Judy Blume really caught my attention when she said in an interview that Kelly Fremon Craig‘s film version of her novel is actually better than the novel itself. She explained by saying that the film opens the lives of the adult characters to us in a way that deepens the experience of the story. Though I haven’t read the novel recently, I suspect she is right. The adult characters in the film surround Margaret and ground her in a context of real voices, real problems, and a family with real joys and pains.
Consider Barbara, Margaret’s mother. Barbara is an artist who at the start of the film announces she is leaving her job. We learn that she is leaving in order to really, finally, have more time to spend with her daughter. This sets up one of the film’s early comic ironies. We painfully observe the way Margaret’s own social development and movement TOWARD new friends in a new community frustrates her Mom’s expectations of all the Mom-daughter time they were supposed to have together. Where did all that time go, Barbara thinks?
There is a maturity in the way Rachel McAdams embodies this dynamic, one that begins in frustration but then moves toward a place of health and freedom. Barbara, as the film goes on, is becoming more aware of her own needs and the needs of her daughter to grow and branch out. Physical development is only one of the ways Margaret is growing, and the film gives us a Mom who gets that in a way that gives her joy and then the audience joy right alongside her.
The father, Herb, will forever be identified in my mind as the guy who is satisfied with crashing on the lawn chair in the living room when his wife is not yet mentally together enough to choose a couch. He is happy with that lawn chair, he says, and in some ways I am his kindred spirit or at least want to be his kindred spirit. Let me be satisfied with the lawn chair, especially if the world is too much of a blur to catch up with the couch! If the journey of the mother is a journey toward realizing who she and her daughter are, the journey of the father may be the journey from simplicity to complexity. The lawn chair is just fine, dear, but why do you want to invite your parents back into our lives? It’s just too complicated, he thinks. His ultimate acceptance of this is its own kind of growth, the admission that he will welcome hard things for the sake of his wife and his Margaret.
Now for Kathy Bates’s Grandma. Early on, she is defined by the way she sympathizes with Margaret and grumbles against her son and daughter-in-law who are now planning to pack up the family and move away to New Jersey. Bates’s comic timing here enriches these scenes with a vigorous bitterness that almost tears a hole in the center of the frame. She then experiences loneliness, one whose only balm is her granddaughter’s visits.
When Margaret says she wants to attend temple with Grandma, Bates’ Sylvia’s response is enthusiastic. That enthusiasm turns a bit sour for us later, though. The turn comes when we see Sylvia thinking of the visit to temple as a sort of badge that she can use to possess her Margaret. The visit must mean, she thinks, that her daughter is a full-fledged practicing Jew. This possessiveness, by the way, is echoed by Barbara‘s own parents who are clearly looking for a similar kind of evidence that will clearly mark Margaret as their Christian granddaughter. (Unfortunately, Barbara ‘s parents are the adults in the story who get the shortest shrift. The film seems to forget about them right after their own moment of grasping to get ahold of their granddaughter’s faith.) Bates’s Grandma moves toward a healthier and less clinging relationship with Margaret by the end, though we are not quite sure if the scars between them are healed.
Finally we have the relationship that gives the film its name – the wrestling, the asking, the pleading with God. We sense from the film’s direction that God is felt to be just outside the frame, though evidence of God’s presence in the film is not easy to come by. At one point, we are shocked when Margaret tells her family that she does not believe in God, shocked especially because she has been speaking to God throughout the film. The movie does not explore that tension quite as much as it might have, and so by the time Margaret is praying again by the end we don’t know if we’re quite keeping up with the real workings of her brain. It is perhaps not surprising that the film is much less assured and curious in its handling of Margaret’s relationship with God than it is with her relationships with the family members. Films that handle spiritual issues with a deep and watchful eye are a rare breed.
The Real family that is gifted to Margaret here makes her own bodily anxieties and wrestlings with God take on a certain weight. These concerns are no longer floating in the ether; they are living and grounded, tethered to this girl who lives in this house, on this street, and with these people who love her. Come to think of it, we see Margaret most clearly through the love of the family members. Indeed, if we are allowed to love a character, maybe we will love her too along with them.
