A Magnolia Article

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I haven't had a chance to read this yet, but I wanted to post it in case it gave some solace to Ben during these difficult BBS times:

https://www.slashfilm.com/magnolia-revisited/

[pinback]

Thank you for this. It's a very nice article that points out many of the key themes/moments of the movie that I still consider the most important/impactful of my life. It has now been several years since I've seen it, but I've seen it so many times that I feel I still "carry it with me", its images and messages having been so impressed upon me.

Although the article mentions the rain of frogs as the singular climactic event bringing the characters out of their collective suffering, it only off-handedly mentions what I consider the previous scene delivering the most important message:

It's a divisive scene, for sure, and I'm sure many an eye was rolling in the theater when it started -- the scene where all of the characters, in unison, in their own crumbling worlds, start singing the Aimee Mann song, "Wise Up". If you tell me this scene sucked and was ridiculous, I have nothing to argue with. It was ridiculous. That's where we part, though, because you thought it sucked, and I was just rocked to my fucking core the way no other movie ever could have done it. It wouldn't even have occurred to me to do a scene like that, but there it was, with the very best song, with the most important message that I'd ever heard...

"It's not going to stop, 'til you wise up."

The frogs come later, since these folks are so entangled in their suffering that divine intervention was required for their awakenings.

Ultimately that's what the movie is about. Waking up from your own story. This movie was the frog that fell from the sky, that hit me right in the face, and I've never been the same since.