Cast: Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jason Robarbs, Melora Walters, John C. Reilly, Philip Baker Hall, Melinda Dillon, William H. Macy, Jeremy Blackman, Felicity Huffman, Michael Bowen, Alfred Molina

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Running time: 3 hrs 8 mins


REVIEW:

MAGNOLIA, that three-hour lengthy narrative of the happenings of 11 different lives in a 24-hour period set in Los Angeles is crafted with self-indulgence and effervescence by the complexly-minded P. T. Anderson. It’s long, very characters-driven (make that plural); almost esoteric that logic might be a fatal threat to anyone who is planning to see this. It’s a film composed of stories of lives, interlocking, paralleling each other, like spiderwebs so intricate that it could be a bit hard to decipher the connections. This could have been easily a bad film to sit with.

But thankfully to P. T. Anderson in his surreal and distinctive style, MAGNOLIA shines with brilliance. It’s nonetheless a magnificent film, stirring echoes to the world, showing us characters all with frailty – humans who consistently battle with the misfortunes of life and facing the struggles of the present with regards to the past. With courage bold enough to tell the tales, this film also shows the world the messages about the imperfection of love, the ghosts of the past, human frailty, forgiveness, infidelity, the fear of the future, and the ubiquitous power of chance in our fates, whether life is held by the threads of chance or whether life is just a series of strange occurrences.

From the start of the film, we are being prepared by Anderson by tales of strange happenings; the murder of the chemist in Greenberry Hill by three scallywags Green, Berry and Hill; and also the death of a boy who committed suicide but was shot by a firing gun while falling down from a tall building, who could have been alive as there was a net below. That gun was fired by his mother, who had a row with her husband and accidentally fired it, missing the husband by inches. And the gun was loaded by the boy himself days before, wishing that one of his parents might shoot the other. All these coincidences reverberate throughout the film, whether we’re all connected that by that strange chance. And no, this is not CRASH with cultural differences. This is MAGNOLIA and you better believe its sheer intensity.

This is emblazoned with stellar and compelling performances. The stand-out would have to be Tom Cruise’s Frank T. J. Mackey, the successful public speaker who teaches men how to seduce women in his lecture “Seduce and Destroy” with the tagline “respect the cock”, who’s also the total bastard. This is probably Cruise’s most defined performance all throughout his career, which will remind us that he’s Tom-Cruise-The-Actor in that time, and not the Tom-Cruise-Who-Went-Berserk-On-Oprah’s-Settee. Nominated for an Oscar Best Supporting Actor back in 1999, he was easily won over by Michael Caine in his CIDER HOUSE RULES acting bravura. Cruise shows fantastic acting skills in the scene where he shatters internally when an interviewer plummets him back to his real past with the question “Why would you lie, Frank?”, as he retorts grudgingly yet slowly seething “I’m sitting here silently judging you.” And his confrontation of his dying father, Jason Robarbs, is stunned with acting magnitude a few actors could have achieved nowadays. Julianne Moore is also a solid actor here as Robarb’s wife who’s been haunted by her infidelity, breaks down in a pharmacy with such fiery countenance.

Robards is dying in cancer, and the one taking care of him is Philip Seymour Hoffman, who revives the connection between a father and his long-estranged son, Cruise. In a TV show produced by Robarbs, there’s Philip Baker Hall, also dying, and a father of a despaired daughter Melora Walters (amazing performance by this lady), who’s drugged life wanted her to break free and at the same time pulls her back into the world of turmoil. The one who saves her is a policeman John C. Reilly, who parallels Hoffman as a caregiver to the community, and falls in love with Walters despite of her ineptitude towards life. Her mother, however, Melinda Dillon is a wife broken down by her husband’s abusive nature. And in the other part of the town, there William H. Macy’s lonely former-quiz-kid, Donnie Smith, who steals money for his braces operation to impress a local braced-bartender, which parallels to Jeremy Blackman, a kid who thrives on quiz shows but decidedly gives up due to a fear of an unforgiving future, causing his father Michael Bowen to be devastated as well as his mentor, Felicity Huffman.

It’s a complex interlocking of stories that might get too confusing when the explanation is furthered and sliced with too many scalpels. There are many scenes edited to fit each other perfectly, characters that shake with crisis, that all build up the main exclamation of the lies and sins committed by the fathers, the wives, the sons, and the daughters. And the revelation, when it comes, rolls down the hill and create an emotionally powerful stirring of the human nature. There are so many unexplained scenes, such as frogs falling from the sky, but as I have discovered this film had referred to the Bible in Exodus.

No matter how strange this film is, Anderson shows us that what we live in a strange world anyway so what’s the point of not liking this film. He gives this film introspection to life, styled in a way of intense scenes, vivid visuals, characters singing to Aimee Mann’s music. Just leave logic beneath your carpet and test your patience with this film. You’ll know it’s worth the watch.

VERDICT:

Complex and esoteric it might be, MAGNOLIA mustn’t be reduced to low-keyed cinema. In fact, it’s a brilliant, challenging, and truthful piece that will stagger you with its pure cinematic intensity emblazoned with outstanding performances by high-calibre actors, and top form audacity by director P. T. Anderson.



RATING: A