Magnolia will destroy you.

It's a weird destruction, if only because it's harder to trace back to its source than most. Usually, when a movie destroys you, you can chart the path backwards through the film and recall all the moments when the dynamite was piled up and the fuse lit. You can sometimes even spot the explosion itself, when your insides flew into ten different directions, either out of glee or abject sorrow.

With Magnolia, the seduction is so subtle, so nuanced and rich, that you might not even realize it's happening. Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson invites you into a world of connections so improbable they shouldn't even exist, with parallels that defy belief, and introduces you to his cast of characters. Slowly you get to know them, then they pivot into new directions you could never have expected, and as they pivot you feel each blade twist in your stomach. Tensions mount, dissipate; dominoes fall in heavenly order and frogs rain down to topple them over in chaotic piles. The characters all end up miles from where they began the film; some move cautiously into the light, and others sink deeper into their private nights. When it's all over, you can't describe what you've seen; worse, you can barely understand it. But you're devastated by Magnolia, and that means it's done its job.

Anderson is one of those rare talents whose growth in his craft is almost scary to behold. With Magnolia, he's progressed light years from his work in Boogie Nights, which itself was light years from Hard Eight--and considering that all three are each brilliant in their own way, that's a stunning voyage to make. Nights seems to have been an attempt to achieve what Magnolia achieves, in a sense: to tell the real stories of a set of characters in surprising and gut-wrenching ways. Somehow, that film mananged the necessary technical construction, but lacked the secret ingredient: the emotion. Like the decade it reflected, it felt soulless at times--pure wit and craftsmanship minus the heart.

Magnolia overflows with heart, though not solely in a warm sense. There's warmth there, but also the sharp sting of passion and the dull ache of regret--especially regret. You ache with all of the characters; your mind will go dizzy from attempting to follow them through their journeys in the film, especially since just like them, you'll have no idea where they're heading or how they'll behave when they get there. (That's refreshing in and of itself--a Hollywood movie you can't telegraph from the back row of the theater.)

You can thank Anderson's script for the film's emotional impact, but some of the credit for Magnolia must also go to its actors, who take these characters and bring them to shockingly realistic life. There's not a bad performance in the bunch, but if I had to pick one standout among the actors, it would have to be the greatest actor on the planet, Philip Baker Hall. He portrays Jimmy Gator, longtime host of the kids' game show What Do You Know? The man is subtlety in motion in all his film roles, which is why he's a genius, but in Magnolia that subtlety masks a darkness you won't even believe when it's exposed naked on the screen in front of you. To realize that such a darkness was in that character throughout the film--and by extension, also in Hall's performance--and that you had no way of sensing it will blow your mind. Stunning, stunning stuff.

You also can't praise Magnolia without praising the music, both the songs contributed by Aimee Mann and the orchestral score from Jon Brion. Anderson has admitted that he was inspired by Mann's songs in writing the script for Magnolia, and the sense of yearning that her music embodies is effortlessly reflected in Anderson's screenplay. When the two are coupled together, it's heartwrending. As for the score, there seem to be huge stretches where the action is accompanied by endless stretches of score, and that music ratchets up the emotional tension to an almost unbearable degree. The music also brilliantly ties the disparate threads of the film's many plots together thematically, in ways you might not even realize until the movie's over and you're discussing it with friends. More than simply commenting on the action, the music reflects it, betrays it, collides the film's elements together in revealing ways.

You need to see this film. No doubt, you will have heard about many of Magnolia's tricks and gifts by now, whether from friends who have seen it or through the media. Regardless, this is a movie that you need to experience in a theater, with an audience, as it was meant to be seen. You need to be destroyed by Magnolia, because that destruction is sheer filmgoing bliss.