Magnolia

dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

Paul Thomas Anderson proves once again, after Boogie Nights, that he is an excellent filmmaker and a terrible screenwriter. Why, oh why, does he insist on writing his own stories?

Anderson challenges himself and the audience right off the bat by introducing a seemingly irrelevant framing device, followed by nearly a dozen characters (the dying father, his pill-popping wife, the prodigal son, the male nurse, a lonely cop, the quiz kid with an overbearing father, a former quiz kid whose life has gone to hell, the cancerous quizmaster, his drug-addicted daughter, etc.).

Anderson relentlessly pushes the camera forward in scene after scene, while the soundtrack sometimes gets so excited it jumps ahead of the image. For the first hour he cuts between everything and everyone with the pace of a kid skipping downhill, and you watch transfixed and impressed because he never falls down. At least, not with the filmmaking.

If only the same could be said for the script. The reason Anderson can bounce back and forth between characters like he does is because he deals with character types, easily recognizable from even a brief glimpse. At first that's fine, because his films aren't about characters, they're about filmmaking virtuosity. Whether he's stealing from Scorsese or Altman or Tarantino, Anderson exudes an enthusiasm so pure he makes everything his own.

But when Anderson tries to flesh out his characters, the movie grinds to a complete halt. Like Tarantino, Anderson is adept at lifting good bits from other people's movies and making them his own; unlike Tarantino, he can't write a decent monologue to save his life. As for the themes of love and regret and the need to forgive, they all fall flat thanks to the lack of three-dimensional characters.

However, the greatest flaw of the film is its length. If Magnolia were to run at the breakneck speed set at the opening, I wouldn't be complaining about its three-hour running time. Alas, it doesn't; and it eventually piles false ending on false ending until you think the movie will never end. When Magnolia finally wraps with a climactic rain that's showy and artificial and fun, you realize -- this guy is good. If only he were smart enough to hire a screenwriter.