For his follow-up to the acclaimed Boogie Nights, director Paul Thomas Anderson has crafted a dense and fascinating tale of twelve people in pursuit of meaning on and around a street called Magnolia, beneath the benign skies of the San Fernando Valley.
|
Julianne Moore as Earl’s young wife, Linda.
magnolia
No doubt about it: Paul Thomas Anderson is the exception that proves the rule. The rule - well, the supposed rule - is that film-makers at the turn of the millennium are less adventurous, less ready to kick over the traces and experiment with dangerous subject matter and new ways of making movies than they were in the late sixties and early seventies. Of course, you’re more likely to say this if you’re over 50. But even for younger observers, there is a certain truth in the claim that the marketing pressures of the late nineties have exerted a standardising influence on younger film-makers.
Either way, Anderson is the exception, because the three films he has made to date - Hard Eight, a story of love and revenge starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel L Jackson which was developed by the Sundance Institute’s Filmmaker’s Workshop; the acclaimed seventies adult-movie saga Boogie Nights, which picked up three Academy Award nominations; and now the intricate mosaic saga that is Magnolia - do nothing but explore dangerous subject matter and push the envelope stylistically. No surprise, then, that Anderson’s new film should, like Boogie Nights, have found a home at New Line, the most envelope-pushing of the major studios.
|
