Here we are. One year later, much to my surprise and chagrin. But if I had to do a year of this, I’m glad I got to spend every day doing this. Thanks for being a part of it.
No links here today — just me rambling.
A year ago on March 13, I wrote the first edition of The Distancer on a plane trip from New York to Houston (a trip scheduled pre-pandemic!) having hatched the idea the night before as I frantically packed a little bit more into my bag than I thought I’d need for a weekend trip. I had gone to take out a large sum from the ATM just in case and was legitimately worried I’d get trapped inside Manhattan’s bounds. I felt like I’d escaped something while also having no idea what I was escaping into.
On this March 13, the U.S. has vaccinated 4.6 million people today alone. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel — a glimmer of hope that is still dim for many (ready to roll up my arm for a shot whenever!) but nonetheless visible. That’s not to say that the tunnel was not long, grueling and terrifying. We lost things along the way, too, be they people in our lives or more intangible feelings. Take a second to mourn those if you need to do so.
And through it all, day after day, I sat down and emailed you a movie recommendation. I don’t know if it helped anything, just to have something stable that you could count on day over day. (Just so we’re clear, I am not equating myself with a frontline worker or anything.) But I can say it helped me, just to have something that resembled routine in a chaotic journey of fits and starts towards some semblance of the life we once knew. After over 11 years of writing about movies, I can confidently say that it’s just as important for me to share the bountiful knowledge of what I watch for the benefit of others as it is for me to watch for the benefit of myself. Or at least that’s how I justify what would otherwise constitute an unhealthy addiction.
Reader, this is not the end of our relationship — but it’s the end of The Distancer and a pause on newsletters for now. I tend to be great at starting things and horrible at officially concluding them in the way I want, oftentimes just choosing to let them trail off indefinitely. At a year to the day, I feel like it’s as good a time as any to step away from this pandemic project. Things are starting to take a turn for the better, and I want to be fully present for it. A daily newsletter is a true time commitment — not that I didn’t love (almost) every second of it! — and I need to reclaim some of that as the wide world of new cinema begins to open up once again.
There will be more newsletters, though I can’t quite commit to when that will be or what form it will take. I will keep you posted somehow! There are ideas, and I’m currently in the process of determining what the best form for them will be — both to provide value to you as a reader and me as a writer. (In the meantime, for those who still want to keep track of my viewing, I keep a diary on Letterboxd.)
Tomorrow, we will set our clocks forward. The sun will linger in the sky later. Spring is on the horizon. We are making it through this. I thank you for letting me be some small part of the voyage with you.
OK, one final thing before the movie recommendation! I did this entire newsletter completely free of charge (although I did consider adding a paid tier on a number of occasions), ultimately deciding that I was providing something akin to a utility in a difficult time for money.
But writing is not a public good, and you really should pay for it. It would be difficult to quantify just how much I sunk into The Distancer, both in terms of time spent and the opportunity cost of paid writing assignments not pursued. (Seriously, a lot of time went into watching/rewatching movies just to write about here.)
So I ask now, whatever value you got out of The Distancer over the last year … please donate it to the Houston Food Bank. Between COVID-19 and the winter freeze here in town, there is a tremendous need for help. No one should go hungry.
The Distancer began with a quote from Roger Ebert about how the movies are a machine generating empathy. I hope this newsletter about movies can be a machine generating your action and compassion, too.
Now, what you came for…
DAY 366: Margaret (available on HBO Max)
Margaret ends with crying in front of art. Anna Paquin’s Lisa and her mother Joan (J. Smith-Cameron, perhaps best known as Gerri on Succession), after spending most of the film at each other’s throats, attend an operatic performance together and break down in tears. It’s here where they can reconcile, here where they can say something to each other that they cannot with their own words. Art has the power to bridge divides between people, to utter the unspeakable, to facilitate reconciliation, to provide harmony in a world where such a feeling seems entirely absent.
I don’t know that it’s fair to call Margaret a hopeful film, even with an ending like this (as some have pointed out, how honest is a rapport inspired by counterfeit emotion?). But the films of Kenneth Lonergan, the filmmaker who also gave us You Can Count on Me and Manchester by the Sea, don’t settle for being hollow pep talks that bestow courage upon us to tackle the grim world he depicts so well. Yet, even so, they’re reassuring in their own way because he refuses to sugarcoat tough truths about how tough it is to achieve such noble goals as peace, justice or stability.
The specter of 9/11 looms large over Margaret as a piece of familiar transportation strikes a metal object in Manhattan, leading to bloodshed and the loss of innocent life. I’m referring, of course, to the inciting incident of the film in which impetuous Upper West Side high school student Lisa tries to get the attention of a Metro bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) who then runs a red light and strikes a pedestrian (Allison Janney) and her shopping cart. Lisa tries to maintain some semblance of normalcy, even daring to go to a movie the same evening a woman died in her arms. It becomes clear, though, that her avoidance is untenable. She walks out of the movie because the accident affects her on a psychic level in ways she cannot even begin to comprehend just yet.
Lisa’s journey is far from linear, and Lonergan’s seemingly tangential or elongated scenes offer a breadth of crucial insight into her mental state, but the forward motion in Margaret consists of her efforts to find some sense of resolution for the trauma she experienced. This mainly takes the form of legal efforts to punish the bus driver and extract some kind of punishment or settlement on behalf of the victim. Even though Lisa claims these efforts are for some kind of higher cause like restoring some sense of moral order to her universe, a protracted battle only serves to reveal that her main rationale is a self-serving one. Not that she realizes this as a teenager, of course — she needs people to tell her so she can dismiss them only to soon discover their wisdom.
There’s a fascinating tension running throughout Margaret, one that plays out in both Lisa’s life and the film as a whole — is this a character study or an ensemble drama? That is to say, can any story truly center around a single person? Or are our lives inextricably linked to the people around us in ways we cannot see given the way we are trapped inside our own experience? There’s no better place to stage this conflict than New York City, of course, an environment so dense that you have no choice but to understand your life in relation to those packed in around you. Lonergan conducts nothing less than a city symphony of Manhattan, synthesizing the sensations of a place that can make you feel at once more alone than you have ever felt and more a part of the human story than you could ever imagine.
Listen to the ambient noise in the sound mix of Margaret. In moments when you’d expect a regular movie to key into a heated or meaningful conversation, Lonergan jumps back and lets us hear another table in a restaurant or some random person walking down the street. We’re left to understand that our intense, intimate dramas are just that: our own. They are just one piece of a grand picture, important to us but perhaps of little relevance to people even in our immediate vicinity. I love the way Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to this invisible connectivity our “inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” How frustrating to realize that the world does not revolve around us, and yet — Lonergan implores us to consider — how liberating in its own way.
Maybe our own experiences aren’t enough to bring us to this conclusion on our own. Perhaps we need art to bring us there.
P.S. — HBO Max has both the theatrical cut, which Lonergan himself does not really love, and his preferred director’s cut that’s 30 minutes longer. If you have the time, watch the full version. (You can read more about the tumultuous six-year journey to bring Margaret to the screen here.)
One final time, this time with extra emphasis — be good to yourselves and to each other,
Marshall