Magnolia is the kind of movie that simply begs to polarize audiences. It's long, it has a labyrinth of characters and plots intersecting, and it certainly doesn't mind structuring itself with a middle finger towards convention. Is it pretentious? Sure, if you're trying to find a pretentious film. Is it deeply profound? If you're looking for that, you probably won't disappoint yourself. Is it somewhere in the middle? No, there's no middle.
The Movie
It's important to know that there isn't a main character in Magnolia. And there is no hero, and there are no villains. There are just humans, they're all screwed up, most are in some way dealing with "the sins of the father", and things are probably going to get worse for them before they start to get any better. Take Frank "T.J." Mackey (Tom Cruise), for example. His popular audio/video series called "Seduce And Destroy" teaches men how to control women, instead of being controlled. Or former "Quiz Kid" champ Donnie Smith (William H. Macy), who spends his time selling stereos but is secretly in love with the bartender across town.
The current prince of kid game show winners, Stanley Spector (Jeremy Blackman), already realizes that there must be more to life than being controlled by his showbiz-wannabe father. They do a good job of not letting you know at first glance, but they're all dying on the inside. And Earl Partridge (Jason Robards) is a lot like all of them, except that he is also dying on the outside, from cancer. And there are more, and somehow they're all connected and will have their lives changed over the course of a single day.
The pacing of the film is almost operatic. After opening with a brief prelude, we're ushered in to a rushed first act, meeting characters and identifying their situations. There are brief arias with each of the leads that peel back their veneer. And as they bounce from one to another, we're not sure if these people are related or not, and the story is initially told in snippets. First the blind what of their circumstances, later the why of their history, and eventually we get to the when and how can this be remedied. And it's these later acts that - fortunately - slow the pace down, before the somewhat grand finale. There are elements to the story that are fantastically coincidental at first glance, as well as elements of some divine intervention that lend it a fabled edge. But the more I dwell on the movie, and the more that time passes and I see it played out in personalities and emotions, the less fantastical it seems.
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