The Ambling Ambition of Magnolia
As moviegoers, and more broadly as people, we tend to think of the word “ambition” in a positive vein. To say a movie has ambition is to say it has purpose; to say it has moxie is to say it breaks some new ground.
On the flip side there are those seen as too ambitious, directors who maybe bite off more than they can chew. Paul Thomas Anderson, in his 1999 feature Magnolia, dances with this question almost as an operating procedure. Over the course of three frantic, uneasy hours, Anderson challenges you to see how many moviemaking rules he can flout before you roll your eyes, how much unfiltered emotion you can handle before you (along with his characters) break.
Magnolia tells of a tangled web of characters, each in some way alone, each with some link to a Hollywood television studio that serves as the film’s nexus. There’s the aging quiz show host who’s diagnosed with cancer and forced to reckon with his past, including his disgruntled, cocaine-addicted daughter. There’s the ailing studio executive who on his deathbed seeks out his estranged son, a dating advice specialist played by a downright maniacal Tom Cruise. And beyond these family ties there are secondary players: a cop searching for love; a former quiz-show champion searching for meaning; a quiz-show wunderkind contemplating his existence.
Somehow, over the course of one long day, their paths cross. But the plot — unwieldy and at times surreal — takes a secondary role here. At its heights Magnolia is a deft character study, exploring the decisions we later regret, the lies we tell ourselves to stay afloat, the ways in which we isolate ourselves.
It’s regret that takes center stage (“The goddamn regret. The goddamn regret,” wails the studio exec Earl Partridge before he slips away). And several characters repeat what becomes the film’s manta: “We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.”
Uttered both by the quiz-show host, played by Philip Baker Hall, and former champion, played by William H. Macy, the phrase appears to haunt just about everyone. And in the process emerges a sobering question: Are we doomed to repeat our mistakes, over and over again, or can we break the cycle?
We can, maybe, if we ever “wise up,” the characters sing over the eerie vocals of Aimee Mann, who composed the soundtrack. And this decision by Anderson — to have each character sing the words to “Wise Up” while seated with sullen, faraway stares on their faces — represents the most admirable of his risk-taking. This is his directorial bravado on full display.
Right from the outset, Magnolia toys with our expectations, quite literally throwing the word “coincidence” out the window by showing a boy who’s shot by his own mother as he falls through the sky in a suicide attempt. Nothing is a coincidence, nothing is off limits, and that’s where the movie earns its credit.
But at a certain point it does all become a bridge too far. The drawn-out montages, the distressing crying spells and drug binges, the raining frogs, they leave you wondering if Anderson just wanted to see how much he could get away with.
Where Magnolia shines brightest instead is in its themes and performances. Anderson handles ideas like identity, objectification, and isolationism with great tact. Cruise’s character, in particular, embodies the blurry space between masculinity and homoeroticism so prevalent in our sex-obsessed culture.
Cast members Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Felicity Huffman drive home all of the raw emotional energy coursing throughout. John C. Reilly, who plays a cop fittingly without a partner, turns into a plain-spoken moral compass in the end.
As a series of moments, a tapestry of human sensitivity, Magnolia delivers on its purpose and then some. There may be moments you hate, where the train veers far off the rails, but they ultimately surrender to the ones you love.
