I’m not even sure where to begin this review.  To attempt a description of the plot in less than 5,000 words would be pointless – it’s a three-plus hour film that has separate storylines for each of its nine main characters.  To heap praise on the acting would be a grave understatement – a finer cast may not ever have been assembled.  To laud the direction would be futile – it may be the best of the decade.

The film is Magnolia, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-anticipated follow-up to Boogie Nights.  Here, Anderson has brought back most of his Nights crew (both in front of and behind the camera) and bumped up the complexity of his script to complement the eye-popping beauty of his sweeping direction.  The result seems like Robert Altman’s structure combined with Martin Scorsese’s visual flair.  It’s almost too much to take in during one viewing.  Anderson is brilliant on a cinematic level that no other director has dared to even set foot.  He’s light years ahead of his counterparts and, if the progression of his work is any indication, the twenty-nine-year-old will likely have a mantle full of awards by the time he has his mid-life crisis.

Two of the biggest pleasures of Nights were its audacious opening (the long tracking shot that went inside and outside a disco) and closing scenes (where Mark Wahlberg finally revealed his “gift”).  They’re both done better in Magnolia.  The film starts rather unconventionally, with a narrator dizzily showing three detailed examples of how life is simply a series of coincidences.  The ending is beyond explanation and would be ruined if I were to try.  In between, the film is excruciatingly sad, yet inexplicably beautiful.

Once Magnolia is finished with its initial setup of life’s unpredictability, viewers are quickly introduced to the main characters.  And when I say “quickly,” brothers and sisters, I mean quickly.  Before you can catch your breath, a third of the film has already flown by.  Which is probably a good thing, on account of the running time.  The pace gradually slows down as the film progresses, but as the tempo diminishes, you can start to feel the pressure slowly building in each of the characters and storylines.

The film is set in the San Fernando Valley and encompasses the nine major characters during one rainy day in Southern California.  In fact, most of the film takes place over a half-hour period.  There is a corny cop (John C. Reilly, For Love of the Game), his cokehead love interest (Melora Walters, L.A. Doctors), her game-show host father (Philip Baker Hall, The Insider), his current and former whiz kid contestants (newcomer Jeremy Blackman and Happy, Texas’ William H. Macy, respectively).  There’s also the game show’s producer (Jason Robards, Beloved), his trophy wife (Julianne Moore, An Ideal Husband), estranged son (Tom Cruise, Eyes Wide Shut) and home care nurse (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Flawless).

To try to pick a center to Magnolia’s story would be ludicrous.  There isn’t one.  There isn’t a main character, either, and not all of the roles intersect with each other.  Some do, but most don’t.  Some relationships between characters are implied but never shown during the film.  The only similarity in each character is that they all are on the run from their past, whether they realize it or not.  If anything, Magnolia shows the effect of damaged relationships between fathers and their children.  Each character is directly messed up as a result of their paternal bonds.

Of the actors, Cruise will get the most attention.  He’s the biggest star and has the best lines (some of the greatest woman-hating dialogue since Jason Patric in Your Friends and Neighbors).  Although Moore has already been mentioned as a potential Oscar candidate, I found her role to be a bit inferior to the others.  She’s not bad, but her character simply bursts into hysterics in every scene.  More impressive were Robards, Reilly and Walters.  And Blackman and Hoffman.  And Hall.  Macy’s character, while splendidly acted, did little to add to the rest of the film.  If the role were missing, the film would not be affected.

But the real star here is Anderson, who glues together long, sweeping takes with quick edits and unique camera angles to create a visual masterpiece.  A lot of people will gripe about the running time, and Anderson even has the gall to have a character piss their pants during the two-hour mark of the film, as if to egg on viewers with weak bladders.  Some people may find Jon Brion’s (Anderson’s Hard Eight) score annoying, but I thought it was very well done, as well as a perfect complement to Magnolia’s songs, which are performed by Aimee Mann.  At one point in the film, one of Mann’s songs is performed by each character in a karaoke music-video style that will certainly be remembered as one of the greatest cinematic moments of the year.

3:05 – for strong adult language, drug use, nudity, sexual content and graphic violence