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An epic mosaic of several interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiveness, and meaning in the San Fernando Valley.
Tom Cruise: Frank T.J. Mackey
Lets just say, Paul Thomas Anderson has succeeded in putting into film a rather clever interpretation of a butterfly effect.
Anderson creates a vast canvas of barely-related and briefly overlapping storylines and characters that come together under the blooming flower concept of a single major theme and a few minor ones. Anderson's concern is to explore the ideology of forgiveness and to examine the part it plays in the redemption of ourselves. In this film, dying characters have inner demons and turmoils to face and to make amends with the loved ones they will soon leave, while estranged characters grasp tentatively to establish bonds that must link them to other members of humanity. Anderson humbly denotes a tremendously wide range of characters, though for a film set in the northern areas of Los Angeles, Magnolia provides a surprisingly non-diverse sea of American Actors. However, in terms of the ages of the characters, Anderson's crew seems more comprehensive, running the gamut from a pre-teen wiz kid to a terminally ill man in his mid-60's. Many of these characters seem to have created any number of facades to help them cope with the miseries and disappointments of life, and much of the redemption occurs only after those masks are stripped away revealing the emptiness and hurt that, in many cases, lurks so close to the surface.
Thematically, then, Anderson's film is a compelling one. Dramatically, however, it suffers from some serious flaws. Many viewers and critics have called `Magnolia' an artistic advancement, in both depth and scope, for Anderson, whose previous film was the similarly condensed Boogie Nights. I tend to disagree. If anything, Boogie Nights, by limiting itself to a much more narrowly restricted milieu and focusing intently on a single main character, managed to connect more directly with the emotions of the audience. Magnolia, by being more expansive, paradoxically, seems more contracted. The pacing is often languid and the screenplay, running a bit over three hours, often seems bloated given the single-mindedness of its basic theme. Certainly, a few of these characters and story-lines could have been dispensed with at no great cost to the film as a whole. By lining up all his characters to fit into the same general theme, the author allows his message to become a bit heavy-handed and over-emphatic. Anderson seems to want to capture the whole range of human experience on his huge, lengthy movie project, yet because the characters seem to all be tending in the same direction, and despite the fact that the details of their experiences are different, the net effect is thematically claustrophobic.
''And there is the account of the hanging of three men, and a scuba diver, and a suicide. There are stories of coincidence and chance, of intersections and strange things told, and which is which and who only knows? And we generally say, "Well, if that was in a movie, I wouldn't believe it." Someone's so-and-so met someone else's so-and-so and so on. And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."
The controversial ending, in which an event of literally biblical proportions occurs, feels generally right in the context of this film, though with some reservations. It seems perfectly in tune with the quality of heightened realism that Anderson establishes and sustains throughout the picture. On the other hand, the ending does pinpoint one of the failures of the film as a whole. Given that the screenplay has a strong religious subtext running all the way through it, one wonders why Anderson felt obliged to approach the religious issues in such strictly oblique terms. None of the characters, not even those who are dying, seem to turn to God for their forgiveness and redemption. In fact, one wonders what purpose that quirky ending serves since the characters are well on their way to making amends by the time it happens.
Perhaps in doing so Anderson finds another way to connect his characters together with the event happening, being something that happens. Adding to another line up of threads and debates.
When it does happen, theres no way your expecting it, granted you maybe expecting something unexpected, but what that said thing is, turns out to be a wondrous surprise.
So the questions pile up, answers and speculation seem far in the distance, while Magnolia succeeds in doing in my mind what many other films in this era have done before. Whether it be Donnie Darko, 21 Grams, or realistic Babel, to me Magnolia seems to be another film following the trend. Perhaps if I'd seen it sooner I wouldn't question it's originality, but I do, and I have. Having said that it's a great film regardless and it tries very hard to be clever and ambitious, which to me is commendable.
Director Anderson has harnessed an array of first-rate performances from a talented, Hollywood drenched cast. Tom Cruise provides a wrenching case study of a shallow, charismatic shyster, who has parleyed his misogyny into a lucrative self-help industry. Yet, like many of the characters, he uses this visage as a shield to hide the hurt caused by a father who abandoned him and a mother whose slow, painful death he was left to deal with. The other actors, too numerous to mention, turn in equally worthy performances. Particularly interesting is the young boy who, in counterpoint to one of the other characters in the story, manages to save himself at an early age from the crippling effect of identity usurpation that it has taken so many others in this film a lifetime to overcome.
In many ways, Magnolia is the kind of film that could easily serve as the basis for a lengthy doctoral dissertation for a student majoring in either filmmaking or sociology. The density of its vision would surely yield up many riches of character, symbolism and theme that a first time viewer of the film would undoubtedly miss. Thus, in many ways, Magnolia is that rare film that seems to demand repeat exposure even for those audience members who may not get it the first time. As a viewing experience, Magnolia often seems rambling and lacking purpose, but it does manage to get under one's skin, and, unlike so many other, less ambitious works, this one grows on you.
''Why are frogs falling from the sky?''
9/10
