The smile that just won't come

Magnolia is such a brutal, unrelenting movie. I swear there's a section midway through the film where the camera doesn't stop pushing in or out and the music isn't constantly playing. It feels like it goes on forever, and it's grinding your groins in an unforgiving and unpleasurable manner. Except, at the end, one thing provides redemption.

I was somewhere in my teens when I first saw the film. It's odd that during this time foul language would turn me off a film, but I wasn't bothered by it in this movie. If anything, the harsh and crude language was compelling. For a movie that says "fuck" nearly 200 times, the language never seemed excessive. It's odd how a setting or something can make it work just right.

This was the third major film by Paul Thomas Anderson. I've still yet to see Hard Eight, but Boogie Nights was his smash opening for me. I think there was an old quote somewhere attributed to Stanley Kubrick that a high class porn film was impossible. It's as if Anderson heard this and took upon the challenge. There's an audacity to it all, from barely R rated sex scenes to the final image on screen, an homage to Raging Bull, with Marky-Mark and his "star". The movie is looking hard at you, but with a smirk. I can see why Quentin Tarantino says this is Anderson's best work.

Myself, I used to trade off between Magnolia and Boogie Nights until There Will Be Blood took the crown. Like Tarantino and Kubrick, the writer/director/auteur relationship ensures hit after hit, with no duds. Each of those three directors haven't made a bad movie yet.

Magnolia is like Boogie Nights but without that smirk. There's no brevity to be found in the film. No release. Julianne Moore is vile, Philip Baker Hall is unforgivable, and Tom Cruise, in his best performance that should have won him the Oscar over "Princes of Maine", quietly judging you. They're all sad, pathetic, with little hope... until the end.

I know it's coming. In my despair, I sit and watch and wait. After everything, one thing gets me every time and makes me cry. She's sitting on the bed. The ending song is playing. There's not much time left. Hurry! Who's talking? It's John C. Riley! Come on. Smile. Damnit. Smile. Smile.

And she smiles. For a moment, there's hope in this world.

Except in life, that smile just won't come.