This article continues our Power of Film series, in which thoughtful viewers share their experiences of meeting God at the movies. (SPOILERS are possible in this series.)
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Magnolia is a film about chance, circumstance, loneliness, interconnectedness, misogyny, regret, forgiveness, death, and frogs. It is a mosaic of 12 characters over a 24 hour day all searching for wholeness in different ways. Claudia is trying to find it in love and cocaine. Frank in controlling women as sexual puppets. Their stories and searches for meaning all collide throughout the film and culminate in the attempted suicide of two of the characters and the death of another. Just when the flame of hope is about snuffed out frogs start falling from the sky.
Magnolia is one of very few movies that I have actually purchased. I purchased it because it did something to me. It affected me in a way that caused me to view the world differently, or, rather, it gave me more understanding for why I view the world the way I do.
It also changed the way I interact with and think about film. There were times in the movie where I was viscerally appalled at a gut level. During Tom Cruise’s speeches, I found myself feeling sick to my stomach knowing that some people really do think this way; that some men allow themselves to be reduced and defined by the amount of women that they can “seduce and destroy.” I started to feel protective for my female friends I was watching the film with. I felt depressed for Claudia as she struggled with cocaine and hopeless for Donnie as he longed for braces, love, and meaning in life. As I watched Magnolia, there were times when I felt overwhelmed, scared, sad, and most of all… just downright filthy, particularly as I found myself relating and empathizing with the characters.
I began to understand that the emotions I was feeling were the very emotions that comprised life itself. Anderson painted a disturbing picture of the depravity of humanity and it was clear by the relationships of these characters that a Savior was needed. Just as Israel needed deliverance from Pharaoh, humanity needs deliverance from itself. Anderson provides that deliverance in the way God provided it in Exodus – by plaguing the country with frogs.
The people are saved by something outside themselves: thousands of frogs raining from the sky. Transcendence is unavoidable. It is literally causing ambulances to crash and knocking people onto their faces, pushing away guns in the hands of suicidal men. I had no other option but to realize that God’s hand is intimately involved in the dirty lives of cocaine addicts, misogynists, child molesters, losers, freaks, and child stars. I had no other option but to realize the God is intimately involved in this dirty life of mine also.
As Magnolia provided for me a divine encounter with whom we are (humanity) and how God graciously intervenes, it also provided for me something entirely new. Magnolia provided me with a new understanding of the power of film. I realized that something of God could be learned through a movie that involved transparent portrayals of sin.
I started watching films in a new way. I wasn’t scared to watch movies that might include obscene language, violence, or sexual content, because I realized that the point of these films was usually much bigger than that. The way God interacts with His children was much bigger than that. Frogs were falling from the sky.