This film is about communication.

I just saw the extended cut for the first time (in one sitting, never got bored), having only seen the theatrical cut a year ago. My opinion on what this film is *really* about, then and now, remains the same: communication.

It reminds me of something Stephen Tobolowsky said one time on the Tobolowsky Files podcast: each of us is living in a 5-dimensional world. There are, of course, the 3 dimensions of space, the 4th one is time, the 5th one is narrative.

I think narrative is the only dimension that is subjective, as it is the way each of us perceives the world around us. And as anyone who has lived long enough has figured out: human perception is always (more or less) irrational, unreliable, biased, manipulated, or misguided. Because each of us is stuck in our own perception of reality, our own narrative, we rarely seem to be on the same page when ours and someone else's narrative intersect, especially when strong emotions are involved. This narrative clash shows up most clearly in the way we are trying to communicate.

This is exactly the over-arching theme in Margaret: the frustration of trying to communicate with each other when each of us is coming from our own narrative. Miscommunication is in EVERY dialogue in this film. It creates tension, which is sometimes low-key, just below the surface and ready to bubble up at the slightest provocation, other times it's full-blown frustration. Frustration turns to anger, anger at the inability to connect, to understand and to be understood. The characters themselves are not aware of it, but we the viewers can see the pattern repeating itself over and over in almost every scene in this 3 hour film. It's so obvious.

Well, at least I thought it was obvious, but having read through the other opinions (and some of the reviews) on here, I see that's the case with everyone else's perception of this film. People seem to be hung up on the sub-plots and sub-themes of the film (and, yes, there are several), but the over-arching theme is the human inability to rationally communicate. The reason is that we are not rational beings. In our personal narratives we are driven by emotion. Emotion is the enemy of rational thought and, consequently, rational communication.

In fact, the only 3 people in this film who appear to be rational communicators are the two lawyers and the detective. They are rational because they are professionals doing their job or communicating from a professional POV, not from their personal narrative. It would be interesting to follow those characters and to see how rationally they behave/communicate in their personal lives, dealing with real emotions, unguided by the emotionless protocol of their professions. We also have the 2 teachers. Matt Damon's character is the one we really get see outside of his professional role as a teacher. When the protagonist visits him at his home, we see that outside of "the office" he's just as confused, unable to have a rational dialogue, and just as impulse/emotion-driven as the rest of us in our own non-professional lives. Ditto for the brief scene with Matthew Broderick's character in the park, awkwardly attempting to communicate with the young girls. His character is also interesting in that he seems to be an emotionally confused young boy in a grown-up's body, spectacularly losing a philosophical debate with one of his students, while drinking from a juicebox. In the very brief time he appears on-screen, Matthew Broderick brilliantly portrays a guy who has basically lost at life, ostensibly due to some deep unresolved emotional/traumatic issue(s). I'm no psychologist, but I felt like somеwhere in his past his narrative has taken a wrong turn and is forever stuck at the intersection of immaturity and fear. Btw, this is the mark of a brilliant film - when you feel like even the secondary/tertiary characters could easily become the protagonists of their own film and it would be just as captivating to watch as Margaret itself.

The final scene is very interesting. It seems to say that untamed emotions, just as they can easily tear us apart, can also deeply connects us. Somehow, in that big opera hall with all those people, mother and daughter are finally able to inhabit the same 5-dimensional space and to really connect for what looked like the first time in a long time. It is interesting that the only time we see two human beings really connect is in a scene with no dialogue.