I'm not a PTA disciple, but damn is he good at what he does. Boogie Nights is a crazy 70s period piece that completely threw me for a loop when I first saw it. There Will Be Blood and The Master I don't love but have some breathtaking cinematography and acting. Inherent Vice has its quirky charms. Punch-Drunk Love has a lot of charm and is my favorite of his films. Magnolia is the one that scared me the most. I knew it was ambitious. One look at the huge cast and run time confirmed that. I remember reading a full summary of the movie a couple years ago and deciding I wasn't ready for it then. Nothing changed between then and now, but I had a few hours and decided "what the hell? Let's see what it is."
I made a few notes while watching and they pretty well sum up what I pulled from that experience.
-"I don't know if I'm supposed to like or hate John C. Reilly". I wasn't even sure by the end. I think I settling on "he's a prick, but he wishes he was a nice guy".
-"Is Tom Cruise going to be ON the whole time?" Yes and he earned that Oscar nomination (should've been a win) because of it.
-"What is that song that everyone is singing? And do I like that they are singing it?" The Song is Amy Mann's "Wise Up". I'd say that the film earned that moment, although I could see if you weren't enjoying the film before that, it could be laughable.
-"Frogs are falling from the sky". I have to applaud PTA. That was one of my biggest WTF moments while watching a movie. I'm not sure I understand the reason for it. It works though and brought the movie to life in a strange and unexpected way.
-"This has been high drama the whole time and I'm exhausted." I read that the idea PTA had for Magnolia was to make an epic movie about not epic things. That sounds right. The film is unrelenting and, except for the fact that almost everyone seems to hate his/her life, pretty small scale.
-"The conclusion of this is basically a giant refutation of my One Big Leap principle". Pretty much any movie that turns into "It's a small world after all" challenges my One Big Leap. If you have a bunch of unconnected people running into each other in a large city, you are playing against some significant odds. Then you add a fucking storm of frogs, and it's like PTA is saying "just give up trying to make sense of anything". This should bother me, but it doesn't. When a movie is all anarchy or this meticulously structured, my brain really does stop trying to put it all together. I get more bothered when a movie thinks it's clever by sneaking in everything converging by the end. Magnolia is upfront about it's machinations, like Serendipity. And no, I didn't go into this expecting to find a way to compare Magnolia and Serendipity.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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