Magnolia

An interesting movie (no disrespect intended)--one well worth thinking about. What I'm still attempting to make sense of (besides all of it) is the introductory three vignettes of coincidences. It seems to me that weird things need to have a reason to be in the movie; it's fine with me that they're there, but they must fit (perhaps this is too much to ask for?). The raining frogs work, I think, due not in small part to the foreshadowing with Exodus 8:2 sprinkled about earlier in the film. The three events in the prologue, however, have a less obvious connection.

The relationship between children and parents is clearly a central theme in the film (the idea that the sins of the fathers will be visited on the children). We see this in Claudia and her father Jimmy (who is the host of the game show, "What Do Kids Know?"--where parents are pitted against children in trivia)--her father quite possibly molested her, and there's a good chance that this is related to her coke addiction. In the parallel story of a T.V. producer, Earl (who cheated on his wife and left her), and his son, Frank, a man who teaches other men secrets to getting women into bed ("Seduce and Destroy"), we again see the sins of the father affecting the son. The plague of the frogs, too, refers to the plague against the Egyptians in which the first born son was killed--the sons were killed because of Pharaoh's sin. Moreover, one of the three "coincidences" in the film's prologue is about a boy who was committing suicide, but would've been saved by a safety net, were not the gun that his mother was pointing at his father loaded (the boy himself had loaded it) and accidentally shot.

The film tells us not to mistake children for angels. I'm not entirely certain about the meaning of this line. Although I'm sure that, were I to understand how it relates, it would relate at about 30 levels.

It is interesting that Stanley, the little boy on the game show, is the one who has a premonition of it raining frogs--he asks what sort of meteorological instruments the building has. He responds to the rain by peeing his pants. The fact that it rained frogs also helps him come to terms with his own genius--he understands the exceptional as something that happens. "This happens; this is something that happens." This gives him the strength to stand up to his father. Perhaps it is Donnie (the man who had been a child star on the game show, but was now an adult living in the past and working for an electronic store in sales)'s inability to understand his own exceptionalism that condemns him to an inability to form relationships--he asserts against the film itself (I think) that children are angels. This is precisely the ideal that Stanley rails against when they ask him to come forward for a bonus round and he refuses.

As far as I can tell, the film makes you work quite hard for a coherent read (which I haven't even approximated). I'm not sure what this means, but if the form matches the content, then I'm okay with it (namely, if the film warns against simplicity in our understanding of life, then it could be right to do this by complicating and nuancing everything that it can). I just couldn't yet say if that unity reveals itself or not.

Percy: The one response you aren't allowed to have is that I've read too much into this. Clearly the film bears reading into.