With his third full-length feature, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson set out to make, in his words, “The Mother of All Movies about the San Fernando Valley." [Magnolia Boulevard is a fifteen-mile street that stretches through the midsection of the Valley; incidentally, Rachel and I lived four blocks north of it for four years.] Though well-known as home to so-called “Valley girls,” much of the Valley is devoid of all the glitz and glamour that one imagines the whole of Los Angeles to possess. It is here where Anderson grew up, and it is here where he examines the lives of the film’s nine main characters: a child genius, an ex-child genius, an LAPD officer, a game show host, his estranged drug-addicted daughter, a rich dying father, his much-younger wife, a male caretaker, and a motivational speaker (of sorts…). As the movie unfolds, we see how each character is “randomly” linked with one another, both directly and indirectly, and how the patterns of their lives similarly deteriorate, recover (to an extent), and ultimately change course in the span of twenty-four hours.

I was a vocal performance major in college, and people thought it strange that I disliked opera so much. It was hard for me to get past (in every sense?) 300-lb. sopranos warbling words I didn’t understand. I have since come to appreciate and be moved by the dramatic spirit of opera, which may have been the result of recognizing the opera-like qualities of many films, particularly two epic dramas: The Godfather (1972) and Magnolia.

The film begins with a Prologue recounting three seemingly random occurrences, about which the Narrator remarks, “…this is not just “Something That Happened.” This cannot be “One of Those Things.” This, please, cannot be “that . . these strange things happen all the time.” We are then immediately thrown into the Overture: Aimee Mann’s rendering of the song “One.” [A purpose of the operatic/theatrical overture is to introduce key musical themes – perhaps depicting characters themselves – that reappear later in the opera.] It’s during these brilliant five minutes that we are introduced to each character in his/her milieu. The second time I saw this movie, I wept throughout this entire sequence as I considered the gut-wrenchingly depraved lives of every character—how they sought happiness, security, and identity in things that would imminently leader to their very messy implosion.

Throughout the hour-long First Act, each character is brought into a setting that, unbeknownst to most of them, signifies his/her demise. Anderson concludes skillfully with a cinematic Entr’acte: Jon Brion’s score accompanies a well-filmed “recap” of each character’s present state which advises the viewer, “See where they all are? Now, watch this.”

The middle hour (Act Two, for those following at home) is one of the most magnificently acted chunks of cinema by an ensemble cast that one will ever see. The characters’ downward spiral into despair is a very slow and steady one (remember – this is an “opera”), and while second-rate actors would have forced the emotion and rhythm of the scenes, these execute their roles with astonishing patience and control, possessing the appropriate passions and emotions without always showing them to the viewer.

Anderson’s second Entr’acte is a maneuver that would have been dangerously cheesy in almost any other context. Each has reached his/her nadir, forced into a desperate posture of self-reflection and need for change. The cast, in a sort of “ensemble aria”, sings along with the soundtrack to Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up” realizing that whatever has caused them to arrive where they are is “not going to stop, not going to stop ‘til [they] wise up.” [It should be noted that Anderson intentionally built much of the movie around the music of singer/songwriter Mann, rather than just inserting her songs here and there.] These are incredibly effective scenes, each singing in his/her own voice in direct response to his/her own condition.

Immediate steps are taken by each character at the start of Act Three to attempt to rectify what has happened. As they begin this process, something exceedingly weird happens (I’m not going to tell you what, but if you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about), something that terrifies them and disrupts their lives, yet in a way that unifies them and motivates them anew. I regard this event as God the Great Interceder stepping in, helping the characters along in their quest for redemption, forgiveness, and righteousness. From a theatrical/operatic standpoint, this is the “10:30 number”, a nickname given to the large ensemble musical number performed near the end of a three-hour Broadway show which reengages the drowsy audience, preparing them for the Finale (e.g. “Get Me to the Church on Time” from My Fair Lady). Rather than the exuberant applause of its Broadway counterpart, this event elicits a “What the heck was that?” from the viewer (isn’t that just like Him, though?). We see in the following ten-minute Finale how the characters right their wrongs (some of them with the aid of other ensemble members they’d met along the way), seek salvation, and pursue reconciliation. A line uttered during this scene encapsulates the heart of each character and, ultimately, the heart of every human: “I really do have love to give, I just don’t know where to put it.”

For me, the most priceless moment of the entire 188 minutes of the film is the final two seconds. Yes, literally the final two seconds. It is hard testimony that this dark film concludes with a shaft of light. Melora Walters’ drug-addict is arguably the most heartbreakingly hopeless character in the whole film. As she is listening to a new friend talk to her (Aimee Mann’s “Save Me” as the undercurrent), she looks straight into the camera and smiles a beautiful hopeful smile as the movie cuts to a blackout (I am shedding a tear just thinking of it right now), a smile that knows things will only get better from here. Hope is a wonderfully transforming thing.

My hope is that Christians will be able to look past the (sometimes very) graphic, aggressive, potentially offensive images and ideas in this film and see people who are broken, in need of Something bigger than themselves to stir them to action, to redemption. Anderson’s masterpiece is filled with lessons of forgiveness and hope to which we’d be keen to pay attention.

Also, this movie is further evidence to support the assertion that 1999 was The Year of the Film.

14 July 2005