DON'T SEE THIS FILM! ("MAGNOLIA")

I don't know why they call it "Magnolia". Maybe because the tree flowers profusely and gloriously in the spring and then the petals fall to the ground in short order. Is that an appropriate metaphor for Life?

However they named it, don't go. Spare yourself from feeling bad for over three hours. I'm a practicing psychiatrist and psychotherapist, have been for forty years, and this film felt like every bad memory I've had in practicing all this time strung together with hardly a minute of surcease for what felt like an eternity. After two hours I kept seeing places where the film could have ended, but it never did. Anticlimax after anticlimax. It was wishful thinking. I hoped it would end, but it went on and on, gaining momentum. The emotional pain was unbearable. But the film was gripping. And so I toughed it out.

Take this as a warning. If you are faint of heart, if you are easily offended, stay home. See a Walt Disney movie. Read a light novel. Watch no-brainers on television. I am reading you your rights. This is 'informed consent'. If you go, you should be prepared. If you value your complacency and comfort, stay away.

If you do manage to avoid seeing this movie, here are some of the things you will be missing--- two protracted dying scenes, with dying wishes and last-minute confessions, and how they affect the people around them. You will see Tom Cruise, yes, Tom Cruise with long hair and talking in the style of a television evangelist, only the content is promoting lust instead of purity. Ultimately the film reveals the root of his becoming a loathsome stud.

If you avoid this movie, you will be avoiding long, loud invective, streams of profanity and obscenity. That taboo word symbolizes compactly sex and hostility, and isn't very nice, but that is the language of the unconscious, where raw emotions and primitive drives reside. Most Grosse Pointers would find the language alone offensive and gratuitous, but in this case the characters reveal the full extent of their mental anguish and rage, which adds up to a painful learning experience, as we all have to behave in a civilized manner, no matter what. Not these people--- they go for the jugular and hang on.

I haven't said anything about the plot, which is a 24 hour period in Los Angeles, where peoples' lives run parallel and occasionally cross. Things happen. There are strange, unpredictable occurrences. Unbelievable things. Anything can happen and usually does. One of the most outstanding coincidences at the start of the film is that of a young man jumping off a tall building. He is evidently committing suicide. On the way down, he is shot through the stomach by a shotgun blast coming from a window. He is killed before he hits the pavement. He would not have otherwise been killed, as his body lands on a net placed there by window washers. It was his mother who fired the gun. The victim was the son of parents who constantly argued and threatened each other with an empty shotgun. The son became so upset by their fighting that he loaded the gun, hoping that one of his parents would shoot the other, which would have effectively stopped the fighting. As it happened, the parents were indeed arguing at the time of the suicide attempt, and the mother missed the father and killed her son on the way down. She said she didn't know it was loaded.

If you can stay with the film, what you see is yet another version of the dark side of the human condition as previously depicted in "Pulp Fiction" and "American Beauty." Because it is a work of cinematic art, you cannot turn away because you would be turning away from truth and beauty, and that would be a crying shame. What is especially painful is the knowledge that these are people you might know, maybe even people in your own family, maybe even yourself, as having done damage in your life, and being forced to look at the actual consequences.

There is a faint voice of reason in the film, from a more or less sane guardian angel. A gentle cop falls in love with a young woman drug addict. He innocently suggests that they be very open and honest with each other, non-critical, non-judgmental, and accepting each other as they are, keeping no terrible secrets, and forgiving whatever sins or trespasses have come before. There was a message for understanding, forgiveness and compassion, with the realization that this may be our only life, and implying that we should try to live it as benevolently as possible.

In the end I found it more than interesting, that this is the basic philosophy of good religion and good psychotherapy--- encouragement of truth-telling in a safe, confidential, compassionate and empathic environment. Still, there is no learning or therapy that does not involve personal pain. That's just the way it is. It can't be helped. No use asking why.

Dr Bloom is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University School of Medicine. He is a member of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and on the editorial board of the Wayne County Medical Society. He welcomes comments at his email address--- vbloom@comcast.net.