Paul
Thomas Anderson's follow-up to Boogie Nights is an equally
long but far more disturbing look at guilt, regret,
embarrassment, and reconciliation. Anderson weaves together
seemingly unrelated vignettes, but he manages cleverly to tie
them all together. It feels like Robert Altman's Short Cuts
for the first half-hour or so (both films have a loser cop
side story), but it digs much deeper and is far more
experimental than Altman's random collage of stories.
Anderson's script is so in your face it is almost grating in
its bravura. The dialogue is often bracing and confrontational
as we witness several characters' most intimate thoughts and
feelings. Several people left the theater after a particularly
uncomfortable but hilarious scene where John C Reilly's dufus
cop checks on a domestic disturbance call at a black woman's
apartment. Her relentless string of profanity rivals any
gangster film of the seventies, but none of it is gratuitous
or showy. Anderson's perspective is gritty and urban and real
and he doesn't hold back on any level.
Everything
takes place in one day in the San Fernando Valley, and every
character is struggling with some sort of guilt or
frustration. William H. Macy plays Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, a
former child star whose parents squandered his fortune from
the gameshow What Kids Know. He turned out to be a completely
dysfunctional man so confused and damaged that he can't even
hold down the most rudimentary job at an electronics
warehouse. Macy plays his character with an hyper sense of
desperation and despair. Tom Cruise makes the biggest splash
in the film, though, as a self-help guru for men seeking
dominance over women. His father (Jason Robards) left him to
take care of his dying mother when he was only fourteen, and
Cruise's character has to decide whether or not he wants to
see his ailing father now that the he, too, is on his
deathbed, dying of cancer. Cruise's performance is over the
top and steals the show.
Anderson is trying to prove
to us that none of these stories is random or arbitrary. We
see the cause and effect cycle of several people's lives and
how damaged they truly become. Julianne Moore plays Jason
Robards' trophy wife, who wants to have her husband's will
changed because she feels guilty that she will soon inherit
his fortune when he dies. Her guilt stems from the fact that
she only married him for his money and, consequently, cheated
on him countless times; however, while taking care of him in
his last months, she has actually fallen in love with him. Her
struggle with the guilt makes her so emotional and suicidal
she can barely carry on a conversation, and her performance is
unnerving. Anderson studies the limits of unconditional
forgiveness and questions its merits over and over again.
Music plays a huge role in Magnolia. Anderson pulls
Aimee Mann out of major label obscurity and puts her brittle,
heavily acoustic music to work. Her songs saturate the film
and even feel like a collective character, particularly in the
montage sequence Anderson weaves together wherein the main
characters mouth the words that seem specifically written for
them. It's eerie and effective. The technique is hackneyed and
cliched in the music video world but it is a rarity in film,
and Anderson pulls it off amazingly well. The characters
briefly escape their respective realities even if it's only
for the brief length of the song itself. Mann's version of
Harry Nilsson's "One" is haunting and climactic, suiting the
mood of the film. Her voice is plaintive and glides within the
somber spectrum of her ineffaceable melancholy.
Magnolia's ending is unforgettable. Anderson
incorporates a freakish act of nature unlike anything you've
ever seen on film. In lieu of all the conflicts coming to
their inevitable heads, everything goes limp and sort of
floats in the wake of the bizarre circumstances. It snaps each
character out the solipsistic worldview that manifests itself
in individuals who suffer from depression. The similarity to
Short Cuts again rears its ugly head as that film's ending
also used a natural disaster of sorts in its absurdly funny
culmination, but Magnolia has more in common The Ice Storm,
the way Rick Moody used that freakish storm to exacerbate
everyone's guilty conscience. Also like Moody, Anderson
doesn't try to tidy up the emotional mess, but he does,
thankfully, open the door for a way out.
From Drawerb
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