I was 16 when I entered my trusted home video store in Andover, Massachusetts, looking for my next DVD rental. I settled on something I hadn’t seen before, a flamboyant and colorful cover titled Boogie Nights. Later that night, alone in my tiny dorm room with that DVD playing on my laptop, I was forever changed and introduced to the wonderful, intense and bonkers world of Paul Thomas Anderson, aka PTA. Boogie Nights excited me, made me laugh, made me sad, and that Alfred Molina drug dealer sequence still has me recoil at the very sound of firecrackers.
A few months later, I was walking the hallways of my favorite arthouse multiplex in Cambridge when a poster caught my eye; it showed a big, blue cloudy sky and the giant close up of a surprised-looking frog in freefall. Magnolia, it read, a P.T. Anderson picture. I literally couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have just discovered one of my new favorite writer/directors with a new movie coming out. Three weeks later, I was back at that very same arthouse theater watching what would become one of my favorite pictures of all time.
Magnolia is, to me, one of those movies that are written, shot and cut in a state of grace. From the first to last frame, everything flows in a flawless rhythm. That first Greenberry Hill sequence is shot with an actual period-accurate camera. A myriad of characters, storylines, heartaches and laughter intertwine and find each other, only to lose themselves and then find each other again. And there are Aimee Mann’s perfect songs, and the countless incredible performances.
At the time of release PTA said, and I paraphrase ”I know I’ll never make a better movie than Magnolia”. In my mind this is still 100% true, and the only contender to that title has just hit theaters: One Battle After Another, shot entirely in VistaVision. It features what may well be the greatest Sean Penn performance ever, and has stunning turns from Benicio Del Toro and Leonardo Di Caprio.
What I love about Magnolia is that, in my heart of hearts, it is about desperate souls, caught at the lowest moment in their lives, who try to find good in the world around them. Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, played by the wonderful William H. Macy, makes all sorts of horrible mistakes, including robbing his own boss, Rahad Jackons (Alfred Molina), but all Donnie wants is the unrequited love of a young bartender. John C. Reilly’s Officer Jim is an absolute, inadequate loser at work (a cop who manages to literally lose his own gun), but he is pure of heart, and may be the only thing that saves Melora Walters’ Claudia. Aimee Mann’s “Save Me”, a piece she wrote for Magnolia, underscores that point very clearly and in a heartachingly beautiful scene.
What about Tom Cruise as T.J. Mackey? He is a chauvinist, misogynist womanizer, who refuses to acknowledge even the existence of his own sick father, yet breaks down in tears and begs him not to go, kneeling at his deathbed. Everybody in Magnolia is trying to be saved.
The cast and characters are way too many to get through here: Julianne Moore’s repented gold-digger trophy wife, Phil Seymour Hoffman’s (rest in peace Master), kind, naïve and ever helpful nurse, Philip Baker Hall’s abusive – and probably incestuous TV presenter, and Jason Robard’s heartless media mogul who searches his soul in his final moments. Everybody plays it pitch-perfect and straight from the heart.
Robert Elswitt’s cinematography photographs everything—and everybody—in high-contrast lights, with long sweeping pans, steadi-cams and dolly shots. Their movement is kinetic, restless and agonizing. The swirling camera acrobatics are cut-up with merciless precision by Dylan Tichenor, a longtime PTA collaborator who edited the great majority of his work. It’s a symphony of images in movement, fueled by Jon Brion’s potent, melancholy score. And of course Aimee Mann’s songs, who serve as a literal bedrock for the entire story. PTA imagined many of Magnolia’s scenes while listening to the very songs that ended up in the movie.
Magnolia is to me cinema and drama at their absolute finest, and opened up to 17-year old me all the possibilities that cinema and life, seemed to be rife for. Is it PTA’s crowning jewel? There Will Be Blood—along with Daniel Day-Lewis’ earth-shattering performance—is up there. And One Battle After Another is a strong, strong contender. Up there with the biggest, meatiest epics. But for my money? Yes. Magnolia is perfection. I own the 2010 Magnolia Blu-ray. It’s a movie I passionately and regularly revisit, and one of the great cinematic and emotional experiences of my life.
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