Soundtracking: "Magnolia"
Wednesday, December 13, 2017 at 1:30PM With a new Paul Thomas Anderson film waiting in the wings, Chris looks at the music of Magnolia...
Rarely is a film and musician as inextricable from one another as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia and Aimee Mann. The singularity of her voice repeated throughout helps streamline Anderson’s massively expansive vision, like a tidy bow pulling together the film’s many untidy pieces. With the film’s religious themes and allegories, her omniscient voice makes Mann the film’s watchful angel, perhaps a messenger of God. She's as much as character as everyone else, if a far more enlightened one.
“One is the loneliest number...” and Anderson announces his ensemble as a collection of “ones”. The Harry Nilsson track is a smart choice, establishing that no matter their twisty associations to one another, each is essentially isolated. Having Mann cover the classic song marries the old and the new, sounding like something that’s lingered for an indeterminate time but still aches like a fresh bruise. A curse of the biblical variety destined to perpetuate and repeat itself...