I had been counting down the weeks until I could see Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret., the new film from writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig (Post Grad, Edge of Seventeen) and producer James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News) that adapts Judy Blume’s classic 1970 novel of the same name. When it was published, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. was revolutionary for its insightful, frank, and commiserative representation of an 11-year-old girl learning about her identity (from understanding her body and its changes to exploring various religions).
The New York Times chose it as the Outstanding Book of the Year, and it has remained, for half a century, the Bible of young women’s literature. It is special because of how much it promotes female self-love; it is a caring, unafraid, and reassuring story about growing up that doesn’t treat any aspect of girlhood, or womanhood for that matter, as taboo, but understands that society does.
I had been hoping, nay, praying that the film would live up to the book. I am relieved to report that it does.
But first, summary! Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. stars Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret Simon, who moves with her parents from New York City to the New Jersey suburbs late in the summer of 1970. Her parents, Barbara (Rachel McAdams) and Herb (Bennie Safdie), are eager to raise their daughter in a more bucolic, homey setting than their tight Manhattan apartment. Initially, Margaret is devastated to leave her home, and her best friend—her grandma Silvia (Kathy Bates)—but in her new neighborhood, she finds a community of fellow sixth-grade girls who want to talk about boys, wonder about what it will be like to get their periods, and are eager to finally wear bras.
This coterie introduces Margaret to a whole host of questions and anxieties about growing up. Margaret already has a lot on her mind, which she unloads in diary-entry-like monologues to God, out loud and in her head, often begun with the title question. Margaret’s very personal, therapeutic relationship with God manifests suddenly, long before her new teacher Mr. Benedict (Echo Kellum) encourages her to consider religion as a research topic for a project.
On the whole, it really doesn’t matter if adaptations are faithful to their source texts, but it does matter in this case.
Margaret’s mother was raised Christian and her father was raised Jewish, and she has been raised without a religion so that she might decide for herself what she wants to be, one day. When she learns that her mother was cast out from her conservative Christian family for falling in love with and marrying a Jewish man, Margaret begins to wonder if religion does more harm than good, and embarks on a quest to try to find God.
They gave us branded stemless wine glasses at the preview of the movie, which I thought was odd for a moment because I associate Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. with an innocent era of early teenagehood, for which sips of alcohol are pretty irrelevant. But Fremon Craig’s adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. is not just about the juice-box crowd. It is also about their moms.
Amid all the delights of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret., the most wonderful thing about it is how it introspectively extends its investment in women’s experiences from Margaret to her mother, Barbara. While the deep interiority of the first-person-narrated novel reveals how Margaret comes to learn about her mother as a person, the film wisely allows Barbara a similar subjectivity to her daughter’s from get-go, giving us the chance to meet her on her own terms. She is a parallel figure to Margaret, rather than a figure Margaret must interpret for us. The film becomes a story about different eras of womanhood, and therefore, provides a rich, deep understanding of womanhood on the whole.
It becomes a story about different eras of womanhood, and therefore, provides a rich, deep understanding of womanhood on the whole.
Margaret’s mother (and also her grandmother Silvia) are more than role models for Margaret in a world obsessed with influencing (but maybe not empathizing with) women. Barbara and Silvia are going through similar things as Margaret. This is a movie about intergenerational love, care, and understanding—and also knowing that the kind of things you feel as an awkward kid never really go away. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. might be a film about growing up, but it doesn’t try to find the “adult woman” in the pre-teen girl as much as understand that there is a pre-teen girl inside all adult women. In fact, the film locates a definition of womanhood in the sensation of feeling precisely like a little kid and a grownup at the same time, all the time.
Just as Margaret faces tough moments grappling with the expectations of “femininity” or womanhood that her friends impose on their hangouts, Barbara (a painter and former art teacher) faces similar moments with her new role as a stay-at-home mom and various domestic expectations. The film clearly represents the Simon household as an outlier in this place (and in this world), a free-thinking, compassionate, modern, reasonably flustered space in a world that is saddled with backwards and unhelpful questions and attitudes about identity.
Margaret’s parents’ relationship is understanding and constantly supportive; their family has a healthy, happy dynamic—it’s the world outside that is confusing. (For what it’s worth I would love to see the prequel romcom about the courtship of Herb and Barbara; McAdams and Safdie have adorable chemistry.) Through it all, Barbara and daughter are dealing with similar questions about how to be true to themselves, and if it’s worth it at all to try to fit in. The film’s aesthetic is the 1970s, but it is wholly timeless.
(As a sidenote, I wonder if many others also felt cleansed by seeing the charming Rachel McAdams, ever-sincere and lovely as Barbara, play a character in a school-set, girl-focused bildungsroman who is the pure antithesis of the bone-chilling Regina George. Now that’s range! You love to see it.)
There is a James L. Brooksian patina to this film, a wryness that underscores rather than disrupts its sincerity and refreshing candor. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a film that locates this much pathos in the everyday and yet has enough objectivity to understand that life is a ridiculous carnival of made-up rules and flimsy structures, and it is especially refreshing to see this attitude applied towards a movie about women’s bodies and experiences.
That more than half of the world menstruates and yet it is somehow an illicit topic makes no sense, and both the book and film versions of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. incisively interrupt this stupid norm, while also sympathizing with the ways we have been made to feel awkward or embarrassed about our bodies and how they work.
Abby Ryder Fortson is wonderful as Margaret, adeptly telegraphing the incredulity and thrills of being 11 and discovering entire dimensions of the self that you thought you knew well. Her initial delivery of the film’s titular and most-important line is spot-on, and her frantic messages to God (sometimes delivered diegetically, other times in voiceover) are perfectly measured with the tones of the scenes they’re in. A subtle, wistful score from Hans Zimmer makes the whole thing one of the most relatable, heartrending things I’ve seen this year.
On the whole, it really doesn’t matter if adaptations are faithful to their source texts, but it does matter in this case. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. is more than just a good book; it is an important book. Blume herself knew this, which is why she didn’t sell its rights for 49 years, until being approached in 2019 by Fremon Craig and Brooks, who had collaborated on 2016’s The Edge of Seventeen, about a high-schooler at her wit’s end after her life undergoes several changes.
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. is about the little moments that are part of growing up that might seem unimportant later on in life but feel huge and earth-shattering when they’re happening—and might even, secretly, dictate how you feel about things for the rest of your life. By the end of the movie, if I had fished it out of my tote bag, my souvenir wine glass could have been filled up with tears. Joyful tears. I watched it and felt myself thinking, over and over, thank God.
