AFGM Pt. 4 - Magnolia (1999)
Tom Cruises character can't handle the truth (again) and I muse existentially in the valley of the frogs
Setting the scene: The “Big Movie Year”
Ah, 1999 the most famous year in cinematic history. Haley Joel Osment saw dead people. Brittney Murphy hoarded rotisserie chickens. Sylvia Plath’s husband made an animated film. Melissa Joan Hart made us think Adrien Grenier was a dork who needed a glow-up (he walked so Seth Cohen could run). Truly every weekend was a box office battle to the point that there have been books and podcasts dedicated to it. In the forthcoming weekly data roundup dashboard we will get into the craziness that was this magically cinematic year but before we get into Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia lets take a quick look at some of the facts.
Okay so without further ado lets talk about PTA’s film that answers the question “what if the Boogie Nights guy was given carte blanche for his next movie?”
My Pre-viewing thoughts
I have seen this movie before. It has all of the things I would love in a movie: acclaimed director, tangential pop culture connection to Fiona Apple, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, great soundtrack. Alas I had next to zero interest in revisiting it.
I had decided I was either going to rip the Magnolia band-aid off or save it until the end because I have been viscerally dreading watching this film. Not in a Vanilla Sky way but in a way where I associate the film and its very memorable soundtrack with a bad breakup in high school. I don’t mean like I associate a character or a specific plot point with the breakup I mean that when I got dumped my summer going into college I had been on a quest to watch as many of the AFI “1,000 movies to see before you die” with my then boyfriend* and our next film was Magnolia. Then I spent many days driving to my summer job listening to Amy Mann’s soundtrack for the film and then randomly rotating in Farmhouse by Phish.
These days it isn’t the breakup (that is obviously no longer of significance to me) that deters me from the film but that image in my head of my 18 year-old self thinking the world was over and then turning on this movie to watch literal frogs falling from the sky. It actually is more the music from the film than the film itself which I barely remember the plot of except for the frogs.
Anyway, I had my coworkers pick the next movie in the lineup from a bowl and Magnolia was selected so lets see how it goes.
*if you also choose to watch a lot of those movies and you are in high school let me save you a lot of discomfort and tell you now that you should NOT watch “Requiem for a Dream” with your boyfriend and your parents
Synopsis
Umm…. this is not really that easy to summarize as it is about 3hrs long and has about 30 characters but I’ll do my best. That being said, I do believe this is a movie that plays better if you go into it knowing basically nothing about it.
We find our ensemble cast in the San Fernando valley living one day of their lives in different storylines. Like many movies of the late 90’s early aughts it plays on the “everyone is connected” trope. Tom Cruise plays Frank T.J. Mackey, a Tony Robbins meets “The Pickup Artist” type self-help guru as he begins a seminar for his captive audience in the pre-Rogan-era 90’s. His day involves the seminar and an indepth magazine interview with a journalist who has done more research than he anticipated.
At one point they all have a lip-syncing scene and then frogs fall out of the sky and everyone is like “okay yeah sure". Frank ultimately makes a decision that - although challenging - is intensely impactful to the audience.
“But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all your territory with frogs.” - Exodus 8:2, which is alluded to throughout the film
Okay that’s all i want to say about the plot. Onto my post-viewing review.
MK’s Post-Viewing Review
Tom Cruise was ROBBED of the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for this role, ROBBED. He lost to Michael Caine of the similarly overly-drawn-out Cider House Rules. When I embarked on my Tom Cruise journey one of the things I wanted to understand was “I get that he was like a heartthrob but is he an actor-actor, does he warrant the movie-star status he has because he is a *star* or is it because he is just a charismatic guy who can say a some iconic lines with pizzaz.
Well if you need evidence of Tom Cruise as an actor you need to watch this film. He truly did not have to do this movie, it had a budget of $37M which is lower than those of Jerry Maguire (1996) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) but not far off (give or take like $15M. What makes this movie different is that Tom Cruise is not the Tom Cruise that we as a culture (and also on my own TC journey) had seen thus far. He plays a deeply problematic character yet gives such an incredibly emotional tour-de-force of a performance in the films second-half that you can see him earning that oscar nom in mere minutes. I firmly believe in what Matt Roger’s of Las Culturistas uses as a litmus test for a Best Supporting award: you make a meal out of a snack. Could another actor have been Frank T.J. Mackey? Sure. But it is the Tom Cruise of it all, the guy we know and love when he is flipping bottles, flying naval aircrafts, and saying “DID YOU ORDER THE CODE RED”, that stuns us when he reads Anderson’s lines and genuinely shocks even a 2024 audience.
If played by any other actor it would be a terrible role and we would would probably say in modern day “oh he’s a total Frank TJ Mackey type” about every toxic guy who has access to podcast equipment. But unlike how people are quick to call their adversary “Iceman” or tell you how “the human head weighs 11lbs” this role of Cruises (I don’t know how to pluralize last names) is essentially not discussed and maybe its because he is so deep in the role that we start to forget its the same guy, THE Tom Cruise.
That is not to say this film is without flaws. The “reveals” of every single character, including Cruise, are fairly obvious approx 15 minutes into the movie but I think we should take this with a grain of salt considering the culture at the time. As much as it PAINS me to do this, the closest comparison I can think of to the general conceit of this film is Paul Haggis’ Crash (2004 not the Cronenberg one) or Soderberg’s Traffic (2000). Twentyish years ago this was still a relatively novel concept but upon rewatch it doesn’t pack the stylistic punch it probably did at the time. I would say one of the only works of media that uses this concept that still holds up is Tom Wolf’s I am Charlotte Simmons and even that isn’t really the same in the sense that it does really withhold how the characters are connected. There is however an argument to be said that an adaptation of the latter would not be as compelling today as it would have been when it was initially published because the trope is a bit overdone. It died the day Crazy, Stupid, Love was released.
But like… we gotta give it to our boy and problematic fave PT Anderson because it’s a really good movie and in a way if you think about it… everyone… is… connected. At least in this movie everyone has legit human motives and emotions.
I really am glad I had to watch this again because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it upon rewatch. It is actually such a shame they never worked together again because what PTA brought out in Cruise is something I would watch many more iterations of as he was clearly really acting-acting.
Other Observations
the frogs… just why?
we need 1000 more movies with concept soundtracks and Aimee Mann really was on her A-game with this one
PTA could have eliminated the ENTIRE plot about the kids in the quiz show and William H Macy’s character and instead just shown footage of the host/dad on TV. PTA does seem to have a fascination with children in blips of small localized fame so I guess it tracks…
I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the famous Tom Cruise Coconut Cake no longer gets sent to the home of PT Anderson and longtime partner Maya Rudolph after he went on to direct The Master… or is Tom a true class act and he still sends one?
If you thought to yourself “wait why do I know the name “Paul Haggis” its because he went on to be a critical contributor to Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief which yes I will be reviewing because we gotta find Shelly Miscavige
Coconut Cake Award: Phillip Seymour Hoffman was the heart of this movie and it is so evident that the role was written for him by a true friend like he had in PTA (who seems insufferable, tbh). His performance is just SO good and I truly wonder how much of his emotion was in the script vs. him reacting to the scenes and other actors.