"When Lonergan began shooting the film in 2005, after taking two years to write the screenplay, Margaret had a lot going for it," wrote Joel Lovell in The New York Times Magazine in 2012, discussing the "thwarted masterpiece" of Kenneth Lonergan, the writer/director of You Can Count On Me and Manchester by the Sea. "When it was finally released six years later, in late 2011—after a brutal and bitter editing process; a failed attempt by no less a cinematic eminence than Martin Scorsese to save the project; and the filing of three lawsuits—several serious film people called it a masterpiece. And almost no one saw it." Margaret is, in fact, a masterpiece—not only thanks to its remarkable lead performance from Anna Paquin, and not only thanks to Lonergan's keen eye and ear, but because it offers the jarring, overwhelming sense of experiencing someone else's life. The tiresome phrase "slice of life" is often used to describe pedestrian, routine stories about pedestrian, routine things, but Margaret really does feel as if it's been lifted, whole and honest, from someone else's existence—as if you're experiencing it alongside them, as if you can look around at any given moment to see and hear the effects of each thought and emotion. Sometimes Lonergan's characters are focused on a shared event—in this case, a horrific incident on a busy Manhattan street—but just as often, they hold that experience within, then go on with their commute, their dinner, their own disparate and messy hours and days. Rather than automatons that shuffle around, building a plot as quickly and efficiently as possible, Margaret's characters are complicated, confused people; wandering alongside them, we see how the experiences and traumas that we carry with us can color, however subtly or dramatically, our world and the worlds of those around us. The best way to watch Margaret is via the three-hour "extended edition" that was released on DVD in 2012 and is available to stream from Amazon—a version that hardly ever screens theatrically, but thanks to bypassing the aforementioned "brutal and bitter editing process," flows and works and affects in ways the shorter, chopped-up version simply can't. The Northwest Film Center is playing that extended cut this weekend, and the rare chance to see Margaret on a big screen, in its original form, shouldn't be missed. Yes, Margaret is long, but it's also unforgettable, and not one second of it is wasted.