Magnolia

Herald rating: * * *

Cast: Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, Jason Robards, William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Rating: R16 (violence, offensive language, drugs)
Running Time: 188 minutes

Screening: Rialto

Review: Russell Baillie

If it was just down to totalling up bravura moments, Magnolia would be a clear frontrunner for film of the year. Anderson's ambitious follow-up to his similarly populous Boogie Nights sure doesn't lack for jaw-dropping scenes.

These include the performances of the film's ensemble (many of whom were in the BN cast) and Tom Cruise as infomercial sex guru Frank T. J. Mackey. Initially startling Cruise, like the film itself, falters in the last stages of a hefty three hours.

Then there are those moments when Anderson conducts his grand cinematic symphony with the boldest of baton strokes. Like a sequence when the characters in turn "sing" one of the many Aimee Mann songs that pepper the soundtrack. It may sound pure MTV but it actually flies.

That said, however, the incidental music is irritatingly intrusive when it seems to highlight dramatic climaxes where none exist.

To put it simply, Magnolia is the story of two dying men, the members of their various families, a cop, a male nurse and two generations of quiz-show whiz kids. We follow all of them over one day in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, as their lives reach a crisis point.

Yes, it does echo Robert Altman's tangled-web Short Cuts, but Magnolia's threads are far looser and this largely stays indoors, intimate and conversational for its three hours.

And despite the performances Anderson extracts - a stand-out is Hoffman's nurse caring for Jason Robards' terminally ill Earl Partridge - it does end up a grand indulgence from a gifted director, but one who likes the clattering sound of his screenwriting keyboard far too much.

As he cuts from episode to episode, relationship to relationship, Anderson risks missing one important connection - between characters and audience.

Which only helps make it a film that takes a lot of time to say not a lot. And that last hour is especially punishing as the energy levels slide.

So when we reach its outlandish finale, Anderson's big silly ending brings an uneasy feeling. The thought that instead of Magnolia having a coherent vision - as was suggested by the Coen-esque voiceover at the opening about how coincidences can indeed be remarkable - that instead you've just been told a shaggy dog story.

Though it its own way Magnolia is still a sometimes brilliant, oddly life-affirming, exceptionally hairy pooch of a movie.

To buy the book online from FlyingPig

Magnolia: the Shooting Script