Posted by Neil at 209.245.186.246 on June 26, 2001 at 17:59:27:
In Reply to: Ok, listen up shits! posted by P.T. Anderson Fan on June 26, 2001 at 15:29:22:
First of all, let me go on record that I was positively effusive in my praise of MAGNOLIA upon leaving the theater, and even upon slightly lowering my opinion in the weeks that follow, it still made the number 2 (or possibly 3) position of best films of 1999 for me, so I'm not another reactive MAGNOLIA basher, however…
: Anderson did not put the raining frogs in Magnolia because he thought it was cool. There are references to the Bible throughout the entire movie and the raining frogs was basically an epilogue to the film. Anderson was trying to say that sometimes life does not follow some little fucking pattern and that life is usually quite shitty and uneven.
I have no idea how the Bible verse quoted (Exodus 8:2, which reads "And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs") leads to that simplistic an interpretation of the event itself, especially if taken in context with the whole of Exodus 8 (which I quoted more of in an earlier post). It certainly doesn't in my mind.
I'm not claiming that you're wrong or that I have a tremendously wise interpretation of my own to enter here, but I just don't see how those two go together, well, at all.
: Hey, I know Magnolia is in acquired tastes. I don't hate Kevin for dissing the movie at all. But what I do hate is when somebody says that the raining frogs were put into the movie simply because Anderson thought it was cool or that he thought he was making art by doing this.
I agree. I don't think the frogs felt tacked on or pretentious as many people here believe. That doesn't mean, however, that I think it can be easily summarized or interpreted… certainly not into a pithy little phrase like "sometimes life does not follow some little fucking pattern and that life is usually quite shitty and uneven." If it can, I think much, much less of the film. That would be approximately the biggest let-down of my cinema-going life if PTA were to step down and explain that as the ultimate meaning of his epilogue.
The truth is, here on the View Askew board, we've seen more than our share of PTA zombies and Kevin zombies, neither one of which speak well for their respective heroes. Ultimately, however, since this is the Kevin Smith webboard, one is forced to give the ultimate disrespect to the people here who come in order to voice some boneheaded notion that Kevin has no "right" to express his opinion here or in his films. These are a fungus that should be exterminated from the earth. The people here need to be told to shut up and get a life, but you have to give them credit… at least they've been provoked on their "home" territory. The PTA zombies came here to do their bitching.