Magnolia

Magnolia (1999)

It's an interwoven intricacy wrapped in a montage wrapped in an epic film

Genre: Drama with a capital D

Starring: Tom Cruise (Top Gun • Days Of Thunder), Julianne Moore (Boogie Nights • Children of Men)

Directed By: (Punch-Drunk Love • There Will Be Blood)

Overview: The San Fernando Valley may very well prove that the world is a small place. As we explore magnolia's tragic characters, we learn how, in the end, they are all interconnected.

Imagine an evil alien race were to descend upon you, stick a phaser to your head and say, "Using your Art, teach us about the human condition, and don't give me any saccharine Zeethlecrap". Luckily, I have an answer to this scenario, and, as you may have guessed from the post's title and poster...it's Magnolia.

An epic drama about interconnectedness, Magnolia is a film that shows you right from the opening montage to the string of montages that follow, to that wacky climax, that this is a drama that has burrowed its way into film history, and is today sitting pretty at number 207 out of IMDb's top 250 films. Magnolia begins by introducing us to its theme with strange and tragic tales of eerie synchronicity, including the story of a man who attempted suicide by jumping off his roof. As he passed by his parents' window, the shotgun that Mom was threatening her husband with went off and killed her plummeting son. It was deemed murder since the attempted suicide would have been averted by the safety net recently put up by window washers. Enter our cast of characters to a tale that will surely be another eerie synchronous series of related tragedies: a motivational speaker shares his knowledge - a drug-addled girl gets a visit from a policeman - a geeky man watches a quiz show while the emcee introduces one of the genius children competing - and dying man's troubled wife goes shopping while his nurse picks up the phone to contact his estranged son; and for these 188 minutes we explore how each of these lives are connected.

The all-star cast includes a pre-freak Tom Cruise, a post-Fargo William H. Macy, and far-less-perverse-than-he-was-in-Happiness Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but let's not forget the gloriously portrayed roles of John C. Reilly, as the Po-po, and Julianne Moore as the troubled wife, whose speech is my favourite of the entire film.

Young Pharmacy Kid: Strong, strong stuff here. What exactly you have wrong, you need all this stuff?
Linda Partridge: Motherfucker...Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck do you think you are? I come in here. You don't know me. You don't know who I am, what my life is. You have the balls, the indecency to ask me a question about my life?
Old Pharmacist: Please, lady, why don't you calm down?
Linda Partridge: Fuck you, too. Don't call me "lady". I come in here, I give these things to you. You check, you make your phone calls, look suspicious, ask questions. I'm sick. I have sickness all around me and you fucking ask me about my life? "What's wrong?" Have you seen death in your bed? In your house? Where's your fucking decency? And then I'm asked fucking questions. What's... wrong? You suck my dick. That's what's wrong. And you, you fucking call me "lady"? Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on both of you. 

For this critic, what distinguishes Magnolia most of all  is its pace. The rapid fire montage pieces that leak into each other are cinematic genius. The soundtrack used is perfect, and when combined with scenes that embrace the filmic medium we find a film that refreshingly occasionally tosses out the vérité of this drama, and chooses to remain in the realm of high-budget art house, my favourite example being a montage of our characters at a crux in their development, as they sit alone, each singing along with the soundtrack. Once it ends, we return to their rough lives and see how they cope. The characters are the adventure, and each is fascinating.
For as much as Tom Cruise pisses you off these days, Magnolia reminds you that, yes, he can actually ACT.

Recommendations: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009), Requiem for a Dream, Dawn of the Dead

Last updated: 2010-05-13 03:51:07 by user07

Magnolia: Pater Familia

A tale of two Pater Familias and their nucleons bound together by residual force, highly attractive at short distances but quickly decaying and becoming unstable. Writer/Director Paul Thomas Anderson weaves together multiple storylines linked by two dying fathers and suspends cinematic convention with disbelief, allowing the narrative to progress with limitless possibilities.

The film begins with an omniscient narrator describing unrelated events from the past, except that each involved some form of serendipitous intervention implying that coincidence may be more than random chance. This foundational mantra is then built upon as he introduces each character in a sweeping montage, beautifully scored with Aimee Mann’s powerful rendition of the Harry Nilsson classic, examining their lives of loneliness and the reasons for living in quiet desperation. The film’s gravitational pull is centered upon a pair of unheavenly bodies, two despicable fathers who are dying of cancer (though a third father known as the Worm is a dangling participle, never explained), and the physical entities trapped in orbit around them.

Big Earl Partridge and Jimmy Gator are the nucleus of MAGNOLIA, each terminally suffering from a life of regrets and guilt: these malignant tendrils infect everyone around them, touching not only family but also strangers who wander too close. Actor Jason Robards is profoundly sad in his portrayal of Big Earl, lying on his deathbed in a morphine haze, his hands trembling and often reaching out towards some ethereal reality, struggling towards consciousness like a drowning man and choking on his venomous shame: he abandoned his wife and child years ago when she became sick. Philip Baker Hall is magnificent as Jimmy Gator, a famous Game Show host relegated to a syndicated future, his cancerous secret known only to his wife: he raped his own daughter and still seeks her love and affection…though Claudia is now an adult lost in a cocaine fugue.

The ensemble cast is wonderful with two exceptions: Julianne Moore as Earl’s young wife Linda, a woman who married for money but now has fallen in love with her dying husband, and Tom Cruise as Frank, Earl’s abandoned son who has now become a selfish pigheaded buffoon. Julianne Moore becomes annoying and unlikable, between her crying jags and condescending judgment of others: there is very little humanity in Linda to care about: it takes more than a situation to create compassion, especially when introduced to the characters without back-story and little screen time to develop. Tom Cruise is better, imbuing Frank with a bravado that deflects all introspection, as the little boy that must be exorcized from a man’s body. His frenetic performance is both funny and toxic, and becomes understandable when his past is revealed. But Cruise fumbles when he must show emotion, and his embarrassing incompetence during Earl’s death scene is a tragic reminder that his skill is only one-dimensional.

Anderson knows that fiction must make sense but he rewrites the equation and designs a new alchemy: one part coincidence and one part compassion mixed in a base ingredient of frogs, creating an exothermic reaction that warms the hearts around it. There is no salvation offered, no easy answers, only hard lessons and the need to wise up. Final Grade: (B+)

(Read Less...)

Recommendations: The Birds, Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960), Funny Games

All reviews copyright Korova, Ltd. Visit Alex at his Home Theatre Blog, http://korovatheatrepresents.blogspot.com/

Magnolia

Watching Magnolia again recently I was reminded of the first lines of Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey”: One day you finally knew/ what you had to do, and began. Something in that line’s mix of weariness/
acceptance of a hard road ahead seems to chime with what transpires in P.T. Anderson’s third movie. This is a film that only offers hope to those willing to sacrifice.

Magnolia takes place in Los Angeles, a city that goes on and on. Much like that other great L.A.-opus, “Pulp Fiction”, this is a film that recognises how L.A.’s geography and psychology are synonymous in many respects: on one level it’s a sprawl, so open it seems to lack all definition, but look closer and its also a place where everyone’s stretching themselves, an anti-New York, a gymnastic city. We meet a dozen or so residents over the course of Magnolia’s generous run-time: Julianne Moore playing the gold-digger who feels love like a light that shines too bright on her; Jason Robards as a man rich man dying with a warehouse of regrets. Tom Cruise is the author of “Seduce and Destroy”, a misogynist’s user-manual he lectures on with delighted-fury. John C Reilly is a cop who carries with him the movie’s conscience. Melora Waters breaks your heart. The list goes on…

Structurally the film owes a debt to Robert Altman’s style of free-wheeling narrative; emotionally this is a Martin Scorsese film. Marrying Altman’s methodically-plotted rambling with Scorsese’s visceral assault on the senses might seem worrying in prospect, but Anderson is as sure a hand as either of those two directors, and he knows how to take something from each and make it his own. He is a big-hearted film maker, as Altman was, but he also wants to be sure the audience feels big emotions, and for that aim he is not content, like Altman, to film things and let the pieces fall into place; he needs to press our faces to the glass, make us see rather than passively observe. Altman would never have staged anything so artificial as the moment where all the principle actors in Magnolia sing-along to an Aimee Mann song, but that isn’t in any way a criticism of Anderson. This moment – so hard to describe without it sounding mawkish or manipulative – is as much what makes Magnolia great (and it is great) as any gem of dialogue or acting flourish. These characters need to sing at that moment. A song gives them the chance to say things aloud that are too revealing to be said otherwise. Pop-music in Magnolia is catharsis.

Anderson loves tragedy. He gets accused of pretension and pomposity all the time, and Magnolia could certainly be seen that way if judged on its dearth of laughter and welter of Biblical allusions. But I refuse to call him pretentious. “Pretentious”, to my mind, speaks of someone who isn’t engaged with the world, and Anderson feels his character’s guilt and their shame so keenly that it seems he would be lost if wasn’t stood right beside them. It’s fair to say he enjoys life on the cross – he’s good with anguish, but it isn’t only what he likes.

Compare Magnolia with last year’s angst-fantasia Babel, where the latter piles catastrophe on catastrophe, its defining image: a woman fleeing through the desert with her hands clawing the air. Magnolia is not a film that wants its audience to feel only sadness – entirely the opposite: it seeks joy. That might sound strange for a movie so awash with human suffering, but it’s to what end that suffering is put which decides the kind of movie it is.

“What do we forgive?” asks John C Reilly at the movie’s end. I think Paul Thomas Anderson’s answer would be: “Everything”, provided wrongs are admitted and no-one tries to duck the strain of making things right.