#36 — Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)
The trailer for Magnolia billed it as “A P.T. Anderson Picture.” It was the writer-director’s third feature, and the follow-up to 1997’s Boogie Nights, the film that first garnered him significant attention and established his unbridled affection for the storytelling potential found in sprawl. Magnolia took that tendency to an even bigger, bolder level, interlacing storylines in dizzying fashion across a three hour running time. That “P.T.” felt like a wink, a declaration of kinship with the master showman named Barnum who used those initials a century earlier. I’ve never gotten the impression that Anderson viewed his audience as a collection of suckers, a fresh one handily born every minute, but he certainly operates with a level of audacity that calls to mind sly hucksters of bygone days. The added wrinkle is that he believes fervently in the snake oil he’s peddling, and that, my friends, makes all the difference.

The film begins with a narrator relaying three unrelated stories, each one layered in coincidence and cruel twists of fate. Right from the beginning, Anderson is reveling in the wonder of a good story well told, and if its very nature defies belief, then all the better. An audience’s unwillingness to roll along, to let the twists and turns take over, to just enjoy the ride is the the greatest enemy a storyteller faces. More specifically, it can easily be the undoing of a director as ambitious as Anderson. By addressing it directly in the very first moments in the film, he opens it up to go anywhere. This beginning is an invitation. Come along, it will all be worth it. Just be prepared to acknowledge that whatever occurs, no matter how bizarre, is indeed a thing that sometimes happens.

There’s another skilled showman Anderson evokes with Magnolia. That’s Robert Altman, the master of this sort of movie, one that juggles countless characters and subtly overlapping storylines. Anderson even looks to Altman’s old stock company to cast Henry Gibson, Nashville‘s Haven Hamilton, in a small but memorable role. Pushing back somewhat against the era he was working in (it’s worthwhile to note that this was released the same year that George Lucas revived the mythology of Star Wars to digitally clobber moviegoers into submission), Anderson embraced the Altmanesque notion that movies could be big because of their intellectual vividness and the potency of their emotions. Character moved through their world oblivious to the dictates of plot, but alive to the uncertainty of human existence. The past and the present coalesce in mysterious, combustible ways, and any moment carries with it the possibility that some lost, hidden piece of personal history will edge through the door and threaten to drop kick your fucking dogs. It is filmmaking without boundary or constraint, without fear of rejection. The rules are there to be honored, and used to proper advantage, but they can also be disregarded at any time. Luis Guzman can play a character named “Luis Guzman” if that’s the best, most amusing way to approach that particular bit of casting, and favorite lines from songs can become pivotal lines of dialogue. In all that splendid messiness resides the thrill of movies themselves.