City Cinema Classic of the Month: Margaret’s Museum

14A, Offensive Language.
Dir: Mort Ransen, Canada, 1995, 114 min.
Helena Bonham Carter, Kate Nelligan, Kenneth Welsh. 

Winner of 6 Genie Awards including Best Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Screenplay, and Music.

“The opening shot of Margaret’s Museum looks like a painting by Andrew Wyeth, of a little clapboard cottage in a sea of grass… We are in Cape Breton in the late 1940s, where the coal pits take a terrible toll in life and limb – and where Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) and her family live in half a house, because the earth subsided into a mine shaft beneath the other half… Margaret’s Museum is the story of the people who must make their living from the cold-hearted mining company, but it isn’t like other films with similar themes. It’s quirkier and more eccentric, and has a thread of wry humor running through it… Most of the movie is the love story of Margaret and Neil. The margins of the movie are filled with colorful characters. With old grandfather, who coughs and writes his song requests on a note pad. With Uncle Angus, who dreams of sparing his nephew a life in the mines… Helena Bonham Carter might seem an unlikely candidate for this role but she is just right – plucky, sexy, bemused, glorious in a scene where Neil sneaks her into the miners’ cleaning area and she takes the first hot shower of her life. Russell, as Neil, is sort of a rougher-hewn Liam Neeson, strong, gentle and poetic. And Nelligan is astounding in the way she allows her humanity to peek out from behind the mother’s harsh defenses. Margaret’s Museum is one of those small, nearly perfect movies that you know, seeing it, is absolutely one of a kind.” —Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com