936. MAGNOLIA (1999)

Running Time: 188 minutes
Directed By: Paul Thomas Anderson
Written By: Paul Thomas Anderson
Main Cast: Tom Cruise, Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jason Robards, John C. Reilly
Click here to view the trailer

"WE MAY BE THROUGH WITH THE PAST, BUT THE PAST AIN'T THROUGH WITH US"

I told you I'd be back! Yes, I've made the decision to return to my grand journey and continue watching my way down this long road of 1001 films, continuing down the road to 500, the road to being halfway home. For the curious, "Bergman Week" will continue soon, but I needed a familiar film to slip back in with, so I made a choice from my DVD shelf and chose "Magnolia".

Please excuse any writer's rust that I may be experiencing - I'm usually not very confident in my writing when I'm just getting back on the horse. To sum up the plot of "Magnolia" in one paragraph is, on one hand, very difficult and on the other hand, quite easy. There really isn't much of a plot, to be quite honest with you. What "Magnolia" is, is a gathering of characters who are loosely intertwined and whom we encounter over the course of a couple of days in the San Fernando Valley of California. We meet a handful of characters, including Frank "TJ" Mackey (Cruise), the misogynistic creator of "Seduce & Destroy" - a self-help system marketed toward men, teaching them how to "tame" women. Frank's estranged father is Earl Partridge (Robards), who is suffering from brain and lung cancer and is being looked after twenty-four hours a day by Phil Parma (Hoffman), his nurse. Earl's wife is Linda (Julianne Moore), a trophy wife who has cheated on him numerous times over the years and only realizes during Earl's final days that she truly loves him. There's also Jim (Reilly), a cop who may or may not have dreams of being on "Cops", as he speaks to himself while on patrol, is religious and is in need of a mate. There's Jimmy Gator (Hall), a legendary game show host who is dying of bone cancer and who is trying to reconnect with his daughter, Claudia (Melora Walters), a drug addicted woman, who also finds solace in the arms of older men, probably compensating for the loss of a father figure.

SPOILER ALERT!

I never really knew what "Magnolia" was all about before. As I watched it this time around, I desperately tried to form some theories and perhaps, in the end, I may have pieced something together. Let me talk it all out and hopefully the words that are spewed from my fingers make some sense when all is said and done.

My first thoughts were that all these characters are basically failures at life. You take characters like Earl Partridge and Jimmy Gator who failed at being fathers. Due to her emotional problems, mainly inflicted on her by her dad, Claudia is a failure at relationships and thus can't meet men in the proper "dinner & date" type way and even when she finally succeeds in that, she messes it up. Jim is failure as a police officer, Donny is also a failure when it comes to employment as he's seen early on getting the boot from his job. Donny also fails at love, failing to grasp what it's really about. Linda failed as a wife, admitting that she cheated on Earl. However, adding up all those failures, one guy didn't fit the puzzle and that was Phil Parma, a genuinely good man who isn't a failure and seems to have the most bearings about him of anyone of the characters, even reaching out to Frank "TJ" Mackey on behalf of Earl Partridge. So while this theory sat in the back of my mind, in the end I gave up on it.

Then I realized that this is just a film about intertwining characters told in a very dramatic way. It's a very melancholy story and at times you just want to burst into tears for no real, defining reason. The entire aura of the film is just a big downer - characters have cancer, characters molesting their children, characters doing drugs & drinking, characters attempting suicide, characters attempting numerous criminal acts, relationships being torn at the seams and family members treating one another like shit. Lies are told, secrets are leaked and confessions are made and all the while the rain pours outside ("Cats and fucking dogs out there") and never are we given an opportunity to even crack a smile. Perhaps that explains the ending - I mean the very ending, when Claudia breaks the fourth wall and smiles at us. Perhaps she's letting us know that the characters that deserve to be all right will be and the ones who deserve a more gruesome fate, will get it. It's actually an exhausting film to watch, because at times it's so intense. The music doesn't let up during the entire second hour and suddenly scenes that would be normally run of the mill are turned into pieces of extreme suspense - a child peeing his pants on a game show, Phil Parma frantically trying to reach Frank Mackey, Linda picking up prescriptions at the drug store.

As it pertains to the frogs...Well, I know there's a lot of people out there who like to let their imaginations run wild in instances like this. They'll think of the most cockamamie ideas and apply them to the movie, just so they can tell their friends they figured out the big secret behind the film. I honestly don't think there's a biblical connection at all. I think the rain of frogs is simply a disastrous event that works to put things in perspective for these characters and in turn, actually ends up solving a lot of problems. I hate to bring this up, because it's such a touchy subject, but it's kind of like 9/11 and how on that particular day menial problems just didn't seem too important for the time being. People were more apt to forgive and forget when tragedy struck and I think that's what the frogs did in this movie.

As for the technical aspects of the film, the acting was brilliant, with EVERYONE bringing their A-game, especially guys & girls like Tom Cruise, Jason Robards and Julianne Moore. This is either a love it or hate it movie, you're probably going to lean one way or the other. As for me, I love it. I think that even though, at times, it doesn't make a lot of sense and you finds yourself questioning the real motives of the movie, you can still get lost in the characters and the meaning of it all. At times the music is too intense, but again I say this is a very real story, told in a very dramatic way, so perhaps the very intense music that plays almost non-stop through the second hour was intentional.

RATING: 9/10 I can't go the full monty on this one (not today anyway), but it's still damn good and maybe with some thought, I can boost it. Like I said, "Bergman Week" will commence and conclude soon enough. It's good to be back!

MOVIES WATCHED: 410
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 591

March 15, 2012 1:15am