Magnolia

365 Films

Entry #147

Magnolia (1999)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Magnolia is a spinning top of a movie that threatens to launch itself careening off the table at any given moment.  It is for that reason and that reason alone that it is my favorite of all Mr. Anderson’s film.  Through every single scene, it becomes almost nakedly apparent that the film is walking an ever so delicate tight rope and with one false choice the whole thing could come crashing down to earth.  That being said, the most frequent note of critique heard roundly when the film was released was that the film did exactly that in its final twenty minutes.  One of the people with whom I saw the film said the exact same thing upon exiting the theater.  Speaking in the broadest of terms, Magnolia comes across as the exodus of clutter from one filmmaker’s mind.  As if Paul Thomas Anderson wrote and directed Magnolia as an attempt to purge the unending trough of conflicting thoughts, emotions, and ideas from his head and hopefully formulate some kind of story from them.  Self-indulgence doesn’t even begin to describe this film and if anything, Magnolia is a testament to the power of self-indulgence in creating indescribable cinematic moments.  There really aren’t too many situations in which frogs raining from the sky (fourteen year old spoiler alert), a cast karaoke version of an Aimee Mann song, or scene after scene of endless snot draining soul bearing confessions should ever work in the same cinematic time and space, but Anderson pulls it off here beautifully.  There are many legitimate arguments as to why this will never work for some and with all due respect to Mr. Anderson, I can’t think of very many other filmmakers whose work consistently inspires such heated and necessary debate.  Magnolia is a prime example of a filmmaker high on his own supply and rather than tamp down the controversial aspects of his previous films (sorry Boogie Nights fans, that’s a film that piles on one too many melodramatic contrivances in the last hour of its run time and seems to do so because it is lacking in any other ideas of how to wrap itself up) he widened his scope, bet double or nothing, and went all in with Magnolia.  It is for that reason that I will always admire this audacious and breathtaking work of show off cinema.