IT CHAPTER TWO
Bill Skarsgård on the other Clown Prince of Crime.
In 1999, new Line Cinema gave Paul Thomas Anderson something he’d never been given before: final cut. Hot off the success of Boogie Nights, which had seen him anointed as the new Scorsese, he wanted to make something truly epic. not in the Lawrence Of Arabia sense, but something that, nevertheless, boasted incredible scale of ambition. It was a special privilege that he knew he had to make the most of. The result was Magnolia.
The story connects nine individuals in the San Fernando Valley across a 24-hour period. Some know each other, others don’t. Children, parents, lovers and loners do their best to survive, fighting against every anxiety within a universe that allows every little “what if?” to feel like it could end the world. These lonely people are united by a sense of yearning, a gaping absence of confidence and affection that plagues them into isolation. It works, because they all feel the same. Child prodigy Stanley Spector (Jeremy Blackman) is taken just as seriously as police officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly).
Anderson had the name of the film before the script existed. Allegedly, this began as a small-scale, intimate idea — but then, like the flower, it blossomed. It’s not entirely wrong to call Magnolia intimate, in the same way that
The Great Gatsby’s Jordan Baker says she loves large parties for their intimacy. In something so sprawling, so epic, the visitor has space to wander through, to find private corners and sit quietly with the weight of it all.
Twenty years later, this very weight is still being debated. In a Reddit AMA last year, Anderson admitted that, if he could, he would “Chill The Fuck Out And Cut 20 Minutes” (punctuation very much his own). But in the same way that the movie tells its audience to pay attention to the things that happen, to question why they do, what they mean, how they connect — it feels like every imperfect piece of Magnolia is utterly essential.
These flaws get a pass, because of the film’s remarkable achievements elsewhere. There’s simplicity in the film’s audacity — Philip Seymour Hoffman is given the generosity of straightforward kindness with his character here, after so many complex and strained
performances before.
The film is guided by one voice that’s louder than all the others. Aimee Mann, singer and good friend of Anderson, inspired the story from the start and ended up writing two songs specifically for the film — ‘You Do’, and ‘Save Me’, the latter earning an Oscar nomination (one of three Magnolia was up for, with Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor In A Supporting Role for Tom Cruise; it ended up with nothing). She has a striking, almost mystical voice that offers a sense of security.
There are now two decades’ worth of essays dissecting the allegorical meanings of Magnolia: the depth of neglectful relationships between adults and children (most characters are involved in the game show What Do Kids Know? in some capacity); the timelessness of solitude and addiction; the lack of hope for a future that holds meaning; the otherworldly presence of some kind of orchestrating higher power.
This last point, of course, refers to the frogs. There is a scene in Magnolia in which frogs, in their hundreds, fall from the skies. This phenomenon is not explained in the film by any rationale. Stanley stares from inside a library and calmly tells himself, “This is something that happens.” It does, but does it always? To everyone? The first instance of a plague of frogs was noted in the Bible, Exodus, 8:2 (eagle-eyed fans note a handful of eights and twos in the film), ascending from the sea rather than falling from the sky. But the transposed interpretation could make sense — it’s a form of salvation for the enslaved. Illogical, perhaps, but so potent in its grace that it’s impossible to ignore. The amphibian rain creates a chain reaction for the web of characters to start anew. It’s not quite a deus ex machina, in the sense that problems don’t suddenly vanish as the frogs descend. But something clicks, and the world’s axis seems to, ever so slightly, shift. Courage is mustered. Relationships are rekindled. Death is avoided.
What is given to one person in Magnolia
isn’t necessarily afforded to another — so dictate the laws of hyperlink cinema that loosely connect characters living different stories. When listed on paper, pre-frogs, nothing too peculiar happens on this one day in the Valley — this is how Anderson intended it. His goal, he said in 2000, was to put “an epic spin on topics that don’t necessarily get an epic treatment. The things I know as big and emotional are these real, intimate everyday moments.”
At the time, this was revolutionary, in a climate that produced enormous war movies and political stories, but few ambitious melodramas on this level. But Magnolia’s
legacy, giving a magnanimous stage to the ordinary, is deeply felt. Before it, there was Nashville. After? We’ve had Love Actually, Cloud Atlas, Boyhood, American Honey. On TV, Euphoria. Even beyond the visibly epic
— in stories like Moonlight and Eighth Grade,
individual experiences are given the compassion to stand as tall as the greatest tragedies.
Epic movies — not to be confused with
Epic Movie — deal in events and stakes so enormous, it’s impossible to feel safe. But what do we go to the movies to gain? Safety from the rain, from endless hours of monotony, from the strain of the world — but no further security. With movies like Magnolia, we put our hearts on the line, watching characters do the same. We go to forget the present, to bury the past. And with Paul Thomas Anderson’s intimate, blossoming epic, it’s never been clearer. The movie says so itself: the past, still, isn’t through with us.