I hereby commence my rant. None of this will make sense if you haven’t seen “Magnolia” or “There Will be Blood.”
That Paul Thomas Anderson (director of Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will be Blood) is really beginning to tick me off.
Anderson sure likes Christian symbolism. Daniel Day-Lewis’ character in “There Will be Blood,” Daniel Plainview, is a proxy for Satan. The whole movie was a kind of spiritual warfare type of movie. I found the movie’s Christian symbolism and parallels between Christ and Daniel Plainview’s anti-Christ sort of fun to note because they made me feel smart when I caught them. But that was pure vanity; they were anything but subtle. So finally I found them irritating. Though Daniel Day-Lewis is my boy, “There will be Blood” is ham-fisted in its symbolism, a symbolism that does little to advance or improve the story.
But at least it was better than “Magnolia,” one of the most overrated movies of the past few decades.
Sigh. How to start?
Kurt Vonnegut describes Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” as the only story that begins perfectly grim and then, step by step, just gets grimmer and grimmer. “Magnolia” follows the same pattern right up until frogs fall out of the sky. Anderson brings a Calvinist sensibility, if not a Calvinist ontology, to the movie. (Thomas was raised Catholic, however. Thank you, Wikipedia.) Calvinism holds that grace is completely unearned and also efficacious, which is to say that it’s pretty much irresistible. If god wants you to be saved, well, you’re gonna be saved whether you want it or not. It’s not “thy will be done,” but “You’d better believe thy will be done.”
So it’s sort of like this. Calvinism suggests that things go to the crapper because it’s in the nature of things to go to the crapper—the worlds is in bad shape and it will just get worse. Which is a different view from, say, Catholicism, which holds nature to be majorly screwed up but still pretty good. Like Montgomery Clift’s face after that car accident. Calvinism holds that it takes a supernatural departure from the nature of things for good to emerge. And that’s just what Paul Thomas Anderson not so subtly suggests in “Magnolia.” In Anderson’s obsessive Biblically symbolic world, that damn plague of frogs is just what the good doctor ordered. Insert miracle here. Dismal lives turn around. Very Calvinist, that Anderson.
My problem with it is that none of it feels right. The only possible reason in the world to advance a Calvinist view of anything is because one believes it to be true. I doubt that Anderson is a real Calvinist, by which I mean the kind that believes in God. And I also don’t sense that Paul is working through any real problems, whether emotional or theological or ontological. He doesn’t seem tortured to me at all. His movies have the feel of a director who feels like he ought to feel tortured because all great geniuses are tortured. And he’s a genius, so…..
You get the drift.
The guy likes Christian symbolism, and that’s fine. Those who know me might think that I would find Christian symbolism appealing. And I do, I suppose. I like Christian symbols, however, when those symbols don’t start and end with themselves but purport to point to something real, something true. Whether or not they really are true, they are more powerful when they are taken seriously as possibly true. Daniel Day-Lewis’ character begins and ends with him. There’s no pointing going on at all despite the “flood” of Christian symbolism. Satan only makes sense if there’s a God to rebel against, but there is no God in “There Will be Blood.” Similarly, “Magnolia’s” plague of frogs is literally incredible. It’s a triple scoop of cinematic irony that banks on the viewers’ unwillingness to point out that the emperor has no clothes.
I hereby close my rant.
Ribbet.
That Paul Thomas Anderson (director of Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will be Blood) is really beginning to tick me off.
Anderson sure likes Christian symbolism. Daniel Day-Lewis’ character in “There Will be Blood,” Daniel Plainview, is a proxy for Satan. The whole movie was a kind of spiritual warfare type of movie. I found the movie’s Christian symbolism and parallels between Christ and Daniel Plainview’s anti-Christ sort of fun to note because they made me feel smart when I caught them. But that was pure vanity; they were anything but subtle. So finally I found them irritating. Though Daniel Day-Lewis is my boy, “There will be Blood” is ham-fisted in its symbolism, a symbolism that does little to advance or improve the story.
But at least it was better than “Magnolia,” one of the most overrated movies of the past few decades.
Sigh. How to start?
Kurt Vonnegut describes Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” as the only story that begins perfectly grim and then, step by step, just gets grimmer and grimmer. “Magnolia” follows the same pattern right up until frogs fall out of the sky. Anderson brings a Calvinist sensibility, if not a Calvinist ontology, to the movie. (Thomas was raised Catholic, however. Thank you, Wikipedia.) Calvinism holds that grace is completely unearned and also efficacious, which is to say that it’s pretty much irresistible. If god wants you to be saved, well, you’re gonna be saved whether you want it or not. It’s not “thy will be done,” but “You’d better believe thy will be done.”
So it’s sort of like this. Calvinism suggests that things go to the crapper because it’s in the nature of things to go to the crapper—the worlds is in bad shape and it will just get worse. Which is a different view from, say, Catholicism, which holds nature to be majorly screwed up but still pretty good. Like Montgomery Clift’s face after that car accident. Calvinism holds that it takes a supernatural departure from the nature of things for good to emerge. And that’s just what Paul Thomas Anderson not so subtly suggests in “Magnolia.” In Anderson’s obsessive Biblically symbolic world, that damn plague of frogs is just what the good doctor ordered. Insert miracle here. Dismal lives turn around. Very Calvinist, that Anderson.
My problem with it is that none of it feels right. The only possible reason in the world to advance a Calvinist view of anything is because one believes it to be true. I doubt that Anderson is a real Calvinist, by which I mean the kind that believes in God. And I also don’t sense that Paul is working through any real problems, whether emotional or theological or ontological. He doesn’t seem tortured to me at all. His movies have the feel of a director who feels like he ought to feel tortured because all great geniuses are tortured. And he’s a genius, so…..
You get the drift.
The guy likes Christian symbolism, and that’s fine. Those who know me might think that I would find Christian symbolism appealing. And I do, I suppose. I like Christian symbols, however, when those symbols don’t start and end with themselves but purport to point to something real, something true. Whether or not they really are true, they are more powerful when they are taken seriously as possibly true. Daniel Day-Lewis’ character begins and ends with him. There’s no pointing going on at all despite the “flood” of Christian symbolism. Satan only makes sense if there’s a God to rebel against, but there is no God in “There Will be Blood.” Similarly, “Magnolia’s” plague of frogs is literally incredible. It’s a triple scoop of cinematic irony that banks on the viewers’ unwillingness to point out that the emperor has no clothes.
I hereby close my rant.
Ribbet.
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