Hey folks, Harry here with a look from AICN-er... Birdie Num Num. He's always peeking in through windows and disappearing into shrubbery... but he's also in the corners of most every movie theater around. Staring at the screen, avoiding glances and posing in bizarre stances. Let's give ear... to Birdie Num Num and his take on Paul Thomas Anderson's.... MAGNOLIA
I don't often agree with the evil genius Moriarty, but I have to say I'm with him 100% on his review of MAGNOLIA. I'm not going to bother with a synopsis here -- a plot synopsis wouldn't begin to do justice to the experience of seeing this movie and I recommend seeing it with as open a mind as possible. If anyone out there REALLY wants to know the plot ahead of time, there's a very concise re-cap in the review posted a few days back, but in the end, this isn't really a movie about "what happens" as much as it is one about what happens while things happen.
A lot of people are going to hate this movie. They'll say it's too long, too indulgent, too rambling, nothing happens, etc., but they'll be missing the point. Comparisons will be made to Altman (the structure), Ashby (the vibe) and Scorsese (the visual pyrotechnics), but they'll be woefully shy in capturing this movie, as well. Overall the best way to describe it is as a great, dense, ambitious, meditative, formally-daring novel printed on celluloid. Anderson is working on a whole different plane here, attempting to push the medium to a new level. He doesn't always succeed, but one can't help but be awed by the effort. AMERICAN BEAUTY feels like a paper-thin TV-movie compared to this.
Quentin Tarantino often gets a lot of props for playing with time in his work. He's been quoted as saying that his use of structure is literary and that the more film can approach the complexities of time, space and structure allowed in novels, the better it will be for the medium. Well, if that's the case, then Anderson has taken that ball and run it clear down the field for a 100 yard touchdown. The structure here is heavily mathematical, almost quantum physics-like. The movie takes place in one day. An event will occur, then we'll see another event happening within that moment, then another within THAT moment and so on. And all the disparate storylines, at first glance seemingly random, reflect and comment on the others Greek chorus-style and fit in with the movie's repeated motifs and themes of fate, coincidence, casual connectedness, blood ties, love and the lack thereof, how people are shaped by the past, Divine intervention and more. It's a lot to absorb on one viewing (my head is still swimming) and a lot of people, frankly, are not going to want to make the effort. This is a much artier, less accessible and more complex movie than BOOGIE NIGHTS, but also more mature and rewarding.
Of course, none of this means jack-shit without interesting characters and situations. Thankfully, MAGNOLIA is chock-full of both. The movie is populated with deep, rich, complex, dimensional, REAL people and Anderson finds high drama in their day-to-day existence. So many recent movies give us caricatures instead of characters. Not here. And the performances, which are terrific across the board, bring these people to life that much more. Yes, Tom Cruise delivers the goods here, much more so than in EYES WIDE SHUT. Jason Robards is mesmerizing. Julianne Moore is as good as she's ever been. Phillip Seymour Hoffman displays a restraint and subtlety that he's never shown before. John C. Reilly conveys a warmth and soulfulness that hold the whole film together. Melora Walters bravely goes out on a limb to play a raw nerve exposed. Newcomer Jeremy Blackman breaks your heart. And the actors in smaller roles are amazing too: April Grace, who goes toe-to-toe with Cruise in her scenes; Luis Guzman, who plays himself to hilarious effect; Henry Gibson, who steals his scenes with William H. Macy; Alfred Molina.... the list goes on.
And we haven't even begun to discuss the technical mastery on display here. The level of expert craft in the movie's prologue ALONE is more exciting than 99% of the movies I've seen this year. Overall, the editing, camerawork, composition and (for the most part -- see below) use of sound are extraordinary.
Now, this is not to say that I don't have some caveats. Yes, the movie is three hours long and, yes, it does feel like it. I chalk a lot of that up to the structure, which takes a while to wrap one's head around, and the fact that the movie is so dense. Some situations seem redundant at first, until you get used to the fact that Anderson is intentionally depicting them in hyper-real time. A bigger problem is the music -- not the Aimee Mann songs (which are terrific, particularly the film's haunting closer "Save Me"), but, rather, Jon Brion's orchestral score, which often seems too omnipresent and threatens to distance the audience from the scenes it plays under. This may actually be a sound mix problem. The music sometimes steps on the dialogue so much that it becomes hard to follow what's happening. Some subplots dangle and don't pay off, particularly the one about a black woman and a rapping, candy-selling little boy. This may be a case of something abandonded to the cutting room floor that may have helped the movie's sense of closure if left back in. Another problem people are likely to have (though not me) is that, relatively speaking, the movie ends with a whimper instead of a bang. Things don't quite add up the way one might expect after three hours, but the film's final image, while subtle, is, in its own way, an incredibly moving muted epiphany, ala BRINGING OUT THE DEAD or THE STRAIGHT STORY.
What more can I say? See this movie. Preferably twice. Love it or hate it, there's nothing else out there remotely like it, and that alone makes it well worth your hard-earned 8 bucks.
BIRDIE NUM NUM
