Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

Sev­en years after her hor­mone-infused direc­to­r­i­al debut The Edge of Sev­en­teen, Kel­ly Fre­mon Craig returns to the big screen with her adap­ta­tion of Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Mar­garet. First pub­lished in 1970, the canon­ic com­ing-of-age nov­el blazed a trail for cul­tur­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of authen­tic girl­hood. Stay­ing true to the time­less source mate­r­i­al, Craig derives uni­ver­sal themes of iden­ti­ty and belong­ing from a wide-eyed tween’s buzzing ado­les­cence and a joint zest for life across gen­er­a­tions of moth­ers and daughters.

The film retells the beloved tale of the 11-year-old Mar­garet Simon (Abby Ryder Fort­son) nav­i­gat­ing the start of her anx­i­ety-rid­den puber­ty. In the eye of the storm is Margaret’s exis­ten­tial inquiry into reli­gion and self, torn between two faiths of her Chris­t­ian mom Bar­bara (Rachel McAdams) and Jew­ish dad Herb (Ben­ny Safdie).

Craig anchors the film with the inter­gen­er­a­tional bond of Mar­garet, Bar­bara, and grand­ma Sylvia (Kathy Bates), as the trio scram­bles to deal with the family’s move from New York City to New Jer­sey. Always find­ing her­self talk­ing to an uniden­ti­fied god, Mar­garet seeks guid­ance out of the haze and daze of fam­i­ly dra­mas, boy prob­lems and her chang­ing body. Rolling with Margaret’s ups-and-downs, Fort­son cap­tures every sub­tle­ty of grow­ing up with emo­tion­al intel­li­gence and versatility.

McAdams and Bates’ per­for­mances are both effort­less­ly affect­ing for us to root for women in dif­fer­ent stages of their life. McAdams plays the ever-fraz­zled artist-turned-house­wife with nuance and relata­bil­i­ty, draw­ing on her real-life expe­ri­ence of bal­anc­ing moth­er­hood and career ambi­tion. It’s a piece of cake for Bates to enliv­en Sylvia, who sprin­kles delights and mis­chiefs onto Margaret’s day-to-day that can get stale and heavy.

Despite the feel-good chem­istry radi­at­ing from the Simon women, Craig switch­es focus onto the mile­stone moments where they con­front Margaret’s reli­gious impasse. The film reach­es its cli­max marked by Margaret’s new­found self-aware­ness – when she real­izes the futil­i­ty of pri­or­i­tiz­ing God over peo­ple she cares about. Protest­ing against Bar­bara and Sylvia’s fight over her reli­gious iden­ti­ty, Mar­garet ele­vates her­self to equal the adults.

The film takes a step beyond the teen-girl angst and orig­i­nates an empow­er­ing por­trait of col­lec­tive wom­an­hood. Get­ting her first peri­od and buy­ing her first bras are not Margaret’s solo adven­ture, but a shared oppor­tu­ni­ty for Bar­bara to also rel­ish her firsts as a moth­er. Sim­i­lar effort for sub­ver­sion is evi­dent in Craig’s cast­ing of Black actor Amari Alex­is Price to reimag­ine a fan favorite: Margaret’s ​‘Pre-teen Sen­sa­tion’ club­mate Janie, who opts for kind­ness and sol­i­dar­i­ty against school bullying.

Read­ers who grew up with Blume’s book have now become moth­ers and grand­moth­ers of new gen­er­a­tions of ​“Mar­garets.” But open dis­cus­sions of women’s repro­duc­tive health and sex edu­ca­tion in our school sys­tem have nev­er been more nec­es­sary and urgent. Rem­i­nisc­ing the awk­ward yet cher­ished time where every lit­tle thing feels like a big deal, Craig fos­ters empa­thy and strength in It’s Me, Mar­garet, rel­e­vant and time­ly no mat­ter how over­told the sto­ry might seem by now.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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