One of the great moments in Margaret, Kenneth Lonergan’s long-awaited and under-publicized two-and-a-half-hour film, is when high school student and protagonist Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin) approaches Mr. Aaron (Matt Damon), a well-meaning math teacher she had sex with, as he walks with a female colleague. Abruptly, Lisa tells the two teachers that she had an abortion. Mr. Aaron, who had given into young Lisa’s advances just a few weeks beforehand, tells her she should tell the father, whoever he is. Lisa says that it probably doesn’t matter, the guy is probably sorry. Mr. Aaron says that it doesn’t matter if he’s sorry, that doesn’t mean anything. The guy needs to own up to what he’s done.

The scene shows Lisa as a character in the mode of Hamlet. The story is about Lisa’s coming to terms with her sexuality and her thinking about culpability. Margaret has to make a big decision, and she goes about seeking the knowledge necessary to make this decision in a variety of ways. Approaching Mr. Aaron resembles Hamlet’s attempt to figure out if his stepfather is guilty of killing his father by staging a play and watching his reaction.

Margaret is the story of Upper West Side teenager Lisa Cohen who distracts MTA bus driver Gerry Marretti (Mark Ruffalo) by flirtatiously shouting to him about his cowboy hat as he drives a Manhattan bus. The driver runs a red light, accidentally killing Monica (Allison Janney), a middle-aged female pedestrian. Lisa lies to the police, covering up for the bus driver, and says that the light was green, when it was really red. As the film progresses, Lisa starts to think she made a mistake. She asks every person in her life who she respects whether or not she should go back to the police and tell them she lied. It is the best friend of the deceased—whose name Lisa got from making some phone calls—who eventually gets Lisa to revise her initial statement, saying it’s her responsibility to tell the truth.

Lisa does, and the film explores the question: Is it Lisa’s responsibility to tell the truth? Won’t she be hurting the bus driver, who has a family to raise and protect?

The film’s fidelity to exploring and ultimately answering these questions is one of its many strengths. It is a coming-of-age drama, but a sophisticated one. Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan seems genuinely concerned with tracking Lisa’s consciousness, watching her as she considers the situation and learns.  Nearly every scene involving Lisa shows her worldview coming up against someone else’s and Lonergan writes each scene with both knowledge of his characters and real verve. The film’s characters are all intelligent and idiosyncratic. We do see the characters’ foibles through what they say, but one never gets the feeling that Lonergan feels anything but compassion for them.

Lonergan’s subtlety and cleverness as a writer is exemplified in one scene between Lisa’s single mother Joan (J. Smith-Cameron) and her love interest, Ramon (Jean Reno). The two go to an opera, at Ramon’s behest, and the show ends with tuxedoed audience members shouting “Bravi!” “Bravi!” On their walk out, Joan comments on how pretentious the Americans are who shout “Bravii!” Ramon explains that it is customary in Italy to shout “Bravi” because it is the plural of ‘bravo.’

JOAN:  It’s just so pretentious. “Bravi!” “Bravi!” Why can’t they just say bravo?

RAMON:  Well it’s the plural.

JOAN:  I know—

RAMON:  It’s the plural of “Bravo.” It’s what they say to acknowledge the ensemble.

JOAN:  No, I know it’s correct, it just—don’t you think there was something a little pretentious about those people?

RAMON:  Pretentious?

Here, Lonergan subtly dramatizes the new couple’s inability to connect. As one watches the film, it becomes more and more clear that, in addition to the expansion of Lisa’s consciousness, it’s the development of relationships that is driving the movie forward.

Lonergan imbues each of his characters with sparkling intelligence, particularly Lisa, and this makes for exciting and often combative interactions. So often in the film, we don’t know who to root for. When Lisa argues with her mother, Joan, or the deceased’s best friend, Emily (Jeannie Berlin), with whom Lisa eventually partners to bring a lawsuit against the city, it’s difficult to say which of them is acting irrationally. Lonergan isn’t pursuing a simplistic idea of youth being wiser than adults, but he does show the messiness of relationships and the fallibility of people in general, no matter how intelligent they are.  Most effectively, he dramatizes how difficult it is for a child to sort through the varying worldviews held by the adults by whom she is surrounded.

Consider this interaction between Lisa and Emily, the executive of the deceased’s estate. Here, Lisa explains that when she held the dying Monica in her arms, the woman mistook her for her deceased daughter (coincidentally, also named Lisa).

LISA: But then when I found out her daughter was dead, ever since then I keep having this really strong feeling that some way, for those last five minutes I kind of was her daughter. You know? Like maybe that’s the reason I was there: Like in some weird way, this obviously amazing woman got to see her daughter again for a few minutes, right before she died.

EMILY (very dry): I see.  And is she still inhabiting your body? Or did she go right back to the spirit world after it was over?

LISA:  I didn’t mean she was literally inhabiting my body. I don’t believe in all that stuff at all.

EMILY: I don’t give a fuck what you believe in.

LISA:  Oh my god!  Why are you so mad at me!?

EMILY:  Because this is not an opera!

LISA (flushing): What? You think I think this is an opera?

EMILY:  Yes!

LISA:  You think I’m making this into a dramatic situation because I think it’s dramatic?!?

EMILY: I think you’re very young.

LISA:  What does that have to do with anything? If anything I think it means I care more than someone who’s older! Because this kind of thing has never happened to me before!

EMILY:  No, it means you care more easily! There’s a big difference! Except that it’s not you who it’s happening to!

LISA: Yes it is!  I know I’m not the one who was run over—

EMILY: That’s right, you weren’t. And you’re not the one who died of leukemia, and you’re not the one who just died in an earthquake in—Algeria!  But you will be. Do you understand me? You will be. And it’s not an opera and it’s not dramatic.

LISA:  I’m well aware of that!

EMILY:  And this first-blush phony deepness of yours is worth nothing.

The scene starts to wind down when Lisa tells Emily she’s being ‘strident.’ Lisa isn’t sure about her usage of the word—she claims that she didn’t know exactly what it meant, and that she must have misused it.  But Emily is being strident. She also has a point—Lisa does need to be aware that this situation is affecting others more than her, that she is not the center of the universe. But Emily could stand to work on her delivery. Lisa is forced to learn two things here: one of them is about herself, and the other is about Emily.

The brilliance of this film lies in that we sort through the moral dilemma with Lisa; we grow and learn with her.

It is a grueling, glorious and enlightening experience and, for my money, the best one offered in the cinema today.

Eric Rosenblum is the founder, editor and host of www.theartsinnyc.com.  Eric teaches writing and English at Pratt Institute. His writing has appeared in Guernica Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Reader and Playboy.com.

During the course of the nearly three hour long world premiere of The Starry Messenger, writer and director Kenneth Lonergan’s newest play, we witness the protagonist, Mark (Matthew Broderick) comfort his mistress Angela (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who has just lost her 9-year-old son; we see Angela, in her job as a hospital nurse, kiss a dying 72-year-old man (Merwin Goldsmith) on the lips to comfort him; and we see Mark repeatedly tell his wife Anne (J.Smith Cameron) how much he loves her, as he assures her he’s not on the verge of asking for divorce.  Throughout The Starry Messenger, Lonergan showcases his characters as they baldly express themselves, often on the verge of or in the midst of tears.  But the portrayal of all this emoting is in no way saccharine; there is a painful irony beneath each of the characters’ sincere expression of their feelings.

The Starry Messenger, which takes its name from Galileo’s 1610 treatise on the wonders of the telescope, takes place in 1995, when the original building that housed New York’s Hayden planetarium was about to be torn down.  Mark, who long ago settled for a career as a City College astronomy professor rather than pursuing the field work about which he is truly passionate, meets an attractive 28-year-old single mom and begins sleeping with her on the sly.  The play covers a month or so of their lives, and the production features a single set with four different sections.  The action drifts fluidly back and forth between scenes in Mark’s classroom, his apartment, Angela’s apartment, and the hospital room of Angela’s patient Norman, a 72-year-old dying of cancer.  

The play’s funniest and most telling moment is when urban dilettante Ian (Kieran Culkin), Mark’s young Introduction to Astronomy student at the Hayden Planetarium, offers him a mid-semester critique of his teaching.   The comedy of Ian’s earnest but arrogant attempt to offer his teacher guidance quickly turns to pathos when the student leaves the room and Mark reads aloud from the critique.  “…I have to say it is truly amazing how anyone could possibly take such an incredibly pedestrian approach to what has to be the single  most expansive, awe-inspiring subject of them all,” Mark reads aloud.  “But you do. Almost as if you thought the stars themselves were boring.”

Ian’s observation accurately reflects Mark’s inability to find magic in his life.   Mark struggles throughout the play to discover something greater than the mundanity of his everyday, but Lonergan shows this as an often hazardous and futile journey.  When Mark makes a conscious effort to convey his love of astronomy to his students, he is interrupted by a loud-mouthed woman (Stephanie Cannon) asking irritating and irrelevant questions.  And when he comes home from work, his wife bombards him with the boring details of their holiday plans.  Mark can only find wonder in adultery and, as Lonergan makes clear, this has its own consequences.

Set Designer Derek McClane’s stunning backdrop to the set, a large digital screen that extends the width and height of the stage, is emblematic of the lyricism in Lonergan’s writing.  Between sets, the audience is treated to glimpses of the wondrous cosmos as the screen shifts from images of a nocturnal New York skyline from the perspective of Central Park, to depictions of the galaxies in the night sky.

The influence of Chekhov is evident in the biting irony beneath the tender moments of The Starry Messenger and also in the play’s ending.  While the characters are offered a temporary resolution to the play’s conflicts, the audience is assured only that the pain and difficulty in these lives will continue long after the play is over.

The performances here are all superb, with standouts by Broderick and Cameron Smith, who both capture the humanity in their flawed characters.  I haven’t seen everything on stage in Manhattan this season, but my guess is that there’s nothing that comes close to topping this show.  You should see it.

The Starry Messenger is at the Acorn Theater, 410 West 42nd Street, Manhattan; (212) 279-4200. Through Dec. 12.