| I just want to add to anyone who doesn't like "Magnolia" that in order to understand the film, one must understand the director. P.T. Anderson is as unique and ambitious as Martin Scorcese ever was, to use a comparison from last week's film discussion "Taxi Driver". P.T Anderson is also a personality on his own, away from the actors and cameras, he is an intensely brilliant cinematic auteur. His ambition is so huge, that like so many great director's of the past (ex: Demille, Kubrick, Capra, Cassavette, Altman, Hawkes, etc...), when given complete freedom to create, not to mention final cut, he can get a little over the top. Not to say that "Magnolia" is not great, but I agree it could have been a little shorter in parts and still gotten the point across. The thing to remember is that P.T. Anderson is a showman who absolutely loves to watch actors perform, therefore if he could have had it completely his way, then the running time of "Magnolia" would have been spent just with John C. Reilly or Phillip Baker Hall or any other number of great actors doing amazing, improvised monologues. P.T. Anderson's fascination with actor's is what draws me to his films. He is as much of a fan of great actor's as many of us are, and sometimes he just wants to write a part for evey great actor he knows, and make the biggest movie ever. He claims this comes from too much caffeine and a manic sense of egocentricity, but I think it boils down to him just loving his work, and wanting to do absolutely everything before his career is said and done for. On another level, "Magnolia" is a personal story about P.T. Anderson wrote after his father's death to help himself come to terms with his own loss, therefore the film becomes a labor of love, and how do you edit your own father's story, not to mention your own emotions? I still firmly believe that "Magnolia" is a massive and overpowering opus about "acceptance. An epic meditation on accepting not only ourselves but others, accepting loss, heartache death, reality, and in the end accepting whatever crosses our path, no matter how strange or unexplainable. To quote the director, "yeah... that's wierd... but I can accept it based on this other bullshit going on over here". Like P.T. Anderson's mind, the story of "Magnolia" is a whirling collection of thoughts and images, things and people with no visible connection until we follow unprobable routes in their lives. The story is simple and complex, creating scenario's that are universal in scope. Most of us have experienced these same emotions, loss, betrayal, lust, love, etc... and therefore we as humans can identify with the delicately entwined twists and turns that make "Magnolia" so compelling. At the very least, "Magnolia" is extremely cinematic in terms of technical scope, and at the very most, it is a work of art... to be pondered, looked at, and questioned... like so many "coincidences" before... |