Welcome back from the break. How'd you guys like those nachos? Today I'm looking at Magnolia, one of my
most favorite films and forever inspirations. Magnolia is Paul Thomas Anderson's junior effort
after his indie breakout success of Scorsese mimics like Boogie Nights and Hard Eight or
Sydney whatever they want to call it. PTA cemented himself as a force to be feared with
Magnolia. He makes a film so unrecognizable, so odd and idiosyncratic, so well crafted and
visually stunning, gathering one of the most kick-ass casts out there to create a beautiful
collage of intersecting, intertwining stories. It might just be my favorite film that I've ever
seen. It's definitely my favorite of Anderson's work so far. Not to pass off his first two films
as merely mimics because Boogie Nights is such a great film especially for how young he was when
he made it. It seems like I'm flipped because some of the initial reaction when this was released was
that Boogie Nights was better. What did I tell you? It's too f****** long. Okay? There's too many
blow ups. It's all just too, f****** too! Smarten up! Yeah, Boogie Nights wasn't like
this. Sydney's not like this. Huh? You want to come back home and be embarrassed in front
of them? You're the only child that's too long! Magnolia is a modern epic tale of several people
in the San Fernando Valley in California. In true PTA fashion, it tells the journies of these
troubled characters with even rougher pasts with reverence and truth to make an emotional and
intimate film. At times it feels like a Biblical epic on an infinite scale. It's all about
believing the story, believing in certain characters, and having faith in PTA that it
will all fold together in unison by the end. Telling multiple characters
stories at once is hard to do. You need to have a through line. Something
that more or less connects them all. It's not about their paths physically intersecting
as you think, it's about a shared idea, a shared moral. Some may say the theme of Magnolia is
about grieving the past, moving on from the darkness that you went through, and how it may
define your actions in the present. And the book says we may be through with
the past but the past is not through with us! And yes, I do think that is one of the moral
takeaways from Magnolia. I also recognize other things that Magnolia conveys. I believe
it to be about forgiveness, forgiving others, forgiving yourself, or the lack of forgiveness. It's an idea that didn't come to me right away
because the three hours of this arc are a lot to take in. You feel like you learned something by the
end but it is hard to grasp what that is. Oh, Lord why is this happening to me? God please help me figure this out! I was lost out here. Things can be connected down the spine of the
film and it mostly all evolves around this TV show and the people that own it. Partridge
owns the station, Gator's the host, Stanley's the current contestant on the show, and the show is
essentially "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader." Stanley is a ridiculously smart kid that gets no
love from his father that just uses him in the show to make money. And that's just a quarter of
the characters. Partridge is being looked after by his home nurse Phil, very different from Philip.
Partridge tells him about his long-lost son Frank played by Cruise and Cruise is just this
sleazy salesman trying to sell alpha male mentality to hopeless men. His motto is "seduce
and destroy." Instead of seeing this man on Tik Tok or YouTube like today, you get to see his
ads late at night or on the occasional billboard. V-day. And come June oh ho baby it is the lick
of my spoon. Still coming from Partridge's branch of the story is his wife Linda who is having anxiety attacks over his health and she abuses the drugs that are supposed to
help her. Jimmy Gator hosts this show. We find out that he molested his daughter Claudia at a young
age and now Claudia is a drug abuser and shut-in as well and that's where Officer Jim meets her.
John C. Reilly plays one of those guys who said that they wanted to be a cop when they were five and
actually held their word. I believe Officer Jim is like a born-again Christian type. His
backstory is the least looked into but I think it's open for creative speculation. The
final spine of this show is quiz kid Donnie Smith who won the show way back when. So you can see how
much of these characters backstories are important. Everything that happened in the past has an effect
on them now. Another great thing about these characters is there's such a diversity in the
age. So that we see how it started... how it's going... and what will happen. This is Jack's
mother! His mother Lily. These two ...that I had. And I lost. This is the regret that you make. This is the-- regret that you make and there's
something you take in the blah blah, something something, The main players of the
cast are Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jason Robards - which
he's actually a big, classic actor from the past. He had just spent weeks in a coma prior to shooting.
And then William H. Macy, plus others. Those are the main players of this film
but there's plenty of supporting members. I imagine the screenplay was kind of a mess
of a film but through camera work, editing, and score, PTA and crew were able to pull off this San
Fernando Valley collective tale. PTA even sets up the premise of the film with this narrated tale of
different stories, full of impossible chances but all came true. He's literally telling us he's
about to be the hand of god inside this film and it's amazing. "Stanley Barry and Daniel Hill" PTA talked to his cinematographer about making each scene look the same because Magnolia is one story. He has a really big emphasis on Magnolia is one story. Even though there's multiple characters.
It's one huge story about forgiveness of your sins. He admits that this was going to be
probably the biggest challenge to direct and the fact that he had to make it feel like the
nine main characters would all meld into one story. And from the look at the behind the scenes, it
looks like almost everything was shot on location. You know, often times even simple houses like a
simple living room set or a kitchen are recreated on the lots of film studios because it's just as
much easier for camera and electrical departments but cinematographer Robert Elswit uses
an enhanced realism look. Meaning that they use plenty of natural light sources like
an open window or lamp but then enhance those looks by shaping it with methods like
a bounce cards, diffusion, or other techniques. There's some surprises in here that you
either go with or you don't go with. It's kind of getting into spoilers now so this
is where the spoiler tag warning is going to go. As the film has much to do with characters in
the now, fighting the demons of their past, their regrets, their shame, their wrong-doings, it comes down
to them asking for forgiveness and it's up to us if they deserve it or not. Starting with the youth
of the story Stanley's father abuses his talents into a money-making machine. And by the
end he tells his dad he needs to do better. Claudia is one of the characters that people
want her forgiveness. She struggles with addiction and there's plenty to back up why she made those
choices but she really hasn't done any other harm to people. Officer Jim is as much of a boy scout
as he is a klutz. You can tell early on that he has something to prove. The guy loses his pistol
but it works into how everyone views him. Just to show how interesting his character is, he's so
unaware that Claudia is clearly a drug addict and he doesn't even you know think about how
wrong it is for an officer of the law to then ask this woman out. A woman that
he was went to a house call for. Quiz kid Donnie Smith is set down a path
that requires him to ask for forgiveness. After losing his job, he finally decides to
stick up for himself. He wants to confess his love to the local bartender but he does so
in a drunken manner it doesn't really work. Hey. Hey! I love you. I--I love you and I'm--I'm sick.
I'll--I'll talk to you. I'll talk to you tomorrow. So distraught and upset, he decides
to go rob the store he was just fired from. And what do you know someone from a
klutzy path finds him and helps him out. And Linda wants to be forgiven by her husband
even though she's unfaithful and coked up most the time anyway. She loves Earl with her whole
heart and I believe her but clearly she has an addiction. Likewise, Earl wants forgiveness of those
in his life, from his wife, and his son. And I have a son. And she has cancer. And I'm not there. And he's forced to take care of her. A little kid ...and I'm not there. Then the one that hits hardest, Frank TJ Mackey. He
starts out as basically the leader of an incel of men that quote-unquote love women so much
that they objectify them to the moon and back. Then he gets pummeled with personal
questions by this interviewer about his dad leaving his mom and having to
take care of his mom when he was just a teenager, leading him to a very
understandable hatred for his father. So when Frank finally decides to show up probably
just in the nick of time before Earl passes, we have no idea what's going to happen.
And it's one of the most moving scenes in all of cinema I think. Cruise plays it so well,
showing just years of repression and hatred being taken over by pure loss and abandonment. You
prick. It seems like a *DING* sort of moment but taken in with a three-hour run time, the other stories,
it has a resounding effect on me. I'm not gonna cry. I'm not gonna cry for you. Jimmy Gator has to deal with the
regret of molesting his own daughter. He seems like one of those guys that the public
would be surprised to hear he did such a thing but, you know backstage, behind the scenes he kind of is an awful person. But he seems so
normal and warm on camera and on stage! Yeah, right. And this is a great score by Jon Brion. I
love the choice of combining musical pieces and then playing them over the top of one another at
some times. Sometimes it's diegetic you know in the world music like a radio playing over the score
of the film. Sort of like melding ideas over the top of each other to make a new one. Literally
the simplest language in film. And one piece that puzzled me was this boy's rap that he does at Officer
Jim. He's a kid that's sort of around early on when Jim is making a house call, then he pops up and
saves Linda's life after she tries to off herself. I think there's also another deleted scene
as well with rapper boy. I don't know his name. But he gives a little rap that sort of tells
each piece of the story coming together. Presence. With a double-ass meaning gifts I bestow.
With my riff and my flow, but you don't hear me, though. Think fast, catch me yo. Cause I throw what I know with the resonance.
For your trouble ass fiend in weening yourself off of the back of the shell. Jackass. Crackers. Body-stackers. Dick-tooting n****** Masturbating your-- Hold it homeboy. I don't need to hear that word. Living to
get older, with a chip on your shoulder. Except you think you got a grip. Cause your hip got a holster.
Ain't no confessor, so, busta you better just shut the f*** up! Try to listen and learn. Check that
ego, come off it. I'm the prophet, the professor. I'ma teach you about the worm. Who eventually
turned to catch wreck with the neck of a long time oppressor. And he's running from the devil
but the debt is always gaining and if he's worth being hurt he's worth bringing pain in. When the
sunshine don't work, the good Lord bring the rain in. And that s*** will help you solve the case. Okay. Whatever that meant. Magnolia
is still my favorite of PTA's work just because I think it offers endlessly to
the known universe. I think I could easily say it's probably not his best, most tight-work film.
I'd leave that up to the crude oil movie or the Adam Sandler comedy. Just the idea of a collage
of characters all blending together to create one story is insane and even more unbelievable that
he pulled it off. I love to watch the documentary behind the making of Magnolia. I love seeing Paul
move around and imagine the visuals of the film. Plus, it gives insight into his creative.
I understand now just how personal of an endeavor this was for him. And watching the doc
and the making-of shows how out of depth he felt. At every turn he felt overwhelmed, frantic,
and anxious about everything. Not to mention they had a five month long shoot. Plus you
see how good of friends he and Philip were. It just goes to show that ambitious natures
can be rewarded sometimes. I think we should all unashamedly try and make a great movie, and
don't apologize. Let's just try and make a really, really, really fantastic movie. Because there's
no shame in that. Hello everyone. Thank you for watching. Magnolia is definitely a special one in my
heart because I think it'll live on with me for I'm assuming forever. Definitely one of my
most memorable experiences was being able to watch it at the Egyptian Theatre on film. I think
out of all of Paul Thomas Anderson's work, Magnolia isn't always a favorite of people'. But it is for
me. And that's what this is all about is finding films that I like and talking about them. Because
even though it seems like you're the only one that likes this film, you put your voice out there and
you hear all the others that think just like you. My Letterboxd and everything's in
my description and whatnot. I'm gonna go now. This has been Andrew. See ya.
