I have never been a big movie person. Something about their runtimes probably. The fact that you typically watch them under a warm blankie on the couch, in the evening time, when the lights are low. My lids grow heavy and glasses come off. At the theater, my legs grow restless. I go to the bathroom for the same reasons I did in high school, to play on my phone and allow five minutes to pass where my undivided attention is not required.
This year, though, there was a movie that broke through for me. That movie was Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 epic Magnolia. My partner Carmen and I watched it over two viewings (this was critical, as the film’s runtime is an indulgent 188 minutes). I didn’t know anything about the movie, except that a bunch of songs from Aimee Mann’s Bachelor No. 2, or the Last Remains of the Dodo were on the soundtrack. Everything that happened was happening to me for the first time.
A couple weeks before watching Magnolia, we had taken a trip out to Washington state to visit Carmen’s dad. We drove from Bremerton across the Olympic peninsula, out to Rialto Beach on the Pacific Coast. Carmen showed her dad that Apple Music (or any streaming service), will have all the full albums of his favorite singers, that he doesn’t just have to listen to the Lucinda Williams Pandora station. He wanted to listen to that Aimee Mann album, not the Magnolia soundtrack, but the full album, and he wanted to listen to it loud as fuck. Sat in the back of his manual transmission Subaru Outback, I kind of ignored the album, looking out the window at thickets of trees and clear-cut fields where trees used to be. By the third or fourth excellent song, Aimee had my full attention. As the climax of “Deathly” pushed the Subaru’s stereo to its limit, Carmen turned to look at me.
So, it felt like kismet when we logged into my mom’s Criterion account and saw that they were featuring Magnolia, right there on the homepage. We’d both been thinking about Aimee Mann since that long ride out to Rialto Beach. So we watched it.
Yes, the players in Magnolia are all world class, and Paul Thomas Anderson is right in his San Fernando Valley comfort zone, but the use of Mann’s music is what really moved me. The movie is kind of about listening to Bachelor No. 2 loud as fuck, which is probably how it should be heard. Also, if a movie is too long, just watch it in two sittings.
Spring Onion’s Seated Figure is out now.
