"You regret what you fucking want"
Magnolia is very....all over the place, but in a good way. The part where the whole movie came together for me was the scene in which Earl Partridge's voiceover accompanies the various stories going about their normal activities. The voiceover is very real to me and seems honest and believable, which is a main reason why I enjoy the scene. Usually directors use music to make silent scenes more emotional, but here the lone voice is more powerful than any other type of sound. The words Earl says are powerful and full of emotion and they seem to let off the aura of the entire film. Regret. Regret and lies and cheating. These are the main themes that seem to stick out to me. He recounts how much he regrets what he has done and tries to reach out to those who are told to wrongly "never regret anything". The whole movie seems to revolve around remorse and regret for past events. His multiple uses of "What did I do" takes this whole idea and puts it into 3 simple words. As his voice envelopes all of the stories he applies his own to all of them. His tone and words are simply heartbreaking and made me feel as if I personally knew the characters, therefore, increasing my apathy.
Though this movie is fast paced and jumpy, it has a sense of unity at this scene, and thats why it is so memorable. All of the interrelation between every characters story becomes one and they are unified by one mans words.
Although a different scene stuck out to me, I definitely see why this scene would be so memorable. Earl doesn't talk throughout the movie except for a couple of phrases and then all of the sudden he's talking nonstop about his regrets in life. What he says really does embody the themes of the movie.
ReplyDeleteYeah I definitely agree with you. I think regret is one of the main themes of the movie. I kind of think the story of Earl almost encapsulates all of the characters' stories. As he is dying, he has lots of regrets about the way he lived his life. Its a powerful message that we should live our lives so that we don't end up like Earl one day.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you on how powerful this scene was. Throughout the movie, the director made use of music in order to make his scenes more fluid and to connect the different characters' situations. However, in this part, he mixed it up by using the old man's voice instead of a lengthy song, which really caused this moment to be so memorable. Although the songs he chose usually were relevant to the events that were occurring, I think using the man's voice in this scene was a great idea to make the connections between the characters that much more powerful and emotional. The sadness and regret would not have come off the way it did without the man's ashamed words.
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