{"id":575,"date":"1999-12-10T09:00:46","date_gmt":"1999-12-10T09:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=575"},"modified":"2012-01-26T08:57:44","modified_gmt":"2012-01-26T08:57:44","slug":"magnolia-1999","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=575","title":{"rendered":"Magnolia, 1999"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plot <\/strong>Los Angeles, Present Day. The film shows an extraordinary\/ordinary twenty-four hours in the lives of a cross-section of Los Angeleanos. The main stories are of the immediate offspring of two elderly men dying of cancer, Earl Partridge and Jimmy Gator, the producer and presenter (respectively) of popular television show, \u2018What Do Kids Know?\u2019. Frank, Earl\u2019s son, is the cult leader of \u2018Seduce and Destroy\u2019 a ‘men’s group’ whose aim is to \u2018tame the cunt\u2019 and \u2018respect the cock\u2019 and has broken all contact with his parents and his past. Jimmy\u2019s daughter, Claudia, reveals to her mother, Rose, that she has been abused by her father. When the delirious Earl reveals a dying wish to his nurse, Phil Parma, to see his son once again the nurse attempts to track Frank down. Meanwhile, a visit by Frank to his daughter leads her to binge on cocaine and loud music; the neighbours complain and Officer Jim Kurring investigates. A number of other plot-lines interact with these main narrative threads: Earl’s trophy-wife Linda admits that she married him for money but realises that she has fallen in love with him as he lies on his deathbed; quiz kid Donny, the television show\u2019s champion from 1968 pursues his unrequited love for barkeep Brad; Stanley, Donny\u2019s contemporary equivalent, the current champion is bullied by his exploitative dad Rick, leading to Stanley\u2019s on-air rebellion; the shadowy story of the murder of Marcie\u2019s trick at the hands of her son, \u2018the Worm\u2019, as narrated to Jim Kurring by the boy rapper. A biblical rain of frogs (foreshadowed by the intermittent surreal weather reports which regulate the narrative into manageable sections) leads Frank to be reunited with Earl; Earl dies; the boy rapper saves Linda from her suicide attempt; Officer Jim aids Donny in returning the money he has stolen from Solomon Solomon; Rose elicits a confession from Jimmy then drives across town to be with her daughter; Jim, Donny and Rose\u2019s cars and Linda\u2019s ambulance all pass unknowingly at an intersection; Jimmy\u2019s suicide attempt is foiled by a frog crashing through the skylight. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Film note<\/strong> Magnolia<\/em> continues many formal, industrial and thematic trends developing within Hollywood through the 1990s. It demands to be seen primarily as an example of a semi-independent \u201cauthor’s\u201d cinema (it was written, produced and directed by 29-year old Paul Thomas Anderson) that developed in the wake of Steven Soderbergh\u2019s and Quentin Tarantino\u2019s successes. This new author’s cinema can be seen as something of a reliberalisation of Hollywood after the sensationalist infantilism of the Spielberg and Lucas blockbuster \u201cReaganite\u201d era. Filmmakers such as Soderbergh, Ang Lee, Mike Figgis, David Fincher and others have been financed (during a period of economic growth under Clinton) by an increasingly confident globally incorporated Hollywood to make complex adult dramas showing a marked change in demographic address from blue-collar to white-collar America.<\/p>\n

These films are decidedly more \u201cliterary\u201d, \u201cactorly\u201d and \u201ctheatrical\u201d than their Reaganite antecedents. The distinction between the independent American art-cinema (previously the province of independent filmmakers such as Hal Hartley, Tod Solendz, Jim Jarmusch, and John Sayles) and the mainstream is now far less distinct. Anderson\u2019s budget for Magnolia<\/em> was $37m accrued through New Line and Time Warner after the critical and box office success of his earlier film Boogie Nights<\/em> (1997). This is a modest budget for a major Hollywood production but huge for a semi-independent film of its style and themes. Magnolia<\/em> can be seen as a prime example of a cinema mediating the concerns of contemporary middle-class, middlebrow America: the ever increasing complexity and fragmentation of urban and suburban life; the emptiness of consumer and celebrity cultures; the crisis of authentic masculinity; and, as corrective to all of these, the search for personal growth and redemption through psychotherapeutic and New Age practices and principles.<\/p>\n

Homage to Altman<\/strong> The film was largely well received, with many reviewers regarding it as the best film of 1999 and of greater value than American Beauty<\/em> (1999), which won an Academy Award for Best Picture. It was Academy Award-nominated for Tom Cruise (Best Actor in a Supporting Role) for Aimee Mann (Best Song) and for Anderson (Best Screenplay). It also won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2000. Much was made of Jon Brion\u2019s score that drives the movie along in a similar way to Bernard Herrman\u2019s music in Psycho<\/em>, and of Aimee Mann\u2019s specially commissioned songs. The main focus of critical attention has been Anderson himself and in particular his indebtedness to Robert Altman: Magnolia<\/em> shares the episodic, multiple parallel storylines of Short Cuts<\/em> (Altman\u2019s 1997 film based on Raymond Carver\u2019s short stories) as well as some of the cast used by Altman there and elsewhere (Julianne Moore, Henry Gibson). Anderson\u2019s repeated use of the same group of actors\u2013Julianne Moore, Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly, Alfred Molina and Philip Seymour Hoffman have all appeared previously in Anderson films\u2013gives the film a marked sense of being an Altmanesque theatrical ensemble piece. His use of his native district of Los Angeles sets him and the film up as the \u201cauthentic\u201d voice of middle-class LA, equivalent to Spike Lee\u2019s Brooklyn or Martin Scorcese\u2019s Italian Manhattan. Like Altman\u2019s The Player<\/em> (1992) the use of older generations of actors (Jason Robards) and the intermingling of different stratas of stardom (Tom Cruise) into an equalising collective \u201censemble\u201d presents Hollywood as a community of actors and presents this community as a group of professionals who have a special understanding about life, as \u2018artists\u2019. These actorly and theatrical emphases present the film as very much a \u201ctext to be read\u201d.<\/p>\n

The film is an example of a self-referential Hollywood proclaiming itself as the highest of art forms for documenting the contemporary. A significantly different industrial message to the \u201chey folks, its just entertainment!\u201d of the Reaganite film. Andrew Britton notes that \u201cReaganite entertainment refers to itself in order to persuade us that it doesn\u2019t refer outwards at all. It is purely and simply ‘entertainment’ […] and to present something as entertainment is to define it as a commodity to be consumed rather than as a text to be read\u201d (3). Magnolia<\/em> can be seen as a self-conscious turn away from the infantilized commercial aesthetic of much contemporary Hollywood fare that foregrounds special effects in the creation of sensational and fantastical events. Instead Magnolia<\/em> deploys digital technology in an understated and low-key way. Offering the audience implausible camera angles within a plausible world thereby adding a gently \u201cmagical\u201d element to an ostensibly \u201crealist\u201d and socially engaged cinema. Films such as The Ice Storm<\/em> (1997), The Thin Red Line<\/em> (1998), American Beauty <\/em>and Fight Club<\/em> (2000) all intersperse their traditionally realist narratives with surreal or metaphysical meditations and pauses, often achieved through the \u201cmagic\u201d of the digital image.<\/p>\n

The Aquarian Conspiracy <\/strong>The individual protagonists of Magnolia\u2019s<\/em> multiple stories are presented as alienated and lonely, cut off from consciousness of the patterned network governing their lives (a network that slowly becomes visible to the viewer as the movie unfolds). This patterned network is figured as an organic unity; figuratively each story or character is revealed to be a separate petal of a single magnolia flower (an image used for the film\u2019s poster). Each story follows a therapeutic pattern of alienation, confession and facing the past, catharsis, redemption and healing. The journalist Gwenovier forces Frank to face his past and he visits his dying father, allowing him to express his true feelings of love, anger, hurt and vulnerability. Claudia\u2019s abuse finally comes to light through her mother Rose\u2019s extraction of a reluctant confession from Jimmy, following which Rose is reunited with her daughter. Officer Jim has a constant confessional monologue with God whilst he drives his patrol car; the answer to his prayers comes in the form of Claudia, the chance to help her and the chance to help Donny. Donny confesses his crime and his love for Brad to Officer Jim who absolves him and helps him return the stolen money. Linda confesses her guilt about marrying Earl for money to the family lawyer. Divine intervention into various lives comes in the form of Phil, the angelic nurse who helps Earl and Frank; Gwenovier, a reporter who acts as a therapist to Frank; and the boy rapper who helps Officer Jim and saves Linda from suicide; as well as the rain of frogs which provides symbolic absolution for all and prevents Jimmy\u2019s suicide. Ultimately it can be argued that the therapeutic work of the film extends to the viewer and the collective cathartic experience of the therapeutically informed audience. The film provides several adages from which its concerns proceed and which summarize its narrative, \u201cstrange things happen all the time\u201d from the opening narration, \u201cthe sins of the fathers are visited on the sons\u201d from Donny in the bar-room scene, \u201cand the book says we may be through with the past but the past ain\u2019t through with us\u201d from Jimmy Gator during the record breaking edition of What Do Kids Know? <\/em>and the collectively sung Aimee Mann chorus \u201cIt\u2019s not going to stop \u2018til you wise up\u201d which presents a pop-song lyric expression of the film\u2019s New Age goal of social transcendence through self-realisation.<\/p>\n

These formal and narrative tendencies are indicative of the wider cultural influences of therapy and the New Age. In 1979 Christopher Lasch observed a \u201cgrowing despair of changing society, even of understanding it, which underlies the cult of expanded consciousness, health and personal \u2018growth\u2019 so prevalent today\u201d (4). Lasch also suggested that although \u201charmless in themselves, these pursuits, elevated to a program and wrapped in the rhetoric of authenticity and awareness, signify a retreat from politics and a repudiation of the recent past\u201d (6). He concluded that \u201c[t]he contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal wellbeing, health and psychic security” (7). Here, Lasch is describing a postmodern rejection of rationalism, of collective political intervention and of empirical cause and effect. In its place is an embrace of irrational belief systems: cults, mysticism, \u2018spirituality\u2019, magic and fundamentalist traditional religions and, centrally, the pursuit of personal growth through therapeutic practice. These include traditional Freudianism, Carl Rogers\u2019 humanistic client-centered therapy and contemporarily holistic New Age therapies. These practices and their underlying principles have become a dominant cultural force throughout the 1980s and 1990s and have been absorbed by the mainstream and are manifest in all avenues of capitalist culture, business, society and the arts; not least Hollywood cinema.<\/p>\n

New Age celebrants of this \u201cnew consciousness\u201d such as Nevill Drury have described it thus: \u201cAdvocates of both the Human Potential Movement and the New Age emphasize the importance of… self-transformation which takes us beyond self itself. It is a journey towards wholeness, towards totality of being\u201d (13). Likewise, Marylin Ferguson in her seminal New Age text The Aquarian Conspiracy<\/em> states: \u201cJust as personal transformation empowers the individual by revealing an inner authority, social transformation follows a chain reaction of personal change… ‘The new person creates the new collectivity’\u201d (190-191). Underlying these statements, and the practices of New Age therapies, is a belief in holism: that all things are related in a universal organic and dynamic whole. Only through the individual realization of this universal relation will enlightenment be achieved. Whatsmore, this \u201cpersonal growth\u201d will lead to social transcendence and a kind of passive revolution whereby a society comprised of enlightened individuals will resolve all inequity. Magnolia<\/em> inhabits this discourse, picking up on its central tenets and using holistic new age discourse to give structure to the many (similar) narrative arcs of its many characters.<\/p>\n

Therapy films<\/strong> As already noted, the rain of frogs in Magnolia<\/em> functions to signal a connected, holistic universe. Similar moments can be found in other \u2018therapy films\u2019, including the bag in the wind video in American Beauty<\/em>, the reflections on nature in The Thin Red Line<\/em>, and the storm itself in The Ice Storm<\/em>. In these pivotal sequences verisimilitude is interrupted by moments of serendipitous coincidence, often made perceptible through the crosscutting of multiple parallel storylines and the deployment of special effects. These moments serve a \u201cholistic\u201d and transcendental impulse to show the relation of all parts to the perfect organic whole. Although these films have been claimed to signal a \u201creliberalisation\u201d of Hollywood, they are in fact driven by a wholesale repudiation of politics. Indeed, the liberal therapy culture that Magnolia<\/em> seems to promote should be viewed against actual economic, demographic and political changes in the workplace and markets of America in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Thomas Frank has argued that these kinds of values resulted in what he calls \u201cmarket populism\u201d, the idea widely held during the 1990s that entrepreneurs were the new liberators and democratisers of society. The success of this strategy, Frank claims, prevented all but small-scale political protest during a decade when wealth was redistributed from poor to rich on an unprecedented scale, when the notion of job security was considered a deterrent to self-realisation and individualism. As such, the liberating forces of the market and the ideology of new age therapies were conveniently aligned. The purportedly liberal aims of \u2018personal growth\u2019 easily co-opted by capitalist discourse of deregulation and entrepreneurial spirit. Frank writes: \u201cUnderstood this way, the true warriors for workplace democracy weren\u2019t trade unionists; they were the new breed of executives\u2013the ones who abjured stuffy suits for casual wear, the zany \u2018change agents’… white collar workers who demanded the right to drink beer and wear jeans in the office\u201d. These were the guerrillas of a corporate culture that managed to persuade people that \u201cby virtue of their attunement to [democratic] market forces [they were] bearers of a kind of soulfulness that government and union could never touch\u201d. Frank argues that through this sophisticated conflation of discourses of self, individual freedom, and capitalist logic \u201cmanagement theory brought an unprecedented degree of workplace quiescence… in a decade when unemployment got as low as 4 per cent\u2013making management extremely vulnerable to demands for increased wages\u2013union organizing and strike activity remained at their lowest points since the 1920s\u2019.<\/p>\n

Whilst the therapeutic self-consciousness promulgated by Magnolia<\/em> may be liberating in theory, it has to be considered against such a background as contributing to a populist myth, predicated on ‘style’ rather than substance, of market-led individual liberation which evidently contributes to collective political apathy and a lack of resistance in the face of overwhelming changes to individual workers rights. The therapy film requires its characters and its viewers to strive to improve their (troubled) social experience via individual reconstruction but crucially without recourse to the kind of collective political activity that might make this improvement possible. Since Magnolia\u2019s<\/em> release the liberal but morally compromised Democrat presidency of Bill Clinton has ended and he has been replaced by the hard-line, right-wing, ex-governor of Texas, George Bush Jr., and the indications are that the US economy is moving into recession. The recent success of Traffic <\/em>(2000) might be read as the high-watermark of a cycle of movies that while seemingly liberal on the surface actually maintained the foundations required for the rebuilding of a right-wing political consensus. On the other hand, the difficulty in establishing support for this right wing shift (demonstrated by a national election that proved impossible to decide one way or the other) might prompt Hollywood to define itself against Bush’s political program (without losing its audience) and accentuate the liberal dimension of semi-independent movie production at the beginning of the 21st<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Britton, Andrew. \u201cBlissing Out: The Politics of Reaganite Entertainment\u201d. Movie<\/em> 31\/32 (1986) 1-42. Print.<\/p>\n

Drury, Nevill. The Elements of Human Potential<\/em>. Shaftesbury: Element Books, 1989. Print.<\/p>\n

Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women<\/em>. London: Chatto and Windus, 1991. Print.<\/p>\n

Faludi, Susan. Stiffed: The Betrayal of Modern Man.<\/em> London: Vintage, 2000. Print.<\/p>\n

Ferguson, Marilyn. The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in our Time<\/em>. New York: Putnam\u2019s New York, 1980. Print.<\/p>\n

Frank, Thomas. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism<\/em>. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997. Print.<\/p>\n

Frank, Thomas. \u201cThe Big Con\u201d The Guardian<\/em>. Jan 6th (2001). Print.<\/p>\n

Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations<\/em>. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1979. Print.<\/p>\n

Ryan, Michael and Douglas Kellner. The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film<\/em>. Bloomington, IA: Indiana University Press, 1988.<\/p>\n

Wood, Robin. Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan.<\/em> New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Print.<\/p>\n

Written by Toby Nuttall, London Metropolitan University (2001); edited by Guy Westwell (2011), Queen Mary, University of London<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article may be used free of charge. Please obtain permission before redistributing. Selling without prior written consent is prohibited. In all cases this notice must remain intact.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2011 Toby Nuttall\/Mapping Contemporary Cinema<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Production Companies: New Line (Time Warner), Ghoulardi Film Company
\nDistributor: New Line Cinema
\nExecutive Producers: Michael De Luca, Lynn Harris
\nProducers: Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Lupi
\nScreenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson
\nDirector: Paul Thomas Anderson
\nCinematography: Robert Elswit
\nFilm Editor: Dylan Tichenor
\nMusic: Jon Brion (score); Fiona Apple (additional music); Aimee Mann (songs)
\nCast: Tom Cruise (Frank T. J. Mackey), Jason Robards (Earl Partridge), Julianne Moore (Linda Partridge), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Phil Parma), Melora Walters (Claudia Wilson-Gator), Philip Baker Hall (Jimmy Gator), Melinda Dillon (Rose Gator), John C. Reilly (Officer Jim Kurring), April Grace (Gwenovier), William H. Macy (‘Quiz Kid’ Donny Smith)
\nRunning Time: 188 mins.
\nClassification: R for strong language, drug use, sexuality and some violence
\nBox office gross: domestic $22.5m\/worldwide $48.5m
\nTagline: Things fall down. People look up. And when it rains, it pours. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[94,95,11],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film-note","tag-94","tag-therapy-film","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":579,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions\/579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}