If There Will Be Blood has eclipsed Magnolia as PTA’s most highly praised movie, this deeply personal 1999 California opus is ripe for rediscovery. TWBB is a vertical, linear story, trained on larger than life oilman Daniel Plainview. Magnolia, by contrast, unfurls like a flower, in every direction. It’s the story of a dying TV producer (Jason Robards), his male nurse (Philip Seymour Hoffman), his much younger, second wife (Julianne Moore), his estranged son, an sex guru (Tom Cruise in his greatest single performance), and also of two child game show quiz kids, past and present (PTA worked on a similar show as a teenager), a TV host (Philip Baker Hall), his estranged daughter (Melora Walters), her new boyfriend (John C Reilly)…
In sum, there are enough characters here to furnish a soap opera for several seasons, criss-crossing the San Fernando Valley in search of either recognition or reconciliation. Anderson keeps us invested in each of these strands, using the songs of Aimee Mann as a unifying thread. He takes big swings here, it’s his riskiest film, but if you are willing to go with it the pay-off is huge.
Enthralling and exhilarating.
Time Out
Magnolia is a plea for kindness — especially between parents and children. It appeals to the emotional heart rather than the logical brain, but there’s true greatness here — it’s a rare movie, about which one can feel true passion.
Andrew O’Hehir, Daily Telegraph
You don’t have to like everything [Anderson] does, but if you enjoy seeing the walls rattled and the roof raised in the Hollywood citadel, you’ve got to love it.
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail
Paul Thomas Anderson
Philip Baker Hall, Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H Macy, Julianne Moore, Melora Walters, John C Reilly, Jeremy Blackman, Jason Robards
USA
1999
English
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Credits
Executive Producer
Michael De Luca, Lynn Harris
Producer
Paul Thomas Anderson, JoAnne Sellar
Screenwriter
Paul Thomas Anderson
Cinematography
Robert Elswit
Editor
Dylan Tichenor
Original Music
Jon Brion
Production Design
William Arnold, Mark Bridges
Also in This Series
Paul Thomas Anderson’s is a risky, unorthodox cinema, flexing between grand gestures and hidden depths, but to rewatch his films is always to discover that fleeting, elusive but profound possibility of connection.
Hard Eight
Anderson's debut is a deceptively modest character piece about a veteran gambler (Philip Baker Hall) who takes a much younger man under his wing and teaches him how to play the system and win. Until things take a darker turn...
Magnolia
This deeply personal 1999 California opus is ripe for rediscovery. Mapping the emotional traumas of half-a-dozen major characters as they criss-cross the San Fernando Valley in search of either recognition or reconciliation, it's PTA's riskiest gamble.
There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson's lacerating epic about the birth of the oil age: Daniel Day-Lewis is extraordinary as the prospector entirely consumed with his own enterprise, a Trumpian figure of naked self-assertion; Paul Dano the evangelist who may be his nemesis.
Licorice Pizza
PTA's oddball courtship comedy takes us to the San Fernando Valley in 1973. 15-year-old aspiring actor Gary Valentine has the hots for 25 year-old Alana. She's bemused but admires his self confidence. It's quirky, meandering, but it sneaks up on you.
