It’s 1970, and nearly 12-year-old Margaret Simon returns from summer camp to a box strewn about her family’s crowded New York City apartment. why? She and her parents move to New Jersey, so her grandmother mutters before her family makes the news of an only child.
Writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig’s book’s portrayal of adolescence, family, and nascent spirituality shows how precious things need to become precious when treated with kindness and thoughtful respect. Craig and producer James L. Brooks bring together a cast that not only delivers the joys and failures that await on the fringes of childhood, but also touches on other kinds of growing pains. Rachel McAdams and Benny Safdie play Margaret’s youthful parents, Barbara and Herb. Kathy Bates is the aforementioned absent-minded Sylvia, Margaret’s paternal grandmother.
But it’s Abby Ryder Fortson who carries the day, or the school year. On her face, Margaret’s dawning self-awareness and the faint glow of scars ring true: From the moment her soon-to-be-sixth-grader utters the film’s first prayer, “New Jersey is too frightening.” Please don’t become a thing,” it ends with a plea. It’s real.
Margaret’s ability to register hope and skepticism becomes even more compelling when she opens the door for her Mockingbird Lane neighbor and new classmate, Nancy Wheeler (Elle Graham). Soon, Nancy invites Margaret to her house and her secret club. At the Wheeler house, Margaret also meets a friend of Nancy’s brother. She is a 14-year-old moose (Aidan Vojtakhisson). The moose stays on the fringes of the action, representing the boy’s displeasure as well as charm.
Filling out their gang of four are the open-minded Janie Loomis (Amari Price) and the wavy-haired, glasses-wearing Gretchen Potter (Katherine Kupfler). Together, they compare notes about boys they like, chant the famous breast mantra, peek at Playboy, and peruse male genital anatomy books. Mildly obsessed with (and maybe even tinkering with) how you menstruate.
Halcyon glaze is used in the film’s Farbrook, New Jersey.As the book, published in 1970, the problems facing America at the time lie beyond the narrative. (Though it’s fun to think of Bloom’s novel as the little sister to another iconic book from the same year, the women’s health manual, Our Bodies, Ourselves. Emphasize “our changing bodies” in
With subtlety, Craig breaks out of the sweet-natured first-person narration of the novel and transforms it into an overall aura. McAdams has quietly made it clear that Barbara Simon isn’t entirely happy with her role as her suburban mother, Bates’ Sylvia says her little best friend Margaret After moving, she is encouraged to broaden her horizons.
Craig also broadens the scope of the novel. Margaret’s teacher, Benedict, is black. (So does Janie Loomis.) Echo Kellum picks up Margaret’s response to a survey, “I hate religious holidays,” and turns it into a yearlong assignment for a new but sensitive 6th grade teacher. Puberty offers most of the film’s overtly tender comedy. But its depth is captured in Margaret’s quest, the idea that her primary interlocutor might be a god she’s not even sure exists.
When Barbara responds amused but respectful to her daughter’s request for a bra, she is thrown out by Margaret’s plans to go to the “Temple” with Sylvia. (Herb’s calm response: “Do you know why I left the temple? I’m going to the temple.”) Barbara and Herb are nonreligious. In her novel, Margaret already knows why her mother became estranged from her own parents. they are christian Herb is Jewish. The two never get married. The writer and director took that back his story and brought it down to a mother-daughter revelation and him in one of the film’s most memorable scenes.
That adolescence and early spiritual quests could begin in earnest at about the same time turned out to be one of the film’s (and its sources’) most radical allures.
are you god That’s me, Margaret.
It is rated PG-13 for topics including sex education and thought-provoking content. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. at the theater.
