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Candid Reviews of Movies
Just Hitting the Big Screen

by Cole Smithey

Magnolia
Unity of Opposites —Director P.T. Anderson Shuffles The Cards of Estranged Kindred Synthesis.

Writer/director P.T. Anderson proves not only that he is no one-hit wonder — Boogie Nights — with his latest screen effort, but that he is a master of pithy dialogue and dynamic juxtaposition of character. In Magnolia, Anderson’s third feature, the director brilliantly sets apart ten characters who support and oppose each other in revealing set-pieces confirming the films loosely optimistic leitmotif that ‘strange things happen all the time.’

Descendants against parents, adults against kids, bosses opposite employees, counter help against customers, cancer against life, fame against anonymity — these are just a few of the conflicts that Anderson frames to push his characters over the brink of socialized behavior. Julianne Moore (Cookie’s Fortune) and Melinda Dillon (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) are long suffering wives to their despicable cancer-dying husbands Earl Partridge (Jason Robards - All The President’s Men) and quiz show host Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall - Rush Hour). Cocaine addict Claudia (Melora Walters) and washed up whiz kid Donnie (William H. Macy - Fargo) are the damaged-goods offspring of cruel parents, while home nurse Phil Pharma (Philip Seymour Hoffman - Boogie Nights) and policeman Jim (John C. Reilly - Hoffa) are pillars of compassion. Little Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) is a modern whiz kid representing hope for the future in his willingness to speak out.

Magnolia is like Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction in that it polarizes audiences. For every audience member who walks out on Magnolia in disgust because he feels no compassion for its characters there will be ten more in the audience who will spill loving praise on the level of intimacy Anderson achieves from his virtuoso cast. I suspect that this phenomenon is due primarily to Magnolia’s centerpiece sub-plot involving Tom Cruise (The Firm) as a seemingly misogynist crusader named Frank T.J. Mackey. Frank gives fiercely male seminars entitled “Seduce and Destroy” that teach the underachieving male participants the power of ‘respecting the cock and taming the cunt.’ Frank has effectively funneled his sense of confused familial loss and abandonment into a lucrative empire by espousing a system of conquering women from their most tender regions. Cruise is so dead center and compelling in his over-the-top motivational speeches that you can’t help feeling simultaneously repulsed and attracted. However it’s when Frank is confronted by a prying black female television interviewer that his bands of defenses are exposed layer by layer. Cruise has clearly learned much about himself as an actor from his work with Stanley Kubrick, as his performance here evinces.

P.T. Anderson’s acumen with juggling multiple characters is comparable to director Robert Altman’s (Nashville, Short Cuts) expert ability to unify a broad scope of personality types. But like Altman, Anderson also suffers from an unwillingness to edit his cinematic tapestries tightly. For example, there is an unexplained sub-plot in Magnolia involving a murder and a little boy who performs an offensive self-penned rap song supposedly identifying the killer for police officer Jim. Gratuitous scenes like this one serve to negate the emotional overall impact of the story’s thrust by veering the dramatic pull.

With one good final edit Magnolia could have been a perfect movie. All of the actors give an exceptionally genuine performance. But part of the glory of the film’s power resides in its shortcomings. There is an excess of information that gestures toward a fathomable depth in characters acting from alternately secure to tragically unstable centers of resolve. In the difficult challenge that Anderson has set up for himself as a social satirist is a mirror of desire and fulfillment that his characters strive for in ways that are every bit as flawed and suggestible as the reality of human nature. Just as something so reliably surprising as the weather can modify people’s behavior, Magnolia encompasses an inter-connective bond of reality’s blind spots. Purity of intention, as the story suggests, is a happy accident that hits everyone.

War zone
Gritty Brit Deception—Tim Roth’s Directorial Debut Applies British Realism For Undeserved Reward.

“Child abuse is an epidemic that infects families across the social spectrum. If there is one abuser who sees this film and realizes what effect they’ve had on the child they’ve abused, it will have been worth making it.” This quote from actor/director Tim Roth’s (Pulp Fiction, Rob Roy) contribution to the press notes for The War Zone contains a huge oversight that runs through Roth’s cinematic rendering of Alexander Stuart’s successful, yet controversial, 1989 novel about incest. Why settle for inspiring repentance in child abusers as a main goal? Why not move toward prevention?

With Roth’s agenda, the best he can hope for is that those engaged in incest with children will be so repulsed by their mirror image as reflected by Ray Winstone’s (Nil By Mouth) performance as a sexually abusive father that they will run out and commit suicide. While The War Zone is affecting for its brave performances and cloaked depiction of a father’s warped psychology that permits him to deny his crimes even to himself the movie serves as an uncomfortably exploitive springboard from which Roth can propel his directing career.

The story takes its title from an abandoned concrete war bunker along the coast of England that becomes a metaphor for a household in which incest takes place. Fifteen-year-old Tom (Freddie Cunliffe) and his older sister Jessie have recently relocated to Devon with their parents from London. Their pregnant mother (played by Tilda Swinton - Orlando) and work-at-home father are domestically comfortable with walking around the house nude while problems simmer beneath their specious level of familial comfort. Freddie Cunliffe resembles a young disaffected Pete Townsend with his over-sized nose, acne-ridden face, and sullen demeanor. His quietly pained temperament suitably resonates the evils around him. As Tom begins to discover clandestine sexual activities between Jessie and their father he confronts her with his knowledge. Jessie directly denies any wrong doing and attempts to refocus Tom’s preoccupation to his own burgeoning sexual desires by attempting to set him up with Carol, an older girlfriend in London. Jessie’s plan backfires and Tom distances himself even further from their father while attempting to protect his sister until he has no choice but to bring the crisis to a head himself. While their mother remains preoccupied with her newborn baby girl, Tom comes to take on the role of a judicial adult for the salvation of his family.

Thematic responsibility is an issue that Tim Roth has had difficulty with in the past. When interviewed at a premiere for director James Gray’s miserable film Little Odessa at the San Francisco Film Festival in 1995, Roth jumped to Gray’s defense when asked what the theme of his movie was. “That’s the problem with Americans, they always want to be spoon fed answers and reasons for everything,” said Roth. While Grey went on to compare himself to Shakespeare before the crowded auditorium, Roth berated the audience for asking for a concrete thematic statement, perhaps because he knew there was none to give.

And so it follows that Roth may believe himself such an experienced artist that thesis considerations are beneath him. In choosing an adaptation of a novel about a complex and sensitive issue Roth aligns himself with the material rather than leading the film with a guiding certainty. Aside from unforgivably out of focus camera shots which riddle the film, and a cliché climax ending The War Zone is a devastating film due mainly to first-time actress Lara Belmont’s finely tuned yet candid fulfillment of a tragically victimized character. Belmont is mesmerizing on screen and one can only hope that her natural talent will find its way to experienced directors.