By Adrian Woods, Staff Writer

[New Lines Cinema Studios; 1999]

Rating: 9/10

This analysis may contain minor spoilers.

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of cinema’s greatest directors to date. He has so many classic movies under his belt, Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, The Master, it’s his third film, Magnolia, that left me thinking about it the most after watching it for the first time more than any of his other films. 

The film centers around a 24 hour period of nine people living in the San Fernando Valley, a cop (John C. Reily), a dying father (Jason Robards), a trophy wife (Julianne Moore), a caretaker (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a public speaker (Tom Cruise), a super genius (Jeremy Blackman), an ex-super genius (William H Macy), a game show host (Philip Baker Hall) and his estranged daughter (Melora Walters), whose stories all interconnect with one another. 

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This is PTA showing the world that he is a master at his craft, this is one of the best directed films I’ve ever seen. Magnolia clocks in at three hours and nine minutes and not a minute feels wasted because PTA puts so much care into these characters. There’s so much going on in this movie, everything in it is involved with the other and it’s some of Anderson’s most ambitious filmmaking to date.

 PTA has a way to make small rooms feel huge in some of the films most enthralling scenes just based on the dialogue alone, but can also make the filmmaking so animated in slower scenes that it doesn’t leave you bored. The lighting in the film is beautifully shot and leaves an impact on the most captivating scenes in the movie. The score of the film adds an edge to scenes that could have likely been hurt without the score there, as well as the gorgeous soundtrack by Aimlee Mann. Her voice is so calm, it fits so well with the tone of the movie that I can’t see anyone else doing the music for the film other than her. Anderson’s wife at the time, Fiona Apple, also contributed to the soundtrack.

This movie is brilliantly casted. Every actor and actress in the film is fantastic, and there are some career high performances in this movie. These characters all feel like real people living in the same valley who just all are happening to look for happiness in their life. John C. Reilly as Officer Jim Kurring may be one of the best portrayals of a real cop in a movie. He can seem friendly and nice, but can also be firm and snappy really quickly. This is by far John C. Reilly’s best role to date. Say what you want about him, but Tom Cruise as PJ Tucker is without a doubt also Cruise’s best role to date. The absurdness and hilariousness of his character is such a wild choice for Cruise to play, but at the same time, it’s not. 

This role also shows that Cruise isn’t just an action star, as he really shows off his emotional acting chops in this. His interview scene with April Grace, who is also great in this, takes an unlikeable character and gives him extreme depth. Additionally, Melora Walters as Claudia Gator is one of the best depictions of a drug addict put to screen. Her body movements and vocal inflection definitely give you the feeling that this girl is not all there and it feels real thanks to Walters’ fantastic perforamce. William H. Macy as Quiz Kid Donnie and Jeremy Blackman as Stanley both give great performances of brainiacs and how the rise and fall of a child star through two different parts in their lives. Macy does such a great job playing sleazy loser characters, but also makes them somewhat likable and relatable. 

The late great Philip Seymour Hoffman gives a terrific performance as caretaker Phil Parma. Hoffman nails how a caretaker in the situation he’s in would be affected emotionally, and goes to show why he was one of the greatest actors to ever do it. Julianne Moore as the trophy wife Linda Partridge is excellent as always, Moore has this ability to use her facial expressions so well. The scene in the beginning when she is being explained to that her husband is probably not gonna make it, you can see the anger, sadness and fear in her face as she’s being explained this. 

The scene in the drug store is one of the best scenes in the film, as Julianne delivers in that fantastic rant. Philip Baker Hall as Jimmy Gator and Jason Robards as Earl Partridge both give two amazing and uniquely different portrayals of people on their deathbed knowing that they are on their deathbed, yet both having dark secrets they regret that change the way we feel about them. Magnolia is a film that really makes you think, makes you wonder what the point of the film really is, and those are some of the best types of movies, ones that stick with you when you’re done watching them.

There are many theories about Magnolia, about how the sins of adults bring destruction upon themselves and their children, it’s an attack on masculinity and whiteness, or the importance of overcoming loneliness. Why this film is so interesting to me is because I think it’s not only about the disconnection between two different generations, but also about how pure chance can affect your life. Many generations cross paths in this movie, even if not directly. As previously mentioned, we see the life of super genius Stanley and Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, one a child star and one a previous child star. Stanley is being forced to do a lot of things he does not want to do, resulting in him being verbally punished by his manager/father as well as being horribly embarrassed. Quiz Kid Donnie Smith is a drunk, lonely man who is only recognized for being on the game show, whose parents stole his money he won from the show. 

Both characters show how being a child star affects someone at the time of their fame, and later on in their life. When a drunken bar bystander with Donnie says, “It’s dangerous to confuse children and angels”, Donnie replies “it’s not dangerous to confuse children with angels”. This line is reminiscent of when earlier in the film a young boy is rapping to Officer Kurring about a crime scene, even calls himself a prophet during the rap, but Kurring does not listen to him because he’s just a kid. The boy even tells the officer that he told him who did it but he wasn’t listening, showing a disconnect between the two generations. 

The relationship between Earl Partridge and his wife and caretaker also shows the disconnect between two generations because we see this trophy wife, a young caretaker and his long lost son trying to communicate with this dying man only alive on painkillers, how Earl goes in and out of being heartfelt and delusional. The same goes for Jimmy Baker as he too is dying and needs to amend with his daughter, but can’t due to a dark secret in his past. These characters are suffering because of the lack of communication between each other, a major point of the film.The movie is mainly centered around nine people searching for happiness while not particularly at their lowest points (for some of the characters at least) but need some sort of change in their life, all by chance intertwined with each other. The film is subtly telling the audience this throughout the movie. 

Throughout the film, a text appears in the sky telling the weather before a scene, “Partly Cloudy, 82% Chance of Rain”. Every time that comes up, it doesn’t exactly match with what the weather is like in the film, because predicting the weather is some form of chance. When Phil Parma is trying to contact Earl Patridges son on the phone, he says “I know this sounds silly, like this is the scene in the movie where the guy’s trying to get ahold of the long-lost son, you know, but this is that scene. And I think they have those scenes in movies because they’re true, you know? Because they really happen. See, this is the scene in the movie where you help me out.” 

One of the film’s final lines by the narrator goes “We generally say, well if that was in a movie I wouldn’t believe it”. Well, everything in the movie that happens is just accepted as it happens, and the movie tells us that these things happen sometimes. There are also many nods and hints throughout the film that play with this idea. For the first seven minutes of the film, the narrator is telling the story of three different near impossible coincidences and showing how they all went down. The narrator ends the opening scene with the line: “This was not just a matter of chance, No. These strange things happen all the time”. That line perfectly encompasses the film because the fact that nine people who are all suffering one way or another lives can all be somewhat intertwined is a crazy chance, but it does happen, and I think the film’s main point, anything can happen because there’s a chance of it, and that’s just how life is. 

This goes especially with the unexpected crazy ending of the film. Why does it happen? Who knows, it’s not likely, but it could happen. “We might be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us” is one of the last narrated lines of the movie, and that speaks volumes with what happens to all the characters in the film, each character goes through something in their early life that brings them to the state of being that they’re in, just by chance. How did a young boy who raps a song for Officer Kurring help another crucial character later on in the film? How does Officer Kurring fall in love with the estranged daughter of game show host Jimmy Gator? 

How are all of the characters doing the exact same thing at the exact same time towards the end of the film? It was just all a matter of chance. I’m sure these are all questions a lot of people ask after they’ve watched it for the first time, and rightfully so. It’s a lot to take in, but this is a movie that definitely warrants a second viewing if you wanna understand or delve into what the film is really saying, because it really is a masterwork of film perfectly crafted in nearly every aspect.