Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
I'm not sure if this entire film was built around Aimee Mann's "Wise Up," or if Magnolia is really a love letter to Aimee Mann herself. What's clear is that Paul Thomas Anderson wrote his sprawling, three-hour epic with her music as the foundation. Nine original songs from Mann comprise the soundtrack, her dark, sardonic style meshing perfectly with Anderson's vision of damaged people struggling through one terrible day in the San Fernando Valley. In the soundtrack liner notes, Anderson writes that all the stories branched off from one character inspired by Mann's music, adding, "You can look at the movie as the perfect memento to remember the songs that Aimee has made"
(Tastemakers Music Magazine). Either way, the soundtrack is beautiful, essential, inseparable from what makes the film work.
Watching all these characters descend into their own private hell for the first two acts is amazing. This is PTA's master class in casting. Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Jason Robards, William H. Macy, Melora Walters — every one of them was cast perfectly. Moore's breakdown is magnetic, like watching a train wreck in slow motion; you can't look away even as you know it's going to end badly. Hoffman brought tears to my eyes with his tender performance as a nurse caring for a dying man, finding grace in the most ungraceful circumstances. Robards delivers a master class in not giving away the script until it says to do that, holding back emotion until the dam breaks.
And then there's Tom Cruise, so perfect in his role as a toxic masculinity guru that it even makes him look like he can act. That alone should tell you how good Anderson is.
"Wise Up" functions as the transition to the denouement, and it's brilliant, integral to the story. The film stops, or rather shifts gears entirely, as one by one each character begins singing along to Mann's song. It's structurally audacious, emotionally devastating, and it shouldn't work but absolutely does. That moment transforms Magnolia from a collection of intersecting stories into something unified, a recognition that all these broken people share the same fundamental truth: it's not going to stop until you wise up.
This is Anderson at his most ambitious, most vulnerable, most willing to take enormous risks. Magnolia is messy, sprawling, occasionally excessive, but it earns every minute of its runtime through sheer emotional honesty and technical mastery. It's a film about forgiveness, regret, connection, and the possibility of grace in a graceless world, all underscored by Mann's songs that make the unspoken spoken, the unbearable bearable.
This audio-visual art is a masterpiece.
