Margaret: The Impending Doom of Accepting Our Insignificance

BY ISA PALEY

WE ARE ALL going to die. Perhaps a solemn acknowledgement of commonality, it is also the truth of the human experience that our mortality and, furthermore, our pain is inherently unremarkable. In Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, “Spring and Fall,” a young child, Margaret, realizes that she, like her favorite tree, will one day die. The startling acceptance of this truth by a young girl is emulated in Kenneth Lonergan’s masterpiece, Margaret (which gets its title from the poem), an ode to the commonplace of loss and grief in a post-9/11 New York. Lisa Cohen, the film’s protagonist, is an angsty and disaffected teen forced to confront how little she matters in the wake of a bus crash and woman’s death that she inadvertently causes. Lisa’s eventual understanding and mourning of her own self-importance mirrors young Margaret’s mourning of her mortality. The shared humility in accepting our insignificance as humans is what drives Lonergan’s film, which functions as a meditation not only on Lisa’s attempts to find solace in a world that makes her unimportant, but also the meaning her – and our – lives gain in the conscious decision to love and to feel.

By naming the film Margaret , Lonergan implicitly communicates Lisa’s lack of importance. She, in relation to the poem, is one of many Margarets, people who deeply feel the weight of societal truths. Those who, in their discovery of their limits as humans, must overhaul the way they lead their lives. Lisa begins as detestably self-involved and carelessly cruel, and she operates with an unwarranted air of superiority. In processing her involvement in the crash, she becomes exceedingly moralistic, attempting to understand this cosmic wrong by taking it out on those who love her. Her acts of cruelty, both before and after the crash, are rarely justified, and explanations for her egocentric grieving are never given. Instead, Lonergan uses his choices in cinematography and sound design to constantly remind us of the larger world that Lisa inhabits. When we see her walk the streets of New York, we hear her conversations at the same volume as those around her. In doing so, he communicates that Lisa’s emotions are not singular, her manifestations of grief are not unique, and that she is one of billions of people that are everyday touched with pain. She is emblematic of the millions of others who suffer in New York City alone. Yet, while she represents them, she does not matter more than any of them. Her story may follow more cinematic narrative conventions in the sense that it has a clear inciting incident, but what I think Lonergan hopes to extract is the idea that anyone’s life can be cinematic. We’ve all had moments that feel like the start of a coming-of-age movie. That doesn’t make our lives more important than anyone else’s, instead it reinforces how connected we are as humans. It is in this assertion, and its dichotomy with Lisa’s behavior, that Lonergan holds a mirror to his audience. Perhaps we are not all as self-absorbed as Lisa, or at least not in the lives we live as depicted in our minds, but I do believe that we often disregard the beauty in acknowledging how similar all of our experiences are.

Lonergan elevates this assertion by suggesting that in the mourning of one’s own importance there is potential for universal connection. He unconventionally conveys this through the use of opera as the film’s main soundtrack. Opera is almost never heard in one’s native language, yet it is still beloved and admired by many. It is the emotions that are conveyed through the sweeping music that has made opera such an effective medium for as long as it has been performed. The language of suffering, like opera, is never the same for any person, but it acts as a universal thread. No one struggle will ever matter more than another, but it is in this assertion of a shared experience that we can find communal solace.

This use of opera as a representation of shared human emotion is particularly fitting in regards to what I consider the film’s most pivotal scene. After attempting to fill her emotional void by reveling in nihilism, Lisa shifts her focus to the litigation of the bus crash. She reaches out to the victim’s best friend and starts demanding that this should be a court case, that the bus driver is guilty, and that he should pay for his crimes. Her self-centered and overly intrusive attempt to right a cosmic wrong comes to a head when she argues with the victim’s best friend, Joan, who says, “This isn’t an opera! And we are not all supporting characters to the drama of your amazing life!” The reference to opera here is incredibly pointed, as Lonergan attempts to highlight how the performance of inauthentic emotions (like the melodrama of an opera) undermines the shared connection that can be found in human suffering. Lisa could have reached out to Joan in an emotional sense, to grieve together over this tragedy, yet she chooses to overbearingly insert herself in a way that nearly overpowers the people who actually knew the victim. Not only does it detract from natural mourning, it causes Lisa to render those in her life that matter most into woeful side characters. This moralistic approach to grief rests in Lisa’s own guilt for her part in the accident, but also in her struggle to find logic behind why she was part of the crash. She believes that by involving herself in the case, other people will see her actions, and that they will then become important. If they happen to win the case, then her involvement in the crash will have meant something. She clings to the promise of external validation of her importance as a way to cope with the truth that things often happen without reason.

Yet what Lonergan most ardently attempts to assert is that a lack of logic and importance doesn’t mean that our actions don’t mean anything. He communicates that in a world of many, the only way to live a life that isn’t constantly hinged on the opinions and actions of others is to find meaning in what is already around you. In “Spring and Fall,” it is exactly this assertion that causes Maragret to mourn in the first place. She cares so much about what is around her that accepting its mortality has sent her into mourning. Lisa, in her self-centered grief, must embrace her unimportance to even realize that she was grieving in the first place. Human connection is the key to this, and as we see through Lisa’s futile attempts to connect in a moralistic way with those involved in the crash, it must come from a conscious decision to be vulnerable and to feel. Lisa spends the film looking for her life to mean something more than just being human, yet Lonergan conveys the inherent beauty in simply existing the same way that the rest of the world does. The bottomless pit of self-loathing that can come with the impending doom of embracing your own insignificance is hard to come back from. But in doing so, and in using what we gain as a means for connection, our lives become meaningful.

As the film ends, Lisa and her mother go to the opera. Despite having won the case, Lisa hasn’t miraculously cured herself of her emptiness. In a room of hundreds she feels just as inconsequential as she did before. But as the opera singer begins to vocalize, Lisa begins to cry. Shedding tears for her own self-importance, Lisa turns to her mother and shows her true affection for the first time in the film. Not only is this a manifestation of the types of human connection Lonergan asserts give life its meaning, it is also an acknowledgement of mutual suffering. As in “Spring and Fall,” neither Lisa nor her mother is grieving a physical loss – rather, the loss of their own significance. Yet as they cry, they are choosing to feel. We as humans could use the truth of our own unimportance to revel in cruelty, but instead we emote, and in doing so add meaning to our lives. As I struggle in my life to overcome the woes of social comparison and selfdoubt, I try to remember why I’m sit - ting in the library typing words about just one of the millions of movies that exist. Margaret as a film isn’t important, and I’m sure Lonergan would agree. Yet in its perhaps insignificant existence, the film has brought me a unique sense of peace, and in choosing to love it and attempting to share the solace I find in it with others, the film (and my life) may garner meaning.