This review is intended to shine a light on films that may have been forgotten or overlooked and should be considered again for your Netflix queue or Redbox run.
“Magnolia” is a film of love, heartache, pain, regret, death and loss. From the opening narration the film hypnotically draws you in and paints a portrait of one day in Los Angeles.
How can you describe what happens in the film? With a three-hour run time, there is a lot to it. But you can start with its characters, the most important element of the film.
They are all different in their own way, with their own stories. The divorced cop; the TV producer dying from cancer; the child prodigy; the drug addict; and so the list goes on. The film shows one day of these people’s lives and how they all connect together. But more importantly, the film shows how these people have pain in their lives and how they fight to survive and find love.
The film can be overlooked as one that just cleverly portrays nine main characters and their stories that in the end connect nicely together through coincidence and chance. That’s partly what the film does, but it goes much further than that.
The film may have nine main characters who all have their own stories, but it ultimately is just one story. The main theme of the story is pain and how people struggle with it. The movie has heroes and villains, but not in the Manichean sense of pure good and evil. Many characters strive to do good but fail because of the cruelty of the past.
As the opening narration says, “We may be through with the past, but the past is never through with us.” One character, Frank TJ Mackey (Tom Cruise) is just one example.
He is a Freudian nightmare. As a boy, he was abandoned by his father to care for his dying mother, and now as an adult he trains men across America to conquer women with his “Seduce and Destroy” technique. One of the film’s heroes, Phil the nurse, has been asked by his patient, Earl, the estranged father of Frank, to find him.
It’s when these people come together that we are treated to a portrait of the human heart. Phil not only cares for his patient, but now he finds himself mediating a relationship that has been tragically damaged for decades.
Another character, police officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly), also finds himself caring for more than he expected. He falls in love at first sight with a woman who tries to hide a cocaine addiction. He sees through the nervous tics of withdrawals and just wants to love her by serving and protecting, just as he does for the police force.
While on the job, Jim catches a man stealing from his company, looking to get money so he can pay for braces in hopes that he can get the attention of his bartender crush, who also has braces. Jim helps him return the money but also helps him prioritize what’s important in life.
This is just a sample of the overall story. You can see now how the film works. The character’s lives intersect, but that description doesn’t do the story justice. People struggle and people hurt. But the hope that this film gives is that there will always be help from someone, someone who you probably will never expect.
Contact Ryan Graves at ryan.graves@whitworthian.com.
REVIEW: Magnolia
Published: Monday, September 28, 2009
Updated: Tuesday, March 2, 2010
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