There are many characters and many stories in Magnolia. It seems to want to explain to us what so-called chance and coincidence are through these seemingly unrelated characters and stories. It’s ridiculous that the director seems to mistakenly describe the similarities between characters and events as interrelated miracles, and the coincidences are reflected in those deliberately arranged digital games composed of 8 and 2 that you can’t even notice. superior.
If just "similar" can be regarded as a coincidence, then it is all over the street by chance, and you can kill me by picking it up. About 100 people pass by every minute on every street corner. 80 of them use Facebook and 20 use Twitter. Perhaps 100% are lonely and lonely. Ten years ago, when the film was shot, there was probably no Facebook, and Anderson must have never heard of "Six Degrees Interval" at that time. So I can only use naive ideas like 8 and 2 to make up such a film that seems to have profound meaning but is mysterious and vague.
Perhaps there is only a thin line between coincidence and deliberate. Precisely because this is a film about coincidence, it should not be more "accident" in these digital games, but should be more reflected in the "necessary" connection between each character. For example, Earl and Jimmy: Because they both got cancer, they both cheated their wives, and both had a child left them. So both of them want to see their children before they die. This probably explains that the similarity in their encounters resulted in a "coincidence." And Duny smoked Camel cigarettes, and Phil ordered Camel over the phone—this connection seems weak and far-fetched, so this can only be considered deliberate.
From the perspective of the intricate story and the structure of the relationship between the characters, it seems that it is not as good as Robert Altman's Nashville. The latter's relationship between the characters is more like an alternating net. Although the stories of the characters are parallel, they are all parallel. There is a bit of overlap, and Magnolia’s character relationships are almost parallel, relatively loose: Jim and Jimmy: Both of them are related to Claudia, Jimmy is Claudia’s father, Jimmy is Claudia Boyfriend. ——But there is no connection between Jim and Jimmy. Claudia and Linda both use drugs to escape life, but there is no connection between them.
And the frog rain at the end comes from the "small book" mentioned many times in the film-"Exodus" in the "Old Testament", which handles typical Hollywood contrived works. Because the narrative was too scattered, I had to find a perfect ending that explained all the characters and the story. Not only did everyone's sins be washed away with the flood of frogs, but finally everyone was happy, and it echoed the style of the film from beginning to end that the form is greater than the content.
In fact, how can such a coincidental theme be so difficult and complicated? We live in uncertainty every day. "That little book" said: "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us." I think it means: just because no one knows what will happen in the next second, but the past It will continue to haunt us, so what is waiting for us will always be unforeseen "coincidences" planted in the dark. As long as the director honestly explains the fate of several characters, this theme is actually everywhere in everyone's life...
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