magnolia question
Mac
meaning. Either I missed some direct/obscure reference to it in the movie,
or there is some ethereal, deep, philosophical meaning the audience is
supposed to be clever enough to figure out but I'm too lazy to try. Does
anyone know?
Hughes
Isn't it the name of a road/street that cuts through multiple sections
(and therefore lives) of LA? ... Or something?
--
Mind you, its undetectible after death.
aemilia
<mcn...@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
The one thing I could come up with is that the film was filmed and set
in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles <my hometown of sorts> and
there is a very long street which runs east-west through it named
"Magnolia Blvd", and it runs from very affluent to very
poor....conceivably, all the locations and homes in this film could be
on Magnolia.
But, that is just my theory. There also happened to be a magnolia
flower in the print ads and film trailers as well as the DVD, VHS, and
CD covers.
aemilia
juan
part of the song that goes like this:
See them big plantations burning
Hear the cracking of the whips
Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
(And) see the ghosts of slavery ships
I can hear them tribes a-moaning
(I can) hear the undertaker's bell
(Yeah), nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
Michael Anderson verified this in an interview he had with journalist Albert
Frossjean about his films. It appears he was inspired so much by the word
'magnolia' in the song that he decided to use it as a title.
juan
--
inside the musems
infinity goes up on trial
voices echo this is what
salvation must be like after a while
inside the football stadiums
neanderthals disprove evolutionary theory
voices echo this is what
life must really be about
John Harkness
>it taken directly from the bob dylan song 'blind willie mctell', from the
>part of the song that goes like this:
>
>See them big plantations burning
>Hear the cracking of the whips
>Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
>(And) see the ghosts of slavery ships
>I can hear them tribes a-moaning
>(I can) hear the undertaker's bell
>(Yeah), nobody can sing the blues
>Like Blind Willie McTell
>
>
>Michael Anderson verified this in an interview he had with journalist Albert
>Frossjean about his films. It appears he was inspired so much by the word
>'magnolia' in the song that he decided to use it as a title.
>
>juan
Look, Juan made a funny!
Congrats.
John Harkness
Jim Linwood
>>meaning. Either I missed some direct/obscure reference to it in the movie,
>>or there is some ethereal, deep, philosophical meaning the audience is
>>supposed to be clever enough to figure out but I'm too lazy to try. Does
>
Q: Did the title come to you early along?
A: Yeah, but at the time, I couldn't say exactly why. Yes, Magnolia is a street
in the valley, and I knew something was going to happen in an intersection in
the valley, but it was still not totally clear why that was going to be the
title. And it wasn't until the last two weeks of the writing that certain
validations for the title really started coming. One of them was the discovery
of this thing called the Magonia, which is this mythical place above the
firmament where shit goes and hangs out before it falls from the sky. I think
I'd come to it through Charles Fort, who wrote about strange phenomena like
rains of frogs and Greenbury Hill. The Magonia is this place where, when ships
disappear from the ocean, that's where they go, and only later will an anchor
from it fall from the sky.
-Paul Thomas Anderson-
http://www.ptanderson.com/featurefilms/magnolia/secrets.htm
JL
Dalton
<mcn...@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
http://www.ptanderson.com/featurefilms/magnolia/secrets.htm-
There has been much debate over the title of the film & PTA has said
repeatedly that it should be left up to your interpretation (along
with the Frog Sequence & many other elements of the film). There are
many Magnolia flowers (or paintings) scattered throughout the film.
Here are Paul's comments on this topic:
"I always had the title of Magnolia in my head even before I wrote
it," says Anderson. And the a couple of weird things stared to happen
that verified the title for me. I did some research on the Magnolia
flower. There's a concept that if you eat the bark from the Magnolia
tree it can help cure cancer.
"There's no reference to it in the film," Anderson says in an
interview with the online entertainment website, Mr. Showbiz.
"It's many different things: It's a street in the Valley. It's a
flower."
Perhaps more tellingly, most of the women in the film have flower
names, like Lily and Rose, but Anderson told Mr. Showbiz that if any
of the characters represents "Magnolia," it is Claudia, the coke-fried
basket case movingly portrayed by Melora Walters.
A key phrase that gets repeated throughout the film -- "we may be
through with the past, but the past isn't through with us" -- is at
the heart of the film's meaning, Anderson told Mr. Showbiz.
Q: Did the title come to you early along?
A: Yeah, but at the time, I couldn't say exactly why. Yes, Magnolia is
a street in the valley, and I knew something was going to happen in an
intersection in the valley, but it was still not totally clear why
that was going to be the title. And it wasn't until the last two
weeks of the writing that certain validations for the title really
started coming. One of them was the discovery of this thing called
the Magonia, which is this mythical place above the firmament where
shit goes and hangs out before it falls from the sky. I think I'd
come to it through Charles Fort, who wrote about strange phenomena
like rains of frogs and Greenbury Hill. The Magonia is this place
where, when ships disappear from the ocean, that's where they go, and
only later will an anchor from it fall from the sky.
juan
because if you dont, and do to it what the baddies did in Fargo to the body,
i'll denounce you to the Alaskan Rights for Animals Foundation.
and as for your taste in cinema, John, is it as abismal as always?
juan
--
p.s. long live alexandre sokhurov!
"John Harkness" <j...@attcanada.ca> wrote in message
news:3bf17a5d....@nntp.attcanada.ca...
Sawfish
> http://www.ptanderson.com/featurefilms/magnolia/secrets.htm-
This provides us with as good a reason as is necessary why it is not a
good idea to view film as instructive, other than for techniques, effect,
emotional impact, etc.
I mean, would you want to learn any life-lessons from someone who seems
thrilled by the notion of anchors falling from the sky?
Man...An Ancient Race
so the movie is a pile of dump that fell out of anderson's ass?
Jeff Coleman
"Sawfish" <m...@q7.com> wrote in message news:10057564...@q7.q7.com...
> Dalton <Dalton...@hotmail.com> writes:
>
> >Q: Did the title come to you early along?
>
> >A: Yeah, but at the time, I couldn't say exactly why. Yes, Magnolia is
> >a street in the valley, and I knew something was going to happen in an
> >intersection in the valley, but it was still not totally clear why
> >that was going to be the title. And it wasn't until the last two
> >weeks of the writing that certain validations for the title really
> >started coming. One of them was the discovery of this thing called
> >the Magonia, which is this mythical place above the firmament where
> >shit goes and hangs out before it falls from the sky. I think I'd
> >come to it through Charles Fort, who wrote about strange phenomena
> >like rains of frogs and Greenbury Hill. The Magonia is this place
> >where, when ships disappear from the ocean, that's where they go, and
> >only later will an anchor from it fall from the sky.
>
> This provides us with as good a reason as is necessary why it is not a
> good idea to view film as instructive, other than for techniques, effect,
> emotional impact, etc.
>
> I mean, would you want to learn any life-lessons from someone who seems
> thrilled by the notion of anchors falling from the sky?
Such as Charles Fort? Or Aleister Crowley? Or Robert Anton Wilson?
I'd be happy to learn from people like that.
Jeff
--
www.isaacpriestley.com
Latest album "Days of Being Dumb"
available for download now!
Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
Anvils, maybe. But never anchors.
Ivan
--
"If I always knew what I meant, I'd be a genius." -- Dick Powell, MURDER, MY
SWEET (1944)
Jeremy Heilman
>I mean, would you want to learn any life-lessons from someone who seems
>thrilled by the notion of anchors falling from the sky?
I'm going to paste part of my non-spoiler review, which points out
what I feel are the film's lessons...
The film’s narrative structure is amazingly complex. It is set in LA,
where they make movies, and it's central theme can be stated as "What
happens when things don't happen as they do in the movies?" So to
hammer in that theme, Anderson starts with a trio of
faux-documentaries (documentary cinema is supposed to be truth, but
it's as much a lie as the rest of it [since we're getting an edited,
single viewpoint], especially here where the stories are lies). As the
film progresses, it escalates the level of narrative falseness. It
continues to reference the lying media with the exposure of
consecutively greater misdeeds, such as the phony Jimmy Gator news
story, the Speak and Destroy lecture, the quiz show which feeds on the
preciousness of its child geniuses. At one point, it even blames one
of the great bad guys of melodramatic fiction – the Freemasons! This
narrative stretching does not continue unchecked. In the third hour
the film seems unable to contain itself and almost explodes. Near the
end of the film there’s an absolute hysteria running throughout the
cast. The rules of moviedom have run amok, and they’re all being hit
by the consequences. Magnolia’s world becomes not a reality, but a
movie where reality is supposed to exist, but things are playing out
as in a movie. We have descended (ascended?) literally into a musical,
and our reality (and the reality that the movie had in its first hour)
is disconnected from what is shown on screen. Yet, we feel closer to
it than ever, since Anderson has subverted our expectations of what a
film should promise/deliver, so we can relate to how the characters
onscreen feel. The explanation the film offers up, which is that
"these things happen" is at once the most naive and most wise
statement in the entire film.
Anderson deconstruction of the melodrama shows how phony its solutions
are, and as a cautionary tale. He warns us not to expect a pat
resolution or explanation for any events in life, as it may not be
coming. The film’s ending is deliberately ambiguous and unclear
(though optimistic since the protagonists seem to have learned from
their experiences). Despite all of the histrionics, Anderson seems to
be trying to connect with audiences emotionally only so we’re more
likely to accept his intellectual message, not the other way around
(using intellectual techniques to better engage us emotionally). Many
of his scenes ascend to high drama (and even operatic levels) despite
their relative mundanity. That’s because he’s created a world where
things happen in movie terms that’s populated by characters that think
they’re living a real life. That tension is astonishing and justifies
the extraordinarily overblown feel. It’s no coincidence that the film
was released right before the year 2000 hit. The millennial feeling
that the world as we know it is ending is the defining emotion here,
and has never been better put on film.
Jeremy
---
http://www.geocities.com/nyfilmfest
Sawfish
...and you are quite welcome to do so. For living in the world as I know
it, I'll stick with the ideas of Nicolo Machievelli, Charles Darwin, and
Albert Einstein.
Sawfish
Yes. That's what I meant.
Thank you.
Sawfish
Jeremy Heilman <jeremy_...@hotmail.com> writes:
Let me clarify.
I had gotten myself off into one of my favorite snits before I read the
thread. The nature of the pet snit is "Should society rely on an artist
for a realistically applicable view of the world, when by definition, all
art's primary palette is emotional range, not objective observation and
data gathering?" And the implication in this is that if one accepts Art as
Truth, one is essentially accepting an argument by authority (artist's
view) as explanation for phenomena. One suspends one's own intellect in
favor of the emotion chords struck by the artist.
I'll state up front that I know it's not all that simple, and yet, I
believe that this is where the essence of the notion that "one can learn
from art,"--and suspiciously, this is most loudly ennunciated by artists
and their ilk--lies. I realize that an artist *can* portray an objective
reality (or so close to an objective reality that the difference doesn't
matter). Sometimes by intent and integrity, sometimes by blind, dumb luck.
And in such cases the comsumer of the art *may* come away enlightened in
the subject area. But I strongly feel that art's main function is its
emotive power, and in this way it is more aligned with propaganda and
demogogery as a source of objective reality than it is with direct
observation, or realistic documentary (although with the latter you must
*still* be aware of the documetnarian's own views, which might skew the
objectivity).
So, I tend to feel that art is like any other sensual pleasure: it is to
be enjoyed for the sensory, emotional responses it evokes. There's nothing
like The Ride of the Valkyries to get one "up", nor like The Fish for
feeling wistful and enchanted, like progressing knowingly toward one's
fate--brilliantly used by Mallick in Days of Heaven, I might add. But if
you think that by watching JFK you are going to learn anything of
substantial value, I'd argue that you're sadly mistaken. You'll learn more
about the guy who made the film, than about the JFK assassination. You'll
also learn about film technique, but again, if you learn anything about
the subject matter, you probably didn't know very much about it to begin
with (in which case you'll learn some gross facts like the names of the
principals, the important dates, etc.,--maybe).
My opinion only.
Jeremy Heilman
> But I strongly feel that art's main function is its
> emotive power, and in this way it is more aligned with propaganda and
> demogogery as a source of objective reality than it is with direct
> observation, ...
Considering your views on the function of art, the irony becomes that
you rejected Magnolia's lesson since it was stated in a movie, and
that lesson says that you shouldn't look to the movies for lessons.
:)
Jeremy
Sawfish
>:)
>Jeremy
Ironically, I haven't seen the film yet...
But seriously, this would be case of art getting it right (in my
subjective viewpoint). It's important to note that I would mistrust the
source of the information, and likely disqualify it as a reliable source.
The conclusion presented may actual be valid, but without independent
verification, it's not reliable enough.
...but let us not forget that a broken watch is right twice a day.
--
--Sawfish
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"Wha's yo name, fool?"
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