Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 25-January-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Magnolia (1999)

I used to think it amazing that someone as young as Paul Thomas Anderson (34 this month) could write and direct movies so rich, so brilliant, and so sublime as "Magnolia." But it occurred to me during my latest viewing that every one of his films has the stamp of youth all over it. That is, Anderson's work evinces a particular brand of fearlessness that appears almost exclusively in the young, which informs both what he says and how he says it. The same bold self-assurance that allows him to try (and succeed at) inventive uses of camera and music also allows him to tell intricate tales thick with profanity, drug use, violence, stupidity, and despair, which nevertheless extol the beauty of the human experience. Blessed with enormous talent and compassion, he seems to believe that anything is possible; as such, he can look life square in the face and see not only its messiness, but its potential.

The script for "Magnolia" takes the form of a whirlwind, a swirling, mounting, inescapable blast of humanity roaring through the San Fernando Valley during the course of one memorable day. Anderson structures his many interwoven stories around a trio of monologues at the beginning, middle, and end of the picture, which deal with the key themes of regret and forgiveness. The first and last monologue are delivered by the film's main hero, police officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly), a soft-spoken, kindhearted doofus who views each day as an opportunity to help others, even though he realizes that this is never simple. The middle monologue emerges with the dying breath of Earl Partridge (Jason Robards), one of the story's guilt-ridden souls whose only chance at redemption lies in admitting and apologizing for his sins. These two men represent opposite sides of the same human problem, the cause and the cure of psychological pain. All the other characters either reflect these roles or react to them by being wounded and in need of healing.

Joining Earl in a battle with guilt are his distraught younger wife (Julianne Moore) and one of his business associates, Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall), a longtime TV game show host who, like Earl, is dying of cancer. Through nobody's fault but their own, both men have become estranged from their children, with whom they hope to reconnect before they die. Thus, Earl asks his sweet nurse (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to locate his son Jack (Tom Cruise), who has changed his name to Frank and reinvented himself as a self-help guru for would-be Lotharios; and Jimmy attempts to speak with his coked-up daughter Claudia (Melora Walters) before being summarily shouted out of her apartment. (This incident has a good side, since it brings Officer Kurring to Claudia's door, where they succumb to an instant attraction.) Afterward, Jimmy heads off to work, where one of the game show's contestants, a boy named Stanley (Jeremy Blackman), struggles with the pressure put upon him by his insensitive, self-absorbed father (Michael Bowen). The painful adulthood that awaits Stanley is suggested by the sad story of "Quiz Kid" Donnie Smith (William H. Macy), a former child star whose parents took all of his winnings and left him a lonely, pathetic shell of a man.

"Magnolia" takes more than three hours to unfold, but it feels like Anderson accomplished a major feat by bringing together so much material and delivering a coherent message. Death, salvation, suffering, family, God, history, humor, singing, rapping, public meltdowns, private meltdowns, Tom Cruise in his underwear, and, yes, miraculous frogs --- they're all here, all carefully fitted together into one big, living mosaic whose moral, as Robards intones, is love, love, love. This movie examines the hurts that strike deepest, the injuries inflicted on a child by a parent, and acknowledges the near impossibility of granting or receiving the forgiveness that both parties need in order to live a contented life. And yet, for all that, it bravely argues that while "the past ain't through with us," the future is never predetermined. Strange things happen all the time, and while we usually write them off as coincidence, they may, in fact, be generated by our own hopes, regrets, confusions, and desires. Mistakes --- both our own and others' --- are inevitable but need not be fatal. The characters, like all of us, just need to keep trudging on.

I have never seen anything quite like "Magnolia" and have never been moved in the same way (except by a small number of books). This is a film that isn't watched but experienced, and it could not have come from anyone but a youthfully confident and highly imaginative master of his craft. If he never made another film, Anderson would deserve to be counted among America's greatest filmmakers; and even when he does, I believe "Magnolia" will remain his masterpiece.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.