Reely Bernie Faves: Magnolia (1999)

The chronological journey goes like this:

During the summer of 1999, I saw the teaser trailer to Magnolia at the Movie Tavern in Aurora, CO. This was the shorter, ambiguous trailer that featured a woman shooting a stray warning bullet through the apartment window, only to coincidentally hit a body that was falling past the window at the same time! Aimee Mann was singing on the background track, there was a frog, and Tom Cruise was in it. The minute-long trailer piqued my fascination with happenstance.

Next, I saw the extended trailer at a different movie theatre and connected to the mosaic of interrlated characters from little Stanley Spector (Jeremy Blackman) to Officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly) to the caretaker in Philip Seymour Hoffman. Aimee Mann continued to rock “I know life is getting shorter” from her indie rock anthem, “Momentum,” and then there was a quick turn to Jon Brion’s melancholic score. These characters were in pain.

Fast forward to the winter of ‘99 in Spokane, Washington when I finally gave this Magnolia movie a chance…

I was 21 at the time, and I had witnessed the most awe-inspiring, spiritually-fulfilling movie of my life. I made it my mission to see it again with as many of my friends as possible to have discussions afterwards. I went back to that AMC theatre three times with different friend groups, each with their own pretense and bias.

For me, it was an all-encompassing movie on a human redemption level. For my friends, it was always about that ending. What was with that freaking ending?

The best way I could explain it back then and today is through this simple joke my dad would tell me when I was a kid:

How do you make God laugh?

Make a plan.

To me, Magnolia is all about making plans, specifically plans that mute or bury the fervent clenching of the past. Following the intertwining vignettes of nine major characters, we come to realize that their small world is actually just as big as our own.

Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson creates his little world on Magnolia Boulevard in Burbank, California, where his characters meet through mediascapes, happenstance, or bloodline. They are haunted by the pseudonymous “Book” quote, “We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.”

The character montage is too vast to summarize, and it’s brilliantly abridged in the trailer and opening scene, so I’ll spare you the complexities. What’s most important is that by the end of the movie, you realize it is all about forgiveness and reconciliation. There are no clean answers, resolutions, or amends because that’s exactly when the ending takes place—an ending that reminds us the world is much bigger than our own.

Magnolia remains one of my favorite movies of all time, and even though it is lengthy and borderline pretentious, I believe those are the required elements for audacious filmmaking, especially in 1999 when movies were bursting with originality (1999: The Year It All Started). Besides, with a movie like this, there is always something new to discover with each viewing, and take it from someone who has seen this gem more than a dozen times—it is worth every minute.

It is worth every solemnly bowed phrase by the cello in Jon Brion’s score, every vile word that comes out of Tom Cruise’s mouth, and every example of human happenstance we see from beginning to end.

As much as I want to discuss the ending to Magnolia, I am also ecstatic for the human being who has yet to see this remarkable film (and that extraordinary ending).

Magnolia will always be my discovery, my movie.

“There are stories of coincidence and chance, of intersections and strange things told, and which is which and who only knows? And we generally say, ‘Well, if that was in a movie, I wouldn’t believe it.’ Someone’s so-and-so met someone else’s so-and-so and so on. And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes.”

Reely Bernie Faves:

1. Amadeus (1984)

2. Magnolia (1999)

3. Poltergeist (1982)

4. Pulp Fiction (1994)

5. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

6. The Godfather Part II (1974)

7. Weekend at Bernie’s (1989)

8. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

9. Goodfellas (1990)

10. Nosferatu (1922)

11. Pollock (2000)

12. Kicking and Screaming (1995)

13. Jaws (1975)

14. Fargo (1996)

15. Citizen Kane (1941)

16. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

17. The Endless Summer (1966)

18. Back to the Future (1985)

19. Angel Heart (1987)

20. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

21. The Goonies (1985)

22. Trainspotting (1996)

23. King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)

24. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

25. Bambi (1942)

26. The Paradise Lost Trilogy (1996-2011)

27. Psycho (1960)

28. Parenthood (1989)

29. Swingers (1996)

30. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

31. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

32. Smoke (1995)

33. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

34. A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

35. Edward Scissorhands (1990)

36. City of God (2002)

37. 1917 (2019)

38. Black Swan (2010)

39. School of Rock (2003)

40. Mulholland Drive (2001)

41. Groundhog Day (1993)

42. If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

43. The Greatest Showman (2017)

44. National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)

45. The Florida Project (2017)

46. Cinema Paradiso (1988)

47. So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)

48. Shadowlands (1993)

49. Steve Jobs (2015)

50. ¡Three Amigos! (1986)