The film, to me, was about the joys of storytelling, acting, moviemaking, drama, and coincidence. Especially the joys of filmmaking.
I agree with Keith Berry’s phrase, “cinematic masturbating.” I won’t argue. The end product was enthralling to me anyway.
My fiance hated it.
They’ve been running this movie of IFC recently, so I’m bumping this thread to ask a question.
There is a line repeated throughout the movie by several different characters. The line is:
And the book says, “We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.”
My question is, what book? The Good Book? does this line have any real signifigance or did PTA include it just because it sounds cool?
From this review:
That’s an interesting review, incidentally, as is the whole site. Heartily recommended for cerebral cinema enthusiasts.
I agree with what many here have said… the genius of Magnolia lies, to me, less in what happens in the movie and more in the way the story’s told, that quirky intelligence behind it all. It’s long been one of my favorite movies, and it’s good to see that there are others who seem to dig it the same way I do.
I enjoyed this movie more the 2nd time I watched it. I loved when the characters sang the song. It didn’t hurt that it was a really good song, though.
The one thing I didn’t like was the Moore character. Especially the pharmacy scene when she goes off on the pharmicists. Totally overdone.
I also didn’t think that the movie was too long, at all. I liked the pacing of the film, and especially the way the film started out.
I thought I’d like this movie. I’d read reviews about the way the characters and plots intertwine until they all come together, and it looked like a great movie to go see with friends and then discuss over sodas afterwards. That’s why I talked my best friend into going to see it with me.
I think I’ve made it up to her. At some point, I’m afraid it stopped being interesting and to me and started being pretentious. I found only one character in the movie I could like or identify with, the policeman, and I got the impression I was supposed to be laughing at him. It had good moments, but the hours were interminable, and I felt like I could see the director patting himself on the back for his Oscar nomination.
I’m not arty or hip, and I find pretentiousness off-putting, so this wound up not being the movie for me. I don’t need to be reminded of the awfulness and callousness of the world and humanity – I suffer from clinical depression and I’m a newspaper addict.
Actually, come to think of it, I did like Tom Cruise’s character in the movie simply because he was such an utter parody of male chauvinists at their worst. Of course one of the reasons I liked him is I liked picturing cutting him down to size.
Oh well. What can I say? I didn’t find The Matrix wonderful either, and I’ve still got a weakness for the old Smokey And the Bandit Movies. In other words, I don’t claim to have taste.
CJ
I’ve seen it twice, and I still can’t decide if I like it or not. I figured that watching it the second time this weekend would decide me, but it really didn’t. It’s interesting, I suppose, but the inter-connection of the people’s parallel stories had been done before, and more coherently, (in this movie, for example http://us.imdb.com/Title?0145734) so I’m not terribly impressed by that, which seems to be what “gets” a lot of people. It’s ok, I guess, but I don’t understand the high praise it’s gotten from a lot of corners.
I wanted to like the movie. Individual elements are very good. Tom Cruise is perfect, because he is just as narcissist as his character.
However…
I was really fed up with the chopped up, out of order, narrative, which so dominated artsy films of the 90’s. Starting with Reservoir Dogs ('92) and Short Cuts ('93) and culminating with Memento ('00), it was an idea/gimmick that was overused in many movies. Magnolia was one of them.
After I saw Punch-Drunk Love, I think I said something similar to the comment about “cinematic masturbating.” I don’t remember exactly- I know I called P.T. Anderson a wanker a couple of times.
Anyway, while I think Magnolia is the better of the two films, they both suffer from the conviction of the director that he’s a genius. Magnolia has some interesting characters and situations, though it gets contrived, it manages to have some emotional impact. Also, it has dialogue. In my opinion, Punch-Drunk Love had none of those things. My issues with Magnolia were that 1) The opening narration is pure fiction, which (to me) negates any reason for its being there and makes the ‘theme’ of weird stuff just float there. (“If that was in a movie, I wouldn’t believe it” - exactly, and the fact that they needed urban legends and stuff to start it doesn’t add any believeability. And 2) I hated the frogs, I felt like they were just there because nobody knew how to end the movie.
Actually, that makes me think they didn’t know how to start OR end it. There were certain scenes that didn’t work for me either, like the one with Julianne Moore discussed above, but primarily it’s those two things. It’s a good movie, but I don’t think it’s a great one.
By the way, this is from the IMDb: “Paul Thomas Anderson has said that he was unaware that the story of frogs falling from the sky is in the Bible (he took it from Charles Fort’s writing) when he wrote the screenplay. The Bible story of the plague of frogs was brought to his attention by Henry Gibson prior to filming. After he became aware of the story, he worked references to Exodus 8:2 into the movie.”
Firstly, see Marley23’s closing paragraph. The Biblical allusion was a clumsy retrofit–but, it was a retrofit that worked, in my view. Not because of meaning, but of the nature of how meaning springs from how people are invested in narrating meaning into things.
The opening urban-legend narration bit, “I cannot believe, no, this was no coincidence, please no,” is important as misdirection. Part of the reasons people believe so strongly in urban legends–in all myths, for that matter–is simply because of how strongly and insistently they narrate their beliefs in them. They insist it means something, so it does.
Forgiveness and redemption…I don’t see much of that going on in Magnolia. There is some, here and there, but then again there is damnation. (Mr. Quiz Show sure wasn’t forgiven or redeemed, as the most extreme example.) The musical interlude wasn’t Aimee Mann singing about forgiveness, it was about continuing–relentless, suffering continuing transmission which “is not going to stop…till you give up.” Give up their own bindings into their own sufferings, give up trying to narrate the world into a shape it is not. There’s bleakness in that, and there’s hope in that, and everything in between, and however things turn out, the meaning of them is simply nakedly there, not hidden, not great and grand Truth, but truth.
Good film. I like it–liked it rather more than I was ever expecting to going in.
No more than you were meant to laugh at any of the other characters in this movie: Tom Cruise for his narssicism, Bill Macy for being a big loser, etc. I found the film’s portrayal of him to be very gentle and sympathetic, and the love story between him and the molested daughter to be very sweet.
This comment left me flabbergasted:
[quote]
originally posted by Drastic
Forgiveness and redemption…I don’t see much of that going on in Magnolia.[/quoe]
Yow, man. All of PT Anderson’s movies are about forgiveness and redemption of lost souls with nothing to offer the world but their humanity. Boogie Nights was all about forgiveness and redemptionm and so was Magnolia. I suppose there were some loose ends left around, but most of the people get some kind of forgiveness or affirmation. Even the game show host his saved from suicide by a falling frog.
I love this movie. It seemed long the first time, but it’s much better the second time when you know what to expect. I’m really upset by all the comments that it was masturbatory pretentious tripe. just because a film doesn’t have a linear structure and just because it has something weird in it doesn’t mean the director thinks he’s a genius. The more times you see it, the more it all makes sense.