NORTHERN PLANNER

I like Deathly by Aimee Mann. For starters, it’s a great song, but I like it even more because this track is the inspiration for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia – one of my favourite films (but if course THE favourite is The Empire Strikes Back).

By the way, Anderson also did Boogie Nights which contains my favourite film scene ever…

Back to Magnolia…It clocks in at over three hours, but it goes very quickly as it tells the story of overlapping broken lives in Los Angeles. Anderson lets each individual story breath while letting them intersect in all sorts of unexpected ways. This may be heresy, but I think it’s better than Short Cuts, and a million times better than the inferior Crash.

I love the pace of the film, the way it builds up to at least three crescendo’s, I like the way he shows grace and courage in even the weakest and most fallible of us, but most of all, I like the way he asks us to consider coincidence v fate, along with and the necessity of love, and being able to give it.

The acting is great too. Most surprisingly with Tom Cruise playing a sex guru(respect the cock).

He starts out as a cocksure macho type, but soon we see the hints of a pained past, the facade begins to subtly crack until we see a lonely, lost young man at his father’s death bed, a man who rejected him, whom he last taught himself to hate, begging him not to go away. It’s a beautifully restrained performance, amazing for HIM, and really gets to grips with the mysterious distance between fathers and their sons.

But back to Aimee Mann. Anderson loved ‘Deathly’ too. Most of all, he was intrigued with the line, "Now that I’ve met you, would you agree to never seeing other again". It’s the core of the song, the idea that someone can be so damaged, that they don’t even know how to accept kindness. From this he created a young, female cocaine addict, who has been abused by her father and sleeps with men for drug money. From there he created the lonely cop who eventually convinces her to let him love her, then her father who is also a famous game show host – and the TV company is owned by Cruise’s dying father.

And so it goes, working outwards from the central inspiration. It’s a beautiful film, building to an epiphany where they all sing Mann’s Wise Up before they all reach a conclusion of sorts – some hopeful some with the possibility that they’ll be able to bear what may come now.

Knowing where the film comes from doesn’t make it any better, but it’s nice seeing where people get their ideas.