MagnoliaI believe that things happen for a reason. That may be a simple world view, but it is an honest one; I think most of us know it to be true. Some people call it coincidence, others call it fate. People have faith that God leads them to their destination, but those who don't embrace divine intervention connect these dots with a different pencil. My point is that we are part of the "whole", a people, a city, a story. Magnolia is such a story, where a matrix of lives intersect and travel upstream and down, their tangential moments a part of that lattice. Were one to examine your life--or mine, or ours--what pattern would emerge?
|
|
Magnolia clocks in at a little over three hours; I mention this because for that whole span of time, there isn't a single moment where there was anything less than rich and tightly wound drama and intense, bravura performances--you will get your money's worth. It is called a "vignette" film, because the story of Magnolia is actually a collection of stories of people from diverse walks of life. It is a story of Los Angeles, and those who call it home, from rags to riches, manipulative liars to the shatteringly naive, and no less than two quiz show alumni. Vignette stories run the risk of trying to say too much, only to say too little over a long stretch of time; not so with Magnolia, because while each character is motivated in different ways, the story is tethered to an umbilical cord of primal fears about identity and self-realization which we all go through. Rather than rehash each character--and they are all interesting--as well as their crises and tribulations, I'd like to talk about the film as a whole. It begins a group of three stories, narrated by Ricky Jay, telling about three separate coincidences, little known episodes in human history--trivia stuff--that might feel more at home on "Ripley's Believe It Or Not". These stories themselves are not revisited during the film's plot, but lay the foundation for our expectations of the sequence of events to follow. "Big" Earl Partridge (Jason Robards) is a foul-mouthed television mogul in the final stages of cancer, married to the beautiful--yet highly agitated--Linda (Julianne Moore), and attended by the gentle male nurse, Phil Parma (Philip Seymour Hoffman). There is no reason for us to expect that their lives would intersect with the machismo-guru and purveyor of the male empowerment (read: dangerously sexist) program called "Seduce and Destroy", Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise). There is no reason for us to expect that the lives of lonely heart, self-esteem challenged cop, Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly) would cross paths with Claudia Wilson (Melora Walters), whose father, Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall) is host of the long-running game show, "What Do Kids Know?", in which quiz whiz Stanley Spector (Jeremy Blackman) is a contestant, as was his decades prior, washed up predecessor "Quiz Wiz" Donnie Smith (William H. Macy); but they do. And these connections are not left to want as the story develops, and the stitches in the pattern quilt weave back upon one another.
Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia is often compared to Robert Altman's Short Cuts--both are vignette stories about people in L.A., and are thematically similar. (Interestingly, both also feature Julianne Moore in starring roles--Short Cuts was a breakthrough role for her.) Another similarity which gives Magnolia a kind of tonal resonance is the sense that this is a plot unlike other movies--which can often feel like a shuffling from room to room in a house, looking at the fancy ornaments--but one which exists in a vast world, where life is happening. This is established in many ways, more directly by introducing us to a collection of people from all walks of life, but also more subtly through flourishes like long and elaborate tracking shots through a television studio. Another way that this is done--clever and decidedly unorthodox--is how the literal tone of the film, like the score and voiceovers, is carried not just within the passage of one character, but many. I think of two key moments (at least) where this is key to underscoring (hell, scoring) this message. The first is when Earl delivers a lucid meditation to Phil about what it is to regret, and how it is his right to regret after the life he has led, how that message seems to relate to all whom we have met and already begun to know so well in such a short time. The other moment is as Claudia listens to her music--still a little too loud--and that song carries itself into the minds and onto the lips of all of our key players, even those who should no longer be able to sing. It is a song about the feelings--the pain, the anger, the tension, more maybe--that will not stop until it is addressed; it is when the music ends that the torrential rain stops. Coincidence, that's what they call it. Magnolia carries rising and descending action like waves on the ocean, and we get large swells even early into the film that threaten to engulf us. But our "Captain" P.T. Anderson steers the S.S. Magnolia through the turbulent waters of a drama where characters experience moments that would serve as the climax in most dramas, only to turn them into the building blocks for the "big one" yet to come. What this might sound like is that the big stars are excused to really ham it up with performances begging for an Oscar; this would be an unfair assessment, because the instances where these breakdowns occur are not arbitrary or without definition. Magnolia avoids unnecessary exposition; even moments which may be isolated from what we perceive to be the "overall story" are moments that define the real meat of the tale: the characters, the people. So an understated response to a judgmental pharmacist would be out of character for Linda, just as it would be for the bombastic motivational speaker Frank. These are characters whose egos are out of control, and that needs to be shown to us without beleaguering us with extraneous footnotes. In this, Magnolia understands cinema in a way that film can regrettably sometimes forget: it is not just visual, it is not just story, and not even just sound; it is the harmony of all of the instruments playing together in a symphony that evokes and conjures up a metaphorical state, be it a pane of glass, each person like a crack as it spiderwebs outward, or the petals on a magnolia blossom. And like other stories of the Golden State, as it builds to its ultimate confluence of events, it carries a level of catastrophic--even apocalyptic--resolution, which draws the characters to one another out of their innate fears, waking them from their own individual torments by the presence of a universal one. But rather than leave us here, we have the aftermath, the moments of awakening from the dreams (and nightmares) that plague us. Jim talks to himself throughout Magnolia, reassuring himself, advising himself, contemplating what defines a cop, but also a good person. He reminds us of that great, universal act of mercy: forgiveness.
Recommended for: Fans of a film with a killer cast of outstanding actors portraying a diverse set of characters with a plot that dances effortlessly between seemingly scattered--but tonally consistent--stories. It is an intense drama that provokes emotion, but carries important messages about human nature and the loneliness that can exist within us all, even when we surround ourselves with people, and what we can do about it.
Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia is often compared to Robert Altman's Short Cuts--both are vignette stories about people in L.A., and are thematically similar. (Interestingly, both also feature Julianne Moore in starring roles--Short Cuts was a breakthrough role for her.) Another similarity which gives Magnolia a kind of tonal resonance is the sense that this is a plot unlike other movies--which can often feel like a shuffling from room to room in a house, looking at the fancy ornaments--but one which exists in a vast world, where life is happening. This is established in many ways, more directly by introducing us to a collection of people from all walks of life, but also more subtly through flourishes like long and elaborate tracking shots through a television studio. Another way that this is done--clever and decidedly unorthodox--is how the literal tone of the film, like the score and voiceovers, is carried not just within the passage of one character, but many. I think of two key moments (at least) where this is key to underscoring (hell, scoring) this message. The first is when Earl delivers a lucid meditation to Phil about what it is to regret, and how it is his right to regret after the life he has led, how that message seems to relate to all whom we have met and already begun to know so well in such a short time. The other moment is as Claudia listens to her music--still a little too loud--and that song carries itself into the minds and onto the lips of all of our key players, even those who should no longer be able to sing. It is a song about the feelings--the pain, the anger, the tension, more maybe--that will not stop until it is addressed; it is when the music ends that the torrential rain stops. Coincidence, that's what they call it. Magnolia carries rising and descending action like waves on the ocean, and we get large swells even early into the film that threaten to engulf us. But our "Captain" P.T. Anderson steers the S.S. Magnolia through the turbulent waters of a drama where characters experience moments that would serve as the climax in most dramas, only to turn them into the building blocks for the "big one" yet to come. What this might sound like is that the big stars are excused to really ham it up with performances begging for an Oscar; this would be an unfair assessment, because the instances where these breakdowns occur are not arbitrary or without definition. Magnolia avoids unnecessary exposition; even moments which may be isolated from what we perceive to be the "overall story" are moments that define the real meat of the tale: the characters, the people. So an understated response to a judgmental pharmacist would be out of character for Linda, just as it would be for the bombastic motivational speaker Frank. These are characters whose egos are out of control, and that needs to be shown to us without beleaguering us with extraneous footnotes. In this, Magnolia understands cinema in a way that film can regrettably sometimes forget: it is not just visual, it is not just story, and not even just sound; it is the harmony of all of the instruments playing together in a symphony that evokes and conjures up a metaphorical state, be it a pane of glass, each person like a crack as it spiderwebs outward, or the petals on a magnolia blossom. And like other stories of the Golden State, as it builds to its ultimate confluence of events, it carries a level of catastrophic--even apocalyptic--resolution, which draws the characters to one another out of their innate fears, waking them from their own individual torments by the presence of a universal one. But rather than leave us here, we have the aftermath, the moments of awakening from the dreams (and nightmares) that plague us. Jim talks to himself throughout Magnolia, reassuring himself, advising himself, contemplating what defines a cop, but also a good person. He reminds us of that great, universal act of mercy: forgiveness.
Recommended for: Fans of a film with a killer cast of outstanding actors portraying a diverse set of characters with a plot that dances effortlessly between seemingly scattered--but tonally consistent--stories. It is an intense drama that provokes emotion, but carries important messages about human nature and the loneliness that can exist within us all, even when we surround ourselves with people, and what we can do about it.