Magnolia
“This is something that happens.”
I really didn’t think I’d get so absorbed by this this time around and there are so many things to write about it I almost opted to wait until the next time since I don’t know if I really have it in me right now. There’s no review here yet, though, which is basically absurd … so what I write now will have to do if only as a placeholder.
I guess I’ve been having one of those late-twenties “mini crises” this week, and I’ve been kind of longing to have an hour or so that just felt like home. Hence Reality Bites earlier in the week, which unfortunately proved to have turned on me in my old age; the OBC of “The Pirate Queen” almost worked last night, the ever-reliable Boublil and Schönberg not trying to innovate a tried-and-true mould like so many others; but it was these three hours that finally brought me down from my grey cloud.
It’s the rain of frogs. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this movie, but that moment, I swear, every time, it’s like an out-of-body experience. It’s Paul Thomas Anderson, director as God, looking down on all those characters – and you, me, all of us too focussed on the stupidest things … Donnie and his braces, Claudia and her self-esteem, Jim and his gun, “and so on and so on” ... you, and your whatever – and saying, in the voice of Aimee Mann, “It’s not going to stop ‘till you wise up.” If only it were so easy.
“Strange things happen all the time,” the narrator says – and there are so many shots in this movie of people just looking at each other in sheer abandonment, not knowing. “I don’t know,” says Jimmy Gator, “I don’t know what I did,” to which his wife’s double-edged answer comes, “You should know better!” It levels the whole human race, this movie – united in the simple fact that none of us has a freakin’ clue why we’re here, why we’re still here in spite of ourselves, and why we have the drives we have. All these characters wear their hearts on their faces, it’s like opera, like soap opera condensed, and it’s beautiful.
I love the “almost-POV” shots – over the shoulder, by the hip, behind the butt, just about all variations you can muster – that give you this weird sense of being more in the scene than is comfortable. Of course, the Aimee Mann songs – this movie basically introduced me, and I believe quite a few others, to her, and you couldn’t ask for a better introduction.
One line haunts me – from the barfly Thurston Howell – “It’s dangerous to confuse children with angels,” to which quiz kid Donnie’s response is, “No, it is not.” It’s as cryptic a line to me as that moment in Palindromes when Jennifer Jason Leigh says, “Pedophiles love children …” I really don’t know what exactly the filmmakers meant for this line to mean? But I love the ambiguity and sheer brassiness of it … it practically puts a gun to your head and says, “Talk about this.”
Magnolia shares a theme with Boogie Nights concerning child abuse and I always figured it was Paul Thomas Anderson quite ham-fistedly putting a little of Fiona Apple’s story into his movies, but I have to say, that line seems so at odds with his approach in Nights ... I really disliked the ending of the Colonel’s story there, mostly because it was very unclear exactly what he had done but also because it was just too much more misery on top of an already miserable enough third act. But I really love (if that’s the right word) how they deal with Jimmy Gator here. Again, the facts of the “crime” are ambiguous. But even if we’re to assume the worst that Jimmy raped his daughter, I just love the fact of that frog that falls from the sky, again like the voice of God saying, “uh-uh … you’re not gonna leave this hell so easy …” – and I don’t know if those sparks from the plug indicated the start of a fire … but the point is, either Jimmy’s gonna burn or he’s gonna have to face whatever he has or hasn’t done like the rest of us.
To end on a slightly higher note, I’ll just mention that last smile at the camera by Melora Walters. Most personal, beautiful, ending ever. Just thinking about it makes me consider placing the movie above the ethereal Almost Famous in my favourites list. Hmmmmmmm …. nah, not quite, but it’s heart-wrenchingly close.
Hey, how ‘bout that? I didn’t do so bad for “not being in the mood” lol 
It seems fitting to have such a naked stream-of-consciousness style review of this movie, actually.