Is Magnolia brilliant, exhausting, or both?
Film Club's four-part series on Paul Thomas Anderson continues with Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love
Film Features Magnolia
Our four-part series on the films of Paul Thomas Anderson continues this week on Film Club, as A.A. Dowd and Katie Rife look back on what can be succinctly described as the second half of the first half of Anderson’s career. After the success of Boogie Nights, Anderson got a blank check for his next feature, the sprawling three-hour emotional rollercoaster Magnolia (1999). By comparison, the 94-minute Punch-Drunk Love (2002) is positively slight.
Join our critics as we sail this relatively choppy period in Anderson’s career, looking back on the early ‘00s wave of what we dub “we’re all connected” movies, the deep well of rage inside Adam Sandler characters, and whether Magnolia really deserves its reputation as a masterpiece.
You can hear the entire conversation in the episode above, or read a lightly edited excerpt down below.
A.A. Dowd: There is a prominent scene in [Magnolia] that, for a lot of people, is a make or break for this movie. Where the characters all non-diegetically sing along to Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up.” This movie in general, I think, is too much, and I find some of its excesses to be a little bit embarrassing, to be honest. But that scene works for me.
Katie Rife: I think the excess of this movie is not used to as purposeful ends as in Boogie Nights. In Boogie Nights, [the excess] fits the content and the setting. Here, it doesn’t necessarily fit the stories that he’s telling here.
A.A. Dowd: You’re right. I think this is the work of somebody who very much set out to make a masterpiece. And you can see that sometimes with filmmakers who are sort of high on their own supply, so to speak. And Anderson was very, I mean, heavily rumored to have been literally high on his own supply. There are lots of stories about him being heavily into cocaine during this time in his life.
Katie Rife: You can kind of see it in some of the movie, especially all those scenes of Tom Cruise yelling. All those long Tom Cruise monologues, you can really tell that everybody is just loving the smell of their own farts that day. Everyone is just like, “Wow, what is this amazing smell?”
A.A. Dowd: I mean, last week you said that cocaine was the villain of Boogie Nights. I think, cocaine directed Magnolia.
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107 Comments
Eh. Both.
I’m going to go with brilliant. There are scenes from this movie that pop into my head on a regular basis and just take my breath away. Philip Seymour Hoffman asking for help on the phone is up there with some of the best bits of craft I’ve ever seen committed to film. Also, Jason Robards’ death scene. It’s hard to do that much with words that aren’t even intelligible. What is he saying? I’m not sure, but he sure as heck means it, and his son is there to hear it, and that’s what matters.
I just rewatched this about a month ago. It was just as brilliant as I remembered it!
A film in retrospect, without a gray area it seems! I watched it a few months ago (since seeing it on release and remembering I really enjoyed it) and… For me it seems to not have aged well. Clearly some vivid scenes and dialogue as well as good performances though also heavy handed, preachy and indulgent, with a lot of scenery chewing signifying nothing. PTA doing it all without a good sounding board or editor and it seemed to go on and on. I can’t argue or throw shade on those who still love it, since we all have our personal reactions, and I was ready to let it wash over me but WOW, I have to say I prefer some of his other films.
I really can’t argue with anything you’ve said here! But for some reason it works for me in this movie.
I do think a half hour from the movie onto the cutting room floor wouldn’t have hurt anything.
I always hesitate to mention after a work of art is completed and released since I feel—it is the film he wants, I’ll accept it on those terms. It would be interesting to ponder how he would change the editing after all these years.I always think about that exchange in Amadeus between the King and Mozart..“And there are simply too many notes, that’s all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.”“Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?”
That is a great analogy! And I’ll have to keep that in mind, as I’m always editing movies in my head, or wondering what ended up on the cutting room floor and how the movie would have differed. Especially when I’ve read a book and then watched the film.
It’s brilliant, incredibly personal and unbelievable that it came from someone of PTA’s age at the time. I also can’t ever imagine watching it again.
Um and how could you forget Julianne Moore’s pharmacy scene?! “WHAT’S WRONG? SUCK MY DICK, THAT’S WHAT’S WRONG! AND YOU! YOU FUCKING CALL ME LADY?!”
She should have walked away with the Oscar that year for that scene alone.
Yes.
I’m going with garbage. It’s a 2+ hour film about people crying over dumb shit. Where the third act wierdness is just there for a big WTF moment.All of the actors are “ACTING!-TM.” I borrowed the DVD from some friends, who, when asked if they wanted it back, said no.If you’ve never watched it, you haven’t missed anything. I’d rather watch anything by Satoshi Kon or Bong Joon-ho instead. Hell, rewatch Boogie Nights. At least there you have a coherent story(ish.)
Brilliant AND exhausting? That’s camp.
I remember thinking “yes, one is the loneliest number, I agree, but maybe we could get the fucking movie started?” That opening song is just endless.
Its biggest problem is its self importance. It has a voiceover (Giamatti) that keeps telling you things are deep and meaningful and interconnected and then they certainly are not. And this was near the height of those other awful “everything is connected” movies.The storyline with John C. Reilly and the kid is awful, but his date story is great. The storyline with William H. Macy is childish but Henry Gibson is dastardly. The storyline with Tom Cruise is proto-incel…but it’s so spot on and Cruise was cheated out of the Oscar. I was really down on it when it came out, as was Kevin Smith as I recall (Jay and Silent Bob beat up a kid whose screenname is MagnoliaFan). I was totally over PTA and then he hit me with “TWBB” and all was forgiven…except that “Inherent Vice” had a lot of the same problems Magnolia did (and added being a Lebowski ripoff). The truth is that PTA is a very competent filmmaker who made one masterpiece. I’m happy to see his new stuff, but he ain’t no top tier. Even Punch Drunk Love, which is great in so many ways, has nearly no characterization for Emily Watson’s role, she’s the nonmanic nonpixie realistic girl but that’s it, she’s also just there to spur the white manchild protagonist to growth and feeling alive.I would probably be more charitable toward Magnolia now, but I would put it at 60% garbage, 30% solid, 10% great.
Just FYI, Ricky Jay is the narrator.
my bad. Even worse, to have a magician introduce a trick that doesn’t go anywhere
Ricky Jaymatti
Jay Mariotti?
“except that “Inherent Vice” had a lot of the same problems Magnolia did (and added being a Lebowski ripoff)“this is a fair criticism as first blush, but given that the character of the dude was heavily influenced by zoyd wheeler, the protagonist of thomas pynchon’s vineland, it ends off feeling less like a rip-off and more like an exchange of ideas.
So what you’re saying is, the author known as “Thomas Pynchon” is actually just the Coen Brothers and PT Anderson getting stoned and co-writing crazy books together.
sorry, i should have been more clear that inherent vice was an adaptation of pynchon’s novel of the same name.
No, I know! I’ve seen/read both – I’m just being a silly goose.
What I want to know is when do we get an adaptation of Against the Day
Inherent Vice is one of those movies that sets up an incredible world but the story itself is just there. The first 30-45 minutes may be my favorite of everything PTA’s done but then it kind of devolves into a boring slog. I wouldn’t say it’s a Lebowski ripoff at all either, not when The Long Goodbye exists to inspire both.
Inherent Vice pulls off the feat of making a coherent story out of a novel that comes off as unfilmable. Doc in the book is so out of his head (and generally mentally disorganized) that his POV can be completely disorienting. PTA managed to keep that sense of disorientation while also organizing things in an intelligible way.
for me it was a little more human centipedeI kid! I kid! I also can’t believe the dramatic center of the whole movie is “my gf banged another guy”at least Lebowski wasn’t that petty…hmmm…well I suppose he was the other guy
I took them as both being heavily inspired by The Big Sleep.
I never knew that, but I couldn’t stop thinking that reading the book. Yeah I think Inherent Vice the movie has enough differences so as not for it to seem a rip off, but the voiceover narration really doesn’t add anything (not even clarity, as far as I can remember)
True. The Dude is basically what you’d get if you tossed Philip Marlowe and Wheeler in a blender, tossed in Kahlua and some half & half and then hit frappe.
Inherent Vice might be my favorite PTA, even while Magnolia might be my least favorite. I guess I just really like Lebowski ripoffs. More people should have watched Lodge 49!
More people should have watched Lodge 49!I am both hugely bummed and entirely unsurprised at its fate.
“…except that “Inherent Vice” had a lot of the same problems Magnolia did (and added being a Lebowski ripoff).”I’ve slacked on watching Inherent Vice, but if it indeed rips off Lebowski, this is not an issue absent from Magnolia considering it blatantly rips off Short Cuts.
what do you mean? raining frogs is nothing like an earthquake! 😉
H/T to Brad Bird
“I was really down on it when it came out, as was Kevin Smith as I recall”
Absolutely not a barometer for anything. Almost a reverse-barometer for quality.
and added being a Lebowski ripoff
The Big Lebowski is basically “what would it be like if a Raymond Chandler story happened in a Thomas Pynchon world?” so adapting a Thomas Pynchon detective novel is going to feel like Lebowski by default. I really don’t think either Pynchon or PTA can be blamed for that.
I think remaking a movie to lesser returns, or doing what amounts to an inferior riff does deserve blame…whoever wrote what first, in terms of movies Lebowski looms too large…almost like so many shitty Emma adaptations that were unnecessary after Clueless (I heard the new one was okay tho)
I just feel like when a thing is a riff on a specific author, you can’t then accuse an adaptation of that author of being a riff on said thing.Of course, I also happen to think Inherent Vice and The Big Lebowski start from similar places but go in very different directions, so one isn’t just a superior version of the other.
“I also remember thinking, when I read the book, This is like The Big Lebowski. And that was a reason not to make the movie. That was a reason to say, like, “Why would I have to do something like The Big Lebowski? Why would I even come close?” But the more I looked at it, the more I loved the book, and I had to kind of ignore that and pretend like it didn’t exist, because, you know, The Big Lebowski is the best movie in history. So I just ignored it and thought about it a different way.”Inherent Vice, published 2009; Big Lebowski released 1999, and you are the one saying the Coens cribbed from Pynchon, there are plenty of authors Pynchon was cribbing from as well. Plus it’s who did it definitively first and then why do it again? With Inherent Vice I definitely did not think that “why did you bang somebody else” was a strong enough hook for that film.
Inherent Vice, published 2009; Big Lebowski released 1999, and you are the one saying the Coens cribbed from Pynchon
I’m aware of which came first. The point is that Inherent Vice is very much of a piece with everything else Pynchon has written, particularly Vineland, which came out in 1990 and was a reference point for The Big Lebowski.
there are plenty of authors Pynchon was cribbing from as well
Obviously. Like Raymond Chandler… who was the other big influence on The Big Lebowski.“Drugged-out hippy wandering through a world his team lost while trying to solve a mystery that leads him everywhere and goes nowhere” is a story Pynchon has been telling since the 60s.I love The Big Lebowski, it’s a fantastic movie and one of the best things the Coens have ever done, which puts it pretty high up in the best movies of the last few decades. I also think it’s a better movie than Inherent Vice. But the fact that Inherent Vice is similar to The Big Lebowski doesn’t make it a ripoff. Two things can be similar without one ripping the other off. The Big Lebowski in clearly influenced by Pynchon (but isn’t ripping him off), and Inherent Vice is similar to The Big Lebowski (because that’s the kind of story he’s been writing for decades).
“one of the best things the Coens have ever done, which puts it pretty high up in the best movies of the last few decades”I see what you did there.
Oh, and what movie did you direct again, you pretentious asshat?
I revisited this when everything shut down and I was reminded of one review I read when it came out, describing it as a “beautiful mess.” That’s a perfect way of putting it. There’s some great scenes, but it’s definitely a director digging his own shit way too much. I’d love to see a version with at least a half hour trimmed out of it.
Pauk has made this same comment.
A handful of brilliant scenes swimming in three hours of meandering drek doesn’t make a brilliant movie. That’s why it’s exhausting – you see a brilliant scene, and it puts you on the hook that it’s all going to come together into something coherent. Then it doesn’t.
I am of the mind that roughly 20% of this movie shouldn’t have made it out of the writer’s room, and I always felt that the final act fell a little flat. But there are individual scenes of such overwhelming power that I would fall on the “brilliant” side of this discussion. Julianne Moore, Robards, PSH and, in particular, Tom Cruise, all knock it clean out of the park. This is also Cruise’s finest performance and, I think, one of the greatest acting performances of the last 25 years (if not the best).
Can someone explin to me why they havent worked together again? I think this is Mapothers last great role, before he went straight super hero all of the time.If we could get PTA to work with Downey Jr, i think wed all be better for it.
I remember when I saw it in a movie theater I thought it was brilliant and that I never planned on watching it again. To this date I have kept that promise to myself.
Controversial opinion: magnolia is really good
That is a controversial opinion in the tmicks houshold.
Both this and Boogie Nights become messy and overlong by the end, in my opinion. Unlike some filmmakers, PTA did not peak early…he’s continually gotten better throughout his entire career.
Magnolia is bloated AF. It needs to be cut in half. There are moments of brilliance but they get severely bogged down by too many other stories. The Tom Cruise toxic masculinity story really works (fight me) and the William H. Macy con man but there is too much bloat overall. The final act also falls totally flat for me.
I liked it, but as a friend of mine (who also liked it) said, “it’s one of those movies.”And now this:
On the one hand, I certainly understand Kevin Smith’s hatred of Magnolia being so intense it makes it into his films. On the other hand, he’s Kevin Smith, and everything about him makes me wonder how he hasn’t been set on fire yet.
The only movie I can recall where I was sore afterward from having clenched my entire body for three hours straight.
I found it exhausing on first watch, it was overstuffed and oversold, I didn’t thinking I’d watch another PT anderson movie again. It just came at the wrong time. There were all of these smaller quirky, quiter more interesting stories being told and MAgnolia is near explosive, until the last act where you do see real human emotion. Now that I’m older and have seen more of what he’s done, especially the master and phantom thread, even inherent vice. You can see what’s his genious and it stands out a bit better than it did when the indy-movie scene was filled with strange ticks and quirks for relatively straightforward stories.
Years ago I considered myself a PTA detractor (now I’m more neutral). This pair of movies are a big part of why. I even prefer Crash to Magnolia.
I know Crash wouldn’t be Crash if it weren’t for the absurd heavy-handedness of its Everybody’s Racist message, but dammit there ARE some excellent performances there and I like the entire cast. Too bad the movie comes off like a satire of prestige filmmaking.
Getting Tom Cruise to act as Tom Cruise is close to brilliant. It’s always funny when filmmakers get a famous personality to act in a role that is only a thinly disguised version of themselves. Gaga in A Star is Born is another one. She obviously isn’t aware that the movie is stating many times that she is nothing but a hack.
But even if 99 people in a room think that she’s a hack, it only takes one person to believe in her.
Fuck you, you’re a hack you piece of shit
Robert Altman was similarly hampered with a cocaine habit during portions of his career, so maybe it makes an odd kind of sense for this Altman tribute to have a similar issue. Magnolia is certainly a film of its time but I also love its big swings. I think the biggest issue is that PTA didn’t learn one key lesson from Altman — Altman’s films had a loose, gauzy, flowy interconnectedness, rather than diagrammatic/literal associations. They felt natural and dreamy. Magnolia is reaching for that mood but it has too much intentionality to work. That said, there is so much greatness in this film — April Grace’s restraint in the face of Tom Cruise’s (fantastic) proto-alt-right mugging for instance.
This movie and Short Cuts always get mixed up in my mind.
Surely you mean Crash?(I kid, I kid)
I didn’t see your disclaimer when I first saw your response – I was so confused!
Except Short Cuts was outstanding and Magnolia was pretty meh.
Obviously I liked Magnolia, but it doesn’t compare to Short Cuts!
I’m an old drinking (not quite drunken), stoner who’s forgotten most of the movies I’ve seen, and actually gave up watching movies for the last decade because I’m a critical, jaded bitch.
But Short Cuts came out at a time when I was younger, more open, and before I realized what a dick Raymond Carver was. I read everything he wrote and loved it all.
This movie is a bittersweet reminder of when I was a young, beautiful, only slightly jaded bitch, and life still had new refreshing ideas!
They compare. They are tonally similar, even when Magnolia is more baroque. They focus on a diversity of people. They are very long and defy the fourth wall at times, they have that tone of importance. These two, Grand Canyon and Ice Storm are very closely related, even on the magical realism moments that get more or less magical depending on which one.Yes, I am ignoring racist Crash in this list, thank you.
“Is Magnolia brilliant, exhausting, or both?”Listen, I get it, my coworkers ask this same question about me all the time.
Are we just not gonna talk about how the black child (of course) raps (Jesus) to the cop about the suspect of the crime? Dear lord
I always thought of Magnolia as a mediocre-at-best (and grating-at-worst) attempt at aping Robert Altman’s far superior Short Cuts.
The misuse of “non-diegetic” here is pretty egregious. The singing is absolutely diegetic. The characters sing it. It might be a kind of fantasy, but it’s definitely happening in the world of the film.
bollocks.
Other than some of Tom Cruise’s stuff, I hated this movie. Tried watching it again recently to see if I was wrong about it and nope, still found it grating for the most part. I love Punchdrunk Love, and think There Will Be Blood is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, and Boogie Nights is just fun, but this one was like nails on a chalkboard to me.
the characters all non-diegetically sing along to Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up.”You mean to say diegetically.
No, diegetically means that its source is somewhere in the world of the movie, e.g. a character listening to a song on the radio. Not the case with Magnolia and “Wise Up”.
Except it does happen in the world of the movie: the characters all literally sing the song on screen. It would be non-diegetic if they sung it on the soundtrack, and only we were hearing it.
The singing itself is diegetic, but the “singing along to” is non-diegetic.
That is an odd distinction. The reason the scene is so unique and why people remember it is precisely because the actors are all actually singing within the diegesis of the film. It’s just weird to talk about this scene notable for that and then call it something else.
No argument there, and I think we’re saying the same thing, just quibbling on the wording. Another and perhaps clearer alternative would have been, “the characters all singing along to a non-diegetic version of Aimee Mann’s ‘Wise Up’”. The point is that the Mann’s “Wise Up” is coming from the soundtrack, it’s not coming from some source within the world of the movie.If the characters had been singing along diegetically, it would have been something like (e.g.) each one singing along to Mann’s voice on a radio within the room.
Well, no, not quite. The music does not originate from the actual storyworld of the film… it’s made specifically so that it doesn’t, that’s why you remember it. Diegetic sound originates in the world of the film… characters spontaneously breaking into song unrelated to anything happening in their “real” world is non-diegetic.If “diegetic” applied to anything that was happening in the film, then there would be no need for the term in the first place. Of course everything that happens in the film happens in the film. Diegetic sound is based in the practical, real world of the film. The characters randomly all singing this song does not meet that criteria.
While I do think individual scenes were sometimes very good, as a whole I just found the conclusion/wrap up really lacking (it promised way to much and didn’t deliver on that)
Both. The answer is definitely both. I would maybe just add “extremely” to both modifiers. Even Aimee Mann’s soundtrack is brilliant but also emotionally exhausting.
I was at Target the other day buying a few bottles of booze to restock my home bar, and the cashier looked at the stuff and said “Wow, weird mix of booze…” and I almost went full Julianne Moore in the pharmacy scene.
Magnolia is good, but not nearly as good as it thinks it is. This makes sense because PTA himself said that he recognized after Boogie Nights that he was in a position he’d never be in again and could do whatever the fuck he wanted, which was to “make the epic, all-time great San Fernando Valley movie.” Throw in working through daddy issues and the cocaine, and of course it’s an exercise in excess.
Throw in working through daddy issues and the cocaineNow I want to rewatch this movie/PTA’s filmography as background on Kendall Roy…
I remember reading an interview with PTA in which Warren Beatty took him to dinner, after the success of “Boogie Nights,” and as a partial apology for turning down the role of Jack Horner. The restaurant was in Beverly Hills, and was a “see and be seen” kind of place. One of their fellow diners was Francis Ford Coppola, and wandered over to their table, and congratulated PTA for his success, they began talking about his next project, and Coppola said, “This is your chance to make the film you want to make, as no matter how successful it is, you’ll be second guessed by the studios from here on out, no matter how successful it is, and you will never have the chance to do what you want ever again.”
Is Magnolia brilliant, exhausting, or both?Yes
I remember reading somewhere that Paul Thomas Anderson wishes that when he was making this, he’d A) calmed down a little and B) cut about 1/2 hour.Anyways, here’s Paul F. Tompkins’ bit about working on Magnolia:Personally, I really didn’t like Magnolia. The acting is all phenomenal – two of my favorites are Julianne Moore and Philip Baker Hall. The best performance was Tom Cruise, who really was robbed of an Oscar, for the interview scene alone. But almost every scene is just a little too knowing. I feel like Anderson is on the couch next to me, watching my reaction to the movie like when you show a friend a funny internet video. It’s the work of a talented artist trying too hard to prove it.For context, I find Boogie Nights to be overrated, but just a little, and I think There Will Be Blood and The Master are two of the best movies of the last 20 years.
I feel like Anderson is on the couch next to me, watching my reaction to the movie like when you show a friend a funny internet video. It’s the work of a talented artist trying too hard to prove it.
I think the William H Macy story could have been cut completely and it would have been nearly perfect. I just remember sitting in the theater and being blown away by the beginning set to a Three Dog Night song. I felt like from the minute it started PT was like “Buckle up, Motherfuckers- and look what I can do…” Grateful I got to see it in the theater. Happy for T Cruise that he got to do that because Goddammit he was fun. I actually thought Julianne Moore was over the top but PSH was great. And Jason Frigging Robards still had it. It was balls-out aiming for the cheap seats and I have to take notice and doff my cap when an artist commits ART. Even if it wasn’t a felony. And the frogs, for Christ’s sake, the frogs.
Exhausting. Movie goes on forever and could have trimmed some fat. Tom Cruise was amazing, though, and I really liked John C. Reilly’s schlubby cop. But Magnolia is not one of my favorites. If it weren’t for the frogs, I probably wouldn’t remember it at all
Boring mostly, the night I went to see it, there were two women there that asked the guy at the ticket booth what was good, and he suggested Magnolia. They settled on that, and I saw them leave, 30 or 40 minutes into it. I could relate, it felt like two or three hours into it.
Two things put Magnolia squarely in the exhausting (also spelled excrement) category.The opening sequence – establishing the ‘sometimes weird and inexplicable stuff just happens!’ premise of the film – consists of three vignettes of things which NEVER HAPPENED. Total urban legends. So from the start the movie was on a short leash for me.Anderson has a very specific directing tic where important or impactful lines are repeated three times. Three times. Three times. Once you’ve noticed it, it turns the movie into a drinking game and it’s disheartening to see how simplistic his craft really is. It’s also at work in Boogie Nights, but for Magnolia it’s like he couldn’t control himself.The real shame of it is that it really does some some fantastic actors giving great performances, in spite of the flaw in the premise, and writing, and direction.
Yes.
Both.
How am I supposed to use this website.
I never understood the frogs thing.Also I couldn’t tell if Julianne Moore died at the end or not.
Frogs = act of God, or at least cosmic-level fuckeryLinda (Julianne Moore) did not die, from what I can tell. Ambulance crashed, but Frank visiting her toward the end seems to indicate more of a hopeful vibe.
It’s both.It’s a brilliant film in that we end up caring about every character, even the ones who are really terrible people. Every character is a deep study in living with the consequences of our decisions. And there are so many that everyone who sees the film can find somebody they can identify with.It’s exhausting because it requires the viewer’s constant attention. It’s dense. Every time you get a new revelation about one character the narrative jumps to another before you really have a chance to process it. Also, it’s a long movie—well over three hours—and there isn’t really a point where you can step away while it’s running.
the musical number by aimee mann is absolutely horrible. It is the most cringe inducing thing ive ever seen. Remove that scene, and the dumb part with the frogs, and its a perfect movie.
Both, as usual with PTA films, and which is part of their charm.
It’s bad.
Sweet, are we done pretending Magnolia is anything but a piece of shit? I almost walked out of the theater when I saw it, but decided to stick it out in case it went somewhere. Reader, it did not. What a terrible, terrible movie.
It’s a flawed film, but I love it.