What happened to the Paul Thomas Anderson who directed Hard Eight? He seemed confident that he could hold our attention without mountains of hysteria. My opinion is, admittedly, fickle when it comes to certain miscellany, rarely when it comes to film, but I am forever being pissed off and then really thrilled by Magnolia and then it goes and pisses me off again and the lousy pendulum swings back and forth to my befuddlement (and everyone else’s profound indifference). I’ve seen it 3 or 4 times, and this recent viewing was its most winning to date. I suppose a movie which was written around Aimee Mann songs is going to irk someone who finds her music Sarah McLachlan-esque treacle. Everybody has guilty pleasures, and I’m surprised the man who would go on to make There Will Be Blood did not hesitate to exhibit his enthusiasm for Ms. Mann’s maudlin heart-string-tuggings for all the world to see. Boogie Nights was a satire about several characters involved in a particular industry in California. Magnolia is about California, the United States, the world, our whole fucking existence, and it is not amused, even when it is satirical. There is very little humor to be found here, as the characters begin where the characters of Boogie Nights ended: suicidal, desperate, drugged into oblivion, hopelessly fucked up. Magnolia introduces us to 9 primary characters (most of them unfortunate wretches, whether they know it or not), but unlike Boogie Nights, all of them are essential to the story. Where whole scenes in Boogie Nights could’ve been removed without altering the message, just about every scene in Magnolia is a vital piece of the puzzle, or “mosaic” as it refers to itself.
The irony is that the acting in Boogie Nights is considerably better. Julianne Moore is the film’s weakest link – I wouldn’t have felt like the film was literally shrieking and clawing at my eyes and ears if she had been replaced with somebody, anybody, else. It’s a lot like watching Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest, a farce of a performance – instead of being raw, it is the polar opposite – affected. We are supposed to be traumatized by this woman’s quivering rage. Anderson’s direction of her acting (if indeed he directed her acting at all) is the biggest fumble of his career – she’s embarrassing to watch, and not embarrassing like “Yeah Linda’s supposed to be a train wreck” but like “This is Julianne Moore miserably failing in pretending to be a train wreck.” She’s so utterly fake – every line, every look, every fiber of her being is failing in capturing the shrill impotence of Linda Partridge. Her acting is like a garish weight hanging around the neck of the whole film, and what’s worse, the character of Linda Partridge could’ve given another actress the opportunity to shine.
Besides Julianne Moore and the familiar feeling that Anderson’s ego is getting the best of him, Magnolia propels itself along pretty well, and maintained a tight grip on my attention. The prologue (the three tales narrated by Ricky Jay before the opening credits) is one of the most brilliant things I've ever seen. Those first six minutes get an A+ from me...but then there's the matter of that pesky movie attached to them. Despite not explaining the relevance of the prologue until the very end of the 3+ hour film, the pace never lags except when it stops for one of Jason Robard’s sluggish monologues.
(But the man is doped to the gills and approximately 117 years old, so that’s acceptable). Magnolia doesn’t feel like 3 hours and that’s precisely because Anderson is incapable of being boring.
In the credits, the entire cast is listed with special distinction going to Melora Walters ("...and Melora Walters") who plays Claudia Wilson, the daughter of Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall). Whenever a film or a television show lists a cast member with the "And," usually that means they are the most senior of the group, but other times it is because there is something particularly significant about that cast member. I don't think he chose Melora Walters simply because her last name was the furthest in the alphabet. She is the soul of Magnolia - the film weeps for her, and, in a sense, the fucked up state of everything can be symbolized in her own private anguish. Unlike Julianne Moore, she truly seems to be in distress. If anyone is in doubt about her character holding a significance the others do not, consider the very end of the film. The last shot is Claudia sitting in her bedroom looking dejected.
While an Aimee Mann song prods your heart on the soundtrack, the shot is sustained, lingering on the broken young woman.
And just when I was thinking that the moment was not as poignant as it thinks it is, Melora Walters suddenly looks directly at the camera...
Cut to black. I found I was smiling too.
Melora Walter's scenes with John C. Reilly were probably my favorite in the film, along with Philip Baker Hall's nervous breakdown on live television. It's fitting that he should suffer this fate, considering the lifetime of it that he has inflicted on his daughter. His deterioration combined with its being broadcast on television and the staging of it on a dramatically lit quiz show set endows it grandeur: it's as if the whole world is falling apart right along with Jimmy. There are echoes of Howard Beale here as well.
The porn industry in Boogie Nights was about the porn industry; it was not intended to be a microcosm on the scale that Magnolia is. Where Boogie Nights repeated the same theme in different scenarios, each character in Magnolia represents a different theme, and by weaving them together, a portrait emerges of the bleak system operating in Los Angeles, each character a part of the system, all affecting one another in direct and indirect ways: while demagogue Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise) indoctrinates scores of men into his nauseating worldview, young women who have already been used as sperm receptacles (Mackey’s term, not mine) numb their despair with drugs as Ron Popeil infomercials, softcore porn, and the NASDAQ serve as the soundtrack for all of it. Earl Partridge (Robards), the patriarch of the entire sick fiasco, lies dying in his bed, cursing and weeping, evoking sympathy from a tender home-care nurse (Philip Seymour Hoffman) despite the rotting man’s miserable legacy. We see the story of overwhelmed young quiz show prodigy Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) being swallowed up in the machine juxtaposed with the story of chewed up and spit out former child quiz show prodigy Donnie Smith (William H. Macy) and ponder Stanley’s future with apprehension. The cycle of life and death proceeds uninterrupted like a wheel spinning endlessly through a puddle of sewage. P.T. Anderson is sick of it, and if God won’t interrupt the madness, Mr. Anderson will.
Warning: If you haven’t seen Magnolia, you should stop reading this instant.
Earlier, the little black kid warned in his rap to police officer Jim Kurring (the great John C. Reilly) about where Magnolia was heading: “When the sunshine don’t work, the good Lord bring the rain in.”P.T.'s Intervention, when it is finally summoned, is a singular cinematic moment, one destined to become an iconic scene like the Royale with cheese monologue from Pulp Fiction or the “Layla” montage from Goodfellas. It also has the unique distinction of being the single most bizarre deus ex machina in the history of deus ex machinas.
Just as several character arcs are reaching their crescendo, the sky begins raining frogs. Yes.
The film has already established its belief that impossible coincidences happen all the time in life, uncanny intersections of fate, and that these are not just terrific accidents, not chance, but something else, something supernatural, mystical government, something…and the biblical plague which descends upon the residents of P.T.’s San Fernando Valley is just another one of these occurrences. Of course, Raining Frogs is as arbitrary as squids erupting from all the characters’ toilets or the Moon disappearing or an earthquake, but it’s still really neat, no? I think so. Some might not, and they are entitled to considering frogs raining from the sky in the film’s third act to be a deal-breaker, but the audacity and plain weirdness of frogs takes the work of P.T. Anderson and the expectations an audience might have for what a P.T. Anderson film can be to delirious new heights. If he’s capable of raining frogs, he is capable of Any. Fucking. Thing.
Magnolia came out right on the heels of Boogie Nights. While critics and audiences alike were still reeling from being effectively gobsmacked by this wunderkind seeming to pop out of nowhere, he quickly dropped another bomb on them, to ensure that there’d be no confusion as to whether or not he was a one-hit wonder (nobody knew he had directed a film before Boogie Nights). While Boogie Nights was like a benevolent deity, first bemused, and then disappointed with the world it displayed, Magnolia is thoroughly disgusted. It’s not very crafty about concealing this fact either, and wears its big, gooey, sentimental heart quite obnoxiously on its sleeve.
Grade: B
* Coming Soon: A review of P.T. Anderson's fourth picture, Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
* A review of P.T. Anderson's second picture, Boogie Nights (1997)
* A review of P.T. Anderson's first picture, Hard Eight (1996)
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