Magnolia

The next film I will review is Magnolia Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 dramatic epic, snubbed by the academy in most areas and undeservedly not winning anything at that years ceremony.

The basic plot follows a group of around nine characters through a day in the life, which all happen to be rapidly spiraling out of control in one way or the other. An example of this is Linda (Julianne Moore), who after years of cheating on her elderly husband, has slowly fallen in love with him genuinely, and with him on his death she realizes that she can’t accept that he has left everything to him, and sets out to repeatedly try and commit suicide.

The structure of Magnolia is relatively simple for the most part, as it moves around the various characters in a sequence and we get to see the key parts of each characters story unfold before we move onto the next one, who is more often than not linked to the character we have just seen in some way.  Chronologically the film works in near linear fashion, with only the occasional manipulation of the timeline.

With Magnolia being a large “ensemble film” the number of characters and their qualities would take forever to get through, and then to discuss them in the detail that they deserve. So to highlight one, it would be Frank “TJ” Mackey (Tom Cruise), who did receive an Oscar nomination for it. Frank is a character that on the surface is someone who helps men to have sex with women, in theory lots of women thanks to his “Seduce and Destroy” technique. But it is when he is interviewed by Gwenovier (April Grace) that his supposed past is revealed to all be a lie, that his normally calm and confident character is broken. The performance itself is perfect, and shows what Tom Cruise is capable of when he is given the character and freedom to act.

The one aspect of the film which could discourage people from watching Magnolia is it’s run time, coming in at 188 minutes it is a film truly epic in scale. And if you were to cut anything from the film, it would suffer on a whole as each character need and deserves the time they are given on screen, so that Anderson is given time to get everything from each of the characters.

The final verdict of Magnolia is that if you are willing to give it you time and patience, then you will be rewarded with a great film story with a detailed and amazingly constructed narrative, that you won’t realize you have just spent over 3 hours watching it.

Score: *****(5/5)