Paul Thomas Anderson, Magnolia [1999]

One of my favorites for this week’s Monday Philm — Magnolia (1999), dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. I haven’t ever properly reviewed this film and I don’t feel up to trying just yet — especially since I’m sick and exhausted this week, COVID sucks, Phil Parma please help me — but I have some general new thoughts on this watch.

Usually it takes quite a bit for me to cry at movies, especially if I’ve seen them before and expect to get emotional, but Magnolia is one of those movies that makes me burst into tears in a second. Poor Stanley singing that song from Carmen and dealing with his father and those awful adults, Donnie drunk at the bar promising Brad “I won’t be mad if you don’t know who said what. I won’t punish you if you get the answer wrong,” Officer Jim crying and begging Gd in the rainstorm after he loses his gun. Those moments and many more hit me right in the gut, they’re so awfully sad and pitiful and real.

And then Phil Parma is such an angel. It’s a testament to their talents as individuals and their shared friendship that PTA and PSH crafted and nurtured such a range of incredible characters, from Scotty J to Lancaster Dodd. But the nurse is the simplest and most tender of their work together, because Paul loves Phil. You know how you wish you could show your best friend how you see them, all the good things they struggle to visualize in themselves? That’s how PTA wrote Phil Parma, and the result is all that love and admiration wrapped up on film. What a sweet gift (even if he makes fun of you for chewing on pens for the next decade).

Magnolia is also so funny?? Somehow I’d never caught the line, “Don, you got hit by lightning that time in Tahoe you went on vacation, I don’t think braces is a good idea,” until this watch but it cracked me up. Also the chances of your hospice nurse accidentally killing your dog with morphine pills is low but never zero 😔😔

I can’t let this go. I can’t let you go. Now, you… you listen to me now. You’re a good person. You’re a good and beautiful person and I won’t let you walk out on me. And I won’t let you say those things - those things about how stupid you are and this and that. I won’t stand for that. You want to be with me… then you be with me. You see? Magnolia (1999) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

Magnolia (1999) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

Magnolia (1999)

“The book says, “We might be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us."”

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cinematographer: Robert Elswit

MAGNOLIA (1999) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

MAGNOLIA (1999), dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

Magnolia - Paul Thomas Anderson (1999)

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MAGNOLIA (1999), dir. Paul Thomas Anderson