Kenneth Lonergan

Filmmaker and Philosopher

Todd May

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350112087
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Kenneth Lonergan's three films- You Can Count on Me (2000), Margaret (2011), and Manchester by the Sea (2016)-are rife with philosophical complexities. They challenge simple philosophical approaches to central issues of human behaviour. In particular, they ask questions about how to cope with suffering that one cannot overcome, the role that self- deception plays in people's lives and how to think about characters who do not embody simplistic moral ideas of virtue and vice. By philosophically engaging with these themes as they unfold in Lonergan's films, we are then able to formulate a more nuanced answer to the questions they pose. Kenneth Lonergan: Philosophical Filmmaker will draw from Lonergan's films and plays, along with the philosophical literature on the topics that they explore. The rich history of philosophical reflection surrounding these areas enables the reader to determine how the themes central to Lonergan's work have combined to create a rich cinematic oeuvre.

1

Introduction

We live in an artistic moment when the line between what is often called “high” culture and what is often called “popular” culture is being increasingly blurred. Novels such as those of David Foster Wallace and Haruki Murakami, television series like the Icelandic Trapped, the British Broadchurch, and the American The Wire; graphic works like Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina and Maximilian Uriarte’s The White Donkey; films of directors like Asghar Farhadi and Richard Linklater; and even a sitcom series like The Good Place—all of these offer themes, orientations, and rhetorics that can be appreciated as popular entertainment while at the same time inviting us to consider weightier issues traditionally associated with high culture.

This is not to deny that there may be other artists in other periods who blurred the line between “high” and “popular” culture, nor that there aren’t works that fall clearly on one side or another of that line. Regarding the latter, movies like Transformers and television shows such as SpongeBob SquarePants are pretty clearly devoid of themes that might characterize them as contributants to “high” culture, whereas much work that falls into the category of philosophy seems destined for venues entirely outside the popular mind. As for the former, one can think of various artists such as Bach, Dickens, and perhaps even Giotto as exemplifying ways of approaching art that go beyond the entertainment usually considered as its central characteristic.

What seems to be special about the current climate is that we inhabit a period in which this blurring is particularly true across many artistic practices. It is a moment to which the films of Kenneth Lonergan offer an important contribution. Although, as of this writing, he has directed only three films, they can all be watched as movies that appeal to wider audiences (You Can Count on Me and Manchester by the Sea both garnered Oscar nominations) at the same time that they offer, as we shall see, significant philosophical contributions to understanding important aspects of our lives.

One might want to balk here at this characterization of our cultural moment, particularly with regard to film. Wasn’t the period that included auteurs like Godard, Fellini, Bergman, and others also one that crossed “popular” with “high” culture? I think of it otherwise. It seems to me that the stakes of that period were less the blurring of boundaries than an attempt to take an artistic practice that had traditionally been associated with mass entertainment and show that it offered the possibility of producing works of “high” culture. Many of the films coming from the most respected directors of the period from the 1950s and 1960s are difficult to watch as entertainment; instead they are experiments in filmmaking that seek to push the boundaries of what the cinematic experience can be. (By entertainment here, I do not mean simply fun but more broadly accessibility to a wider audience.) Nevertheless, even if we insist on calling that period or another one a blurring of boundaries between “high” and “popular” culture, it is surely the case that we are living in one now, and across a variety of arts. And it is just as sure that Lonergan’s work sits squarely within this movement of blurring.

Lonergan himself began his career not as a director, nor even as someone associated with film. He was originally allied to the theater. (Many of the details of Lonergan’s life recounted here are drawn from Rebecca Mead’s important New Yorker profile, “The Cinematic Triumphs of Kenneth Lonergan.”)¹ He grew up in New York and started writing in the fifth grade. When he was 18 he won a competition at the Young Playwright’s Festival. For college he went to New York’s University’s dramatic writing program, soon joining a downtown theater company called Naked Angels. Although some of the material that was developed for Naked Angels found its way into his later cinematic work, more immediately it generated a commitment to the theater. His first full-length play, This Is Our Youth, premiered in 1996 and eventually garnered very positive reviews. He has since written six other plays in addition to the screenplays for the films Analyze This, Analyze That, Gangs of New York, and for the recent television remake of Howard’s End. Although the focus here will be on the three films Lonergan directed, his theatrical background is important for understanding the films themselves, for two reasons.

First, there is a theatrical feel to the films. The focus is on the characters and situations in the films rather than on special effects or other formal elements. Although we will periodically see the use of formal elements in the films—usually thematic indicators of one sort or another—they do not occupy nearly as important a place as the interpersonal relationships and unfolding characterizations he places before us. It would be a mistake to go so far as to claim that Lonergan’s films are simply cinematically presented plays, although they are probably closer to that than most films that pass as entertainment.

The second reason has to do with the actors themselves. In the voice-over to You Can Count on Me, Lonergan notes that almost all of his actors come from the theater. Given his background this should not be surprising. Not only are his early connections developed in the theater, but he has remained an active playwright throughout his film career. Moreover, the skills he is looking for in actors for his films are those associated with the stage. He is less concerned with aspects of cinema that are peculiar to that medium and is instead more focused on theatrical skills. In addition, many of the actors recur across his films, such as Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick, and his wife J. Smith-Cameron.

Another important influence in his cinematic work is the environment in which he grew up. Both of Lonergan’s parents were practicing psychoanalysts. He joked to Rebecca Mead that he was “raised by the New York Psychoanalytic Society,” explaining that discussion of patients was common dinner table talk. “Talking about people’s personalities, and why people do things, is a big part of my life, and has been since I was little.”² This account of his upbringing reinforces Lonergan’s commitment to an approach to cinema that would be oriented toward the theater. It reveals something else as well.

As we will see, his characters have a depth and complexity that often goes missing in film characters. This is a central trait of Lonergan’s characters, one that, I will argue throughout, has philosophical implications. Among the aspects of this depth is one associated with psychoanalysis: self-deception. Lonergan’s characters are often acting out of motives of which they are unaware and would have reason not to bring to awareness. This is a core theme in psychoanalysis. The concepts of repression and the unconscious are posited by Freud largely to account for self-deception, and so exposure to the phenomenon undoubtedly appeared early in his life. Although we will distance ourselves here from the traditional psychoanalytic approach, we devote an entire chapter to the appearance of self-deception in his films.

To date, then, Lonergan has directed three films: You Can Count on Me, Margaret, and Manchester by the Sea, which appeared in 2000, 2011, and 2016, respectively. However, the date for Margaret is misleading. Behind this date is a story, recounted by Rebecca Mead in her profile of Lonergan, that helps explain why his output in the sixteen years after You Can Count on Me consists of only two films. Margaret was the subject of intense disagreement, leading to legal proceedings that left Lonergan bitter and depressed.

The film, which Lonergan sought to be his masterpiece, was shot in 2005, four years after he began writing it, and was ready to be shown the following year. In fact, he did show it to a few friends. The problem was that it was over three hours long. It originally had been far longer: three hundred and seventy-five pages in typescript. (Mead comments that this is three times the length of a standard script.) Lonergan told Mead that “I cut a hundred pages out of it without turning a hair, and then I cut another hundred pages of it without much difficulty, and then I stopped, because I wasn’t sure if I was making the cuts that were good, or because I was trying to get it to a normal length.”³ That was where the trouble began.

Fox Searchlight, with whom Lonergan had contracted, demanded a version of the film that was no longer than two-and-a-half hours. Eventually, in 2008, he gave them several cuts of the film, one of which met the length requirement. However, he was not at all happy with it. “We did one cut where we just shortened all the scenes, and it fell apart, completely and obviously.”⁴ So Lonergan kept working on the film, at a great personal and financial expense. At the same time, he was distancing himself from the shorter cut. Fox hired someone to do the cut for him, but he rejected it. Then he hired Martin Scorsese to work on a version, but, as Mead notes, “by that time, Gary Gilbert, one of the producers, was suing Lonergan, and Scorsese’s version never saw the light of day.”⁵

All of this drained Lonergan; moreover, when the film was finally released in 2011, six years after it was shot, it was the short version. And, to add insult to injury, it opened in just two theaters. The masterpiece that Lonergan had envisioned had been diminished and then forgotten. In addition, two years later the Gilbert lawsuit began, although it was soon dropped when Gilbert saw the list of Hollywood royalty lined up to testify on Lonergan’s behalf. But the dispute had taken its toll. It was not until five years after the release of the short version of Margaret that another Lonergan film appeared: Manchester by the Sea, surely one of the most wrenching films to find its way onto a screen. (Fortunately for all of us, the longer version of Margaret is now available as an “extended” cut, since it is still legally not allowed to be called a “director’s” cut.)

The poem after which the film is named, “Spring and Fall,” is by Gerard Manley Hopkins. There is no character in the film named Margaret, but the poem itself is discussed in one of the English classes Lisa Cohen, the film’s main character, attends. We will see it again in the following chapter, but here it is in full:

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.⁶

The poem can be seen as expressing, among other things, the sadness and regret that we experience as we grow older, a theme that is relevant to Lisa’s unfolding journey. However, it can also be seen, in retrospect, to be relevant to the events surrounding the release of the film itself. Lonergan came to regret his actions with the studio. According to Mead, “Lonergan acknowledges that he was recalcitrant and difficult about ‘Margaret’… The lesson that Lisa Cohen learns in the course of the movie—that she cannot bend intransigent forces to comply with her own sense of personal justice—mirrors Lonergan’s struggle to see his artistic vision realized.”⁷ The poem “Margaret” does not refer to senses of personal justice, but it does convey a sense of regret that attends to both Lisa’s actions (more particularly her participation in causing a death) and Lonergan’s (less momentous but also less fictional) struggles with Fox.

Turning to the films themselves, there are, as with many intelligent films, a number of themes that could be discussed. Some of these will be woven into the discussion of the three themes we isolate here. What is of concern for us is the philosophical relevance of the films, and that will point us in specific directions, directions that cannot capture the entirety of any one of the films but that will allow us to see at least some of their philosophical relevance. We are fortunate in that there are only three films; this allows us to look more deeply into what is going on in them than we would be able to if we had to canvas a larger corpus.

Moreover, there is a single overarching theme that draws all three films together, or perhaps better a theme about which the films revolve in their different way...