Tom Cruise's movie "Magnolia"

[Pacion]

I saw this on the weekend and confess to being confused by one scene :shock: Has anyone here seen it? There is a scene where it just suddenly starts to literally rain frogs :shock: Do any of the movie buffs here know what, if any, significance this has?

Otherwise, it was a good movie, long, but good. Tom Cruise had an amazing performance and I think I almost fell in love with him :lol: yes, GR, then I woke up :wink:

It was actually on DVD and this is where I felt let down incidentally. Other movies I have seen on DVD (US/Region 1s) tended to have Director's Cut or a repeat of the movie, with the Director's voice over it explaining why certain scenes may or may not have been filmed a certain way. I often found this to be the best part of the movie/DVD :oops: I had hoped that this would have been true of Magnolia (it was a 2 DVD set) but alas, it didn't even have interviews with the cast :shock: how "cheap" is that! :evil:

:lol:

[cocodrilo]

That was a good movie, indeed! Tom Cruise's cheesy role was perfectly played! I saw the film several years ago so will have to check it out again 'cause I honestly have to say I can't remember much of what went on(I see too many movies on cable here, don't watch much TV, too stupid for my taste...) :(

[spatten]

While I don't know what Paul Thomas Anderson's (the director) reason for the frog scene it, my take is this.

Everybody in the film is having these terrible breakdown's in life. So many things are going wrong. Like eveything is so bad, it might just as well finish with a Biblical Plague.

Don't know if that makes sense. BTW, I like to call movies like this "Actor's movies" - because everyone gets to act difficult or emotional scenes. These are the scenes that many actors live for.

Scott

[Hank]

Short answer. the raining frogs mean whatever they mean to you. If they mean nothing to you, there's your answer.

Long answer. Magnolia is not like a cookbook recipe where everything is laid out for you beforehand and you are lead by the hand to an inescapable conclusion, which is obvious and, thus, boring. Instead, Magnolia is like poetry, where you must reflect on your own life experience and supply your own interpretation, which is what makes poetry, like life, beautiful and exciting.

Many people have written about their interpretations of Magnolia and the raining frogs, and if you type "magnolia frogs" into google, you can read them, but they are no more valid than your own. Some note the many Exodus 8:2 references thru out the movie. Others talk about all the odd coincidences depicted in the movie, which despite being odd, still occaasionally happen, which forces us to deal with them. Raining frogs are then the ultimate oddity, which despite being very rare, have occurred. Still others speak of the resignation (bordering on acceptance of fate, no matter how bizarre) to one's life circumstances that occurs to the characters at the end of the movie.

When Paul Thomas Anderson (writer and director) was asked what Magnolia means, he replied, "S*** happens, and then it rains frogs."

[etchuck]

I have Magnolia on DVD. It is one of my favorite acting movies (i.e., I got it for the screenplay and how the cast worked off that screenplay). I'll agree with what was said. It's basically an absurdity in my view, but one that states that things happen that one can try to write off as coincidence but is more ironic and absurd than anything else. Essentially take note of the last few sentences of the narrator in the first few scenes of the movie before the entire "One" section introducing all the players. That explains the entire movie's raison d'etre... maybe. ;)

[spatten]

Anybody else think it should have been called "The Magnolia"?

It seems like all the defining literature of existential philosophy is 2 words beginning with "The..."

Just look at all the works by Kafka, Satre, Camus. The stranger, The Metamorphosis, The Plague, The Rebel and on and on...

When people say it has an absurdist ending, that seems a strong part of existential philosophy - at least as I remember from high school.