Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin) is a selfish, arrogant teenager, more interested herself and her own life than what's going on around her. She attends a New York City private school on a half scholarship but cheats on her exams, then questions the difference between someone else's mind and an open book. She's looking to buy a cowboy hat when she spots a bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) wearing one, and follows alongside the bus, trying to get him to stop. He seems amused but continues to drive while she distracts him, until he runs a red light and hits a pedestrian, Monica Patterson (Allison Janney). Lisa holds Monica's hand and tries to comfort her, but she dies in Lisa's arms. Afterward, a complicated cocktail of grief, pent-up rage, and guilt build up in her as she tries to sort out what she believes would be justice for the victim, and how to make that happen.

It's not hard to grasp why the editing of Margaret proved to be such a challenge. Lonergan aims to examine a scenario in which altruism could be arrogance and guilt could be selfish, with an incredibly unsympathetic character at the center, but hopes to view that character with compassion rather than cynicism. The aftermath of the accident is a genuinely horrifying moment, and the effect it has on Lisa is not unreasonable. She is instantly conscious of her role in what happened, and clearly overwhelmed with guilt even before Monica dies. There is an honesty in her desire to do something, to use that guilt to accomplish something meaningful for a scenario she feels responsible for, not just for distracting the driver but for lying to the police, informing them the light was green when she catches his eye while giving her statement. Later, Lisa contacts one of Monica's close friends, Emily (Jeannie Berlin), and confesses her lie. Emily is momentarily furious, but lets it go: "I know you're trying to do the right thing now."

At the same time, Lisa is a deeply self-centered person, someone who believes blindly in what she feels is a wisdom and insight gained from her experience, without the self-awareness to put that experience is a context greater than herself. The impact the accident has on her is so profound she can't bring herself to see past it. Neither Lonergan or Paquin shy away from her many obnoxious qualities, beginning with incredibly self-righteous debates with a Syrian student (Hina Abdullah) over her perspective on America. Time and time again, Lisa presents her feelings as more valid and more deeply felt than the viewpoints of others, feeding off of the accident as if being tangentially involved in it marked her immediate shift into adulthood. In the weeks following the accident, she loses her virginity to a dopey stoner (Kieran Culkin). In arguments with her mother, she flaunts her newly jaded side, minimalising the things going on in her mother's life (starring in a new play, and becoming romantically involved with Ramon, an international businessman played by Jean Reno), and she struggles to engage her distant dad (played by Lonergan himself). At her most selfish, she pushes herself on a weak-willed teacher (Matt Damon), and envisions herself as an angel who helped reunited Monica with her dead daughter.

Although the story focuses on Lisa, it's crucial to the overall mood of the film to see how the personal arcs of each character clash and collide, each interaction between characters informing another. It's a crucial element of the film's structure because this ripple effect is the very aspect of the world that Lisa fails to acknowledge. By waving at the bus driver, or lying about it, she profoundly changes not Monica's life, or her own, but also Emily's, and the lives of many people Abigail knows. She affects the bus driver, a classmate, her mother's relationship with Ramon. It's here that the additional 38 minutes afforded to the director's cut transform the film. For this review, I also watched the theatrical cut for the first time, and while the shorter edit successfully expresses the same themes and ideas, it does so in a more disjointed, abrupt way, like a series of run-on sentences. Transitions often feel incredibly abrupt, calling attention to the leisurely pace of an accompanying scene. The condensed delivery of information can also make the theatrical cut feel like it's hammering its thematic points a little hard. With more room to breathe, the film regains a sense of observation as opposed to dictation.

The title of the film comes from a poem, "Spring and Fall to a Young Child", by Gerard Manley Hopkins, which one of Lisa's teachers (Broderick) reads to the class. The poem is about the loss of innocence and understanding of mortality. Lisa believes these things have happened because of the accident, but both revelations hit her when she least expects them, and when she is least prepared. In examining Lisa's rude awakening to a cynical world, Margaret could become a cynical movie, but Lonergan's film is understanding and sympathetic, a compassionate portrait of the messy nature of grief.

The DVD
This new MOD edition of Margaret doesn't stray from the artwork created for the Blu-ray release of Margaret, featuring the theatrical poster image of a slightly fuzzy Paquin in front of a blurred background. A caption at the top of the front cover clearly identifies it as the Extended Director's Cut, and the one-disc DVD-R release comes in an eco-friendly Amaray case (no holes), and there is no insert. The cover art is printed on something more closely resembling standard inkjet printer paper.

The Video and Audio
When Fox Searchlight finally released Margaret on Blu-ray in 2012, they had recently tried a new experiment with their Blu-ray of The Tree of Life: no standard DVD release, only a Blu-ray combo pack featuring the Blu-ray and DVD discs. If you wanted to own it in standard-definition, you were gonna be future-proofed. Margaret introduced another wrinkle: the set included both the theatrical cut of the movie and the Extended Director's Cut, with the former on the Blu-ray disc and the latter on a DVD (disappointingly, it seems that the director's cut may have been completed in standard definition, preventing a Blu-ray version of the longer cut).

Having seen compression artifacts on a few MOD releases, I was a little skeptical that the three-hour movie would make a seamless transition from DVD to DVD-R, but a scan through the two discs doesn't appear to reveal any noticeable difference between the two 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfers. Artifacts I spotted on the MOD DVD were present on the original DVD. The same softness afflicts both. Colors appear equally saturated. I also couldn't find any difference between the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks included on both, which have the same limitations compared to the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack from the theatrical Blu-ray. It's a decent presentation, even though one wishes the director's cut could've been the one presented in high definition, and the two discs are essentially identical.

The Extras
None.

Conclusion
Margaret is a masterpiece, especially in Lonergan's extended version, which restores much-needed breathing room to his complex drama. I would've appreciated a wide, pressed version of the DVD disc in the combo pack, but I was surprised to find the MOD DVD, which I was positive was going to be more compromised, seems to be a 1:1 copy, right down to the flaws of both transfers. For those who are adamant about not owning a Blu-ray disc (which now costs the same as the MOD DVD), this disc, like the initial combo pack, is highly recommended.