the decade that ensued, she opted for a sometimes unfocused but none the less interesting film career. Her roles over those years include an unbilled cameo in a Steven Spielberg film (Amistad), a teenage romantic comedy (She's All That), a near silent part in a hugely popular film (Almost Famous), a role in one of the best comic-based series ever (X-Men), a Spanish slasher (Darkness) ans supporting roles in auterist films (The Squid and the Whale, 25th Hour).
When it was announced that she had been cast for the central role in Lonergan's film, I thought it could be a career-changing moment for her, but then the project kept being put back and in the meantime another role, that of a Southern belle in love with a vampire in HBO's hit series True Blood, has transformed not only Paquin's career but also her public persona.
With an Oscar, a Theater World Award (for her 2011 stage debut The Glory of Living) and a couple of Emmy nods in the bag, pre-Sookie Paquin was a well-known performer but, in a curious case for a film star, she had remained in the margins of stardom and little was known about her private life, maybe because, well into her twenties, she tenaciously retained an eternal post-adolescent image.
Sexually charged True Blood has transformed that image way beyond the blond dye applied to her hair. The show has also paved Paquin's way to adulthood. Last year she married True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer just some months after she proudly announced her bisexuality in Cindy Lauper's  great Give a Damn campaign.
In fact, looking  at the film stills Fox Searchlight has published after the announcement of the September release (see pic above), one can't help but wonder if the viewer won't be taken aback when they watch a new film with a leading actress whose onscreen image doesn't correspond to the household name she is today.
In the event that she were to give a terrific performance in the film, would a given group or guild have no problem nominating her for an award knowing that the actress who would  eventually go to pick it up is effectively another person? (Of course Jessica Lange won an Oscar for Blue Sky after the film had sat on the shelf for four years, but it happened at an age when the change in her public image was hardly perceptible).
In any event, it is certainly sad that Margaret enters the commercial circuit almost through the back door, with such a limited and inconspicuous release. After so many offscreen troubles, however, one might also argue that it's the best way to set it free and see what happens.
As for me, I'm looking forward to seeing it as much as I was six years ago. 

Comments

[Sasha]

Me, too, I'm excited about this project, although some people who have seen cuts of the film weren't as enthusiastic as Scorsese and named it 'unfocused' and 'overlong'. I can't wait to see the result. Some people were joking that it might win a best editing Oscar after all.

[Imitation of Life]

I've also heard that some people who saw cuts of the films over the years didn't like it that much, but I think at this point it's simply herd to know what to expect.
True, the very limited release is an indication that Fox Searchlight doesn't believe so much in the film right now, especially because it seems it's not gonna enter the festival circuit, which is the place where it belongs.
Let's wait and see.
As for the editing Oscar, I'm not sure if Thelma Schoonmaker will the credited as the only editor, but in this case it might actually happen, given the already legendary offscreen, editing troubles of the film.

[Filmic]

Hadn't thought about the Paquin-Jessica Lange parallelism, but it's true, although I don't think Margaret is gonna get any attention