Magnolia (no 3)

(USA 1999 188m) DVD1/2

I shall smite all thy borders with frogs

p  Joanne Sellar  d/w  Paul Thomas Anderson  ph  Robert Elswit  ed  Dylan Tichenor  m  Jon Brion, Fiona Apple  m/ly  Aimee Mann  art  William Arnold, Mark Bridges  cos  Mark Bridges

Julianne Moore (Linda Partridge), William H.Macy (Quiz Kid Donnie Smith), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Phil Parma), Tom Cruise (Frank T.J.Mackey), Jeremy Blackman (Stanley Spector), John C.Reilly (Jim Kurring), Jason Robards Jnr (Earl Partridge), Melora Walters (Claudia Wilson Gator), Philip Baker Hall (Jimmy Gator), Melinda Dillon (Rose Gator), Alfred Molina (Solomon Solomon), Michael Bowen (Rick Spector), April Grace, Ricky Jay, Michael Murphy, Henry Gibson, Thomas Jane, Luis Guzman, Miriam Margolyes,

Ladies and germs, may I present the most ambitious masterpiece of American nineties cinema.  If ever a film demanded multiple viewings to pick up its textures and nuances, this is it.  Some called it pretentious, indulgent and even overlong and they have a point, but very few filmmakers have the balls to run with their indulgencies to the point where greatness is achieved.  Boogie Nights promised much, especially in its director’s handling of its eclectic ensemble cast, but Magnolia surpasses it easily.  Indeed, one can see his ensemble being the finest seen since the days of John Ford and Preston Sturges and his style being the modern successor to Altman.  They, and he, are that good.

            The plot itself is very Schnitzler like; a young black boy’s stepfather is murdered, the investigating cop falls for a young hyper-nervous drug addict, who in turn hates her father, who is dying of cancer and who for forty years has presented a game show about brainiac children (the 1968 champion of which is now reduced to working in an electronics store after his parents spent his winnings and the current champion of which is pressurised by his greedy excuse for a father) sponsored by a misanthropic old businessman, likewise dying of cancer and tended by a male nurse, who he asks to get in touch with his estranged son, a sex guru, much to the disgust of his once gold digging but now guilt-ridden and hysterical wife, who decides to end it all, only to be rescued by a young black boy who happens by…

            This all takes place in a single twenty-four hours in the San Fernando Valley, but the opening prologue with its three tales of coincidence and chance tell us to expect the unexpected.  Here, fate and destiny rules and nothing is pure chance.  Those continual references to 82 and variations thereof point to the very quote from Exodus Ch8, Vs.2 that explains the almost Twilight Zone biblical ending (predicted by the arcade game in the bar being “Frogger”).  Yet this is not only a film about complex lives and performances (of which Walters, Hall, Robards, Hoffman and Macy are superb and Reilly, Moore and Cruise simply extraordinary), but the sheer bravado.  The incredibly complex tracking shots leave one spellbound and have since become known as Anderson shots.  He dares to have his characters introduced as infuriating, telling much of the plot through Aimee Mann’s wonderfully meaningful song lyrics (all the while squirming through the continual renditions of Gabrielle’s “Dreams”).  Some of the speeches and monologues reach almost poetic proportions; one particularly recalls Robards’ deathbed speech on regret (“use that regret for anything, any way you want…”).  Though the narrator may say that “if that was in a movie, I wouldn’t believe it…”, you do because it’s so extraordinarily well done, with the finale surprising despite the cryptic clues.  The title itself is indeed only explained by cryptic clues (the Masonic symbols in the studio are because the 82^nd – that number again – chapter of the Masons is in Magnolia, Arkansas).  Emotions are at a high throughout and you just have to go along with it, and each repeated viewing is a richer experience than the previous one because those previous viewings are history.  As the film says, “we may be through with the past, but the past aint through with us.”