P.T. Anderson, according to many accounts, did not begin writing “Magnolia” with any thoughts of religious overtones. The amphibian event in the film was not inspired by a biblical reference (that was written in after the script was mostly done) but by the work of Charles Fort, who wrote books about scientifically inexplicable events.
Anderson has been fairly circumspect on what the movie is about, telling Charlie Rose during an interview that a) “none of us could figure it out, it’s too hard to describe” and b) he could go on all day with the subject. He concludes: “Let’s just say here’s who is in it….”
But quite plainly the film is an exploration of failure, regret, forgiveness and, in the end, the prospect of redemption that defies any sense of propriety. Some might call that grace.
In speaking about the film Anderson once said that the character of the police officer was a picture of moral certainty that was alien and yet attractive to him.
“It’s a little embarrassing to say, ‘No, I’m not up to the moral place that someone like Jim Kurring is.’ I’m trying, and maybe by writing it down it’ll get me there faster.”
At the time he stumbled across the Ex. 8 reference that appears repeatedly in the film, Anderson said he was “going through a weird, personal time”, and he started to understand “why people turn to religion in times of trouble, and maybe my form of finding religion was reading about [a supernatural event] and realizing that makes sense to me somehow”.
It seems clear that with this film Anderson, who both wrote and directed, made a public record of his personal search to understand something he longed for. Wonderfully and terribly he comes to the brink of a place familiar to many Christians but stops on the doorstep.
Much of the condemnation for this film emanates from the ugliness and profanity that pervades it. Everyone in the film, with the possible exception of the police officer and male nurse, are terribly flawed people who have fallen far.
But all of them, save one, is forgiven by the film’s end. I can’t help but think the impact of that would have been lessened by white-washing their failings.
More important, the seaminess in the film is not just a cinematic contrivance. Various accounts have Anderson referencing the sexual abuse by her father of Fiona Apple, his girlfriend at the time, in the creation of some characters. Other ugly and actual events are said to have leavened his script, making the story in some ways an exploration of the terrible things people really do to themselves and others.
Maybe we could all be righteously incensed if he had simply looked at the putrid insides and outsides of corrupt people bathing in filth. But regardless of Anderson’s hedging in interviews, that just isn’t what the film is about.
If nothing else, the movie is about hope. Toward the end of the “Magnolia” trailer the words appear: “People fall down. People look up.” They don’t pick themselves out of the mire, they don’t bootstrap themselves to salvation. They need something outside of themselves and are looking for it.
Many say that movies like this don’t work as tools of conversion. I agree. This movie in particular isn’t evangelistic, at least in part, because the person who created it clearly sees himself as a seeker rather than a shepherd. He doesn’t stand with the ninety-and-nine. Maybe that’s why he has such an amazing sense of how lost people can be.
But I might quibble about whether there is any “ministry” that can come from the movie. Anderson and his film are unintentionally analogous to the namesake character of a well-known parable who acted in a way his betters felt was beneath them and, in the process, taught everyone something unconscionable about God.
The spiritual teaching of “Magnolia” may be mostly for those of us who are “saved” and need reminders of what it felt like to receive a gift both unearned and undeserved.
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