The contemporary master Paul Thomas Anderson loves the San Fernando Valley, having set several of his early films there, calling Magnolia the epic, all-time great San Fernando Valley movie. The film never garnered as much praise as a few of his other efforts (like There Will Be Blood), but it does boast an impressive cast including Tom Cruise, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy and the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman. It also boasts one of the strangest turns in modern cinema. The opening of the film is unique and admittedly unorthodox, yes but the information it imparts is understandable on its own, even if the application to the movie as a whole is unclear. From there, the film progresses in a manner simple enough. We have a cop stricken by a young woman, a womanising motivational speaker, a young quiz-show genius, a washed-up quiz show genius, and several satellite characters that serve to colour the overall story. Its all written beautifully and would make for an excellent film if Anderson stopped there. But something falls from the sky, literally, at a crucial point in the story. This event is so strange, so out of place, and so surprising that the characters in the film are just as perplexed as the viewer. Part of what makes it so strange is the otherwise normal façade put up for the majority of the runtime if this freak occurrence happened along at the end of The Fountain, no one would look twice at it. Magnolia exudes the elusive I-Know-Something-You-Dont-Know quality attempted by so many directors and achieved by so few, and it remains the undercover powerhouse in Andersons sterling canon.
