Magnolia (1999) - Movie Review

Tagline
Things fall down. People look up. And when it rains, it pours.

To summarise, this movie is a deep portrayal of the lives of multiple characters. Somehow they get intertwined, but not made to appear so for the entertainment of a movie.

There are no big twists to make you turn but instead a development of understanding of the lives of these characters being focused on. As the tagline suggests, things happen, and sometimes not for any particular reason but sometimes they do.

Lots of other movies that i’ve seen where there appears to be a build up towards a grand climax, is done to give an ending twist- which then renders the movie viewable only once with the same eyes, if that makes sense. I don’t think the sixth sense can be watched with the same eyes the second time.

In Magnolia we see the development of stories which build toward a grand climax. Magnolia differs from others however as whilst some of the points of interest are predicatable, the suspense is in how we see characters in the movie react to these moments not a revelation in storyline.

The acting and direction is in a perfect blend with the setting and content. We feel the pain, the happiness and the relief of those on screen. Movies where you want to see the reaction of characters to revelation in storyline appear with great emotion and understanding, we never feel left out.

I originally hired this film after hearing about Tom Cruise’s roll as Frank Mackey who is a basically the  a “woman tamer” and god amongst men who don’t know how to play the game of getting to bed with women.

Cruise plays a character in only one story of several that this movie tells. His acting and emotion in this film is well deserved of his golden globe award.

Whilst this movie is quite deep in the way things intertwine, try not to think too hard about the background as you will miss the importance of the foreground. One hint, this movie isn’t cut up in different time sections, it is a story of one particular period of time displayed from start to finish.

I’ll try not to spoil this for you, but I do want to say, this 3 hour feature film is definately worth watching, keep a night free to watch it at your own lesuire. Don’t ruin being moved by a brillant film by watching it during conversation or before u go out on a night in the town.

The climax of this movie will display and event that is very out of place and i beleive was put in to make us just realise that some things happen, for no apparent reason- some need to be recognised throughly and some should just be left as a past event.

There is something there for all of us to take away, and for me personally, it has made me realise that saying that you regret something is not a bad thing to say. I’ve always thought regret is a waste as you don’t take decisions made and make something good out of them. But for some things, there is no good that comes out of it and i suppose we need to all acknowledge that these things happen. We can’t do anything more about them now and it’s ok to recognise what we have done wrong in the past regardless of our current situation.

Nobody is perfect and to say we regret decisions made is ok, as long as we recognise bad decisions as bad things and not always as “it was for the best”. It’s not about dwelling about the past, but more about recognition of something that was wrong and giving it the true recognition it deserves- especially if it has affected others you love.

The big quote from this movie is “We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us”

This review has also been submitted to imdb.com