I have an affinity for films about people. By this, I mean films about honest interactions and relationships: relationships of people and other people; relationships between individuals and their community and surroundings.

The Dreamlife of Angels

As an example, I present my second favorite movie of the year, Erick Zonca's The Dreamlife of Angels. A young French woman kicking around the country gets a job working in a small sweater factory in Lille after a chance run-in with the factory owner in a cafe. Not knowing any of the workers, Isa (Elodie Bouchez) begins a lunch break conversation with Marie (Natacha Regnier) over a shared cigarette. At the end of the work day, Isa convinces Marie to let her bunk at her place. From this point, the two begin a new friendship. The Dreamlife of Angels puts you into this friendship at different intervals over a short time span as the women -- and the viewer -- get to know one another. As the film progressed, I could feel my allegiance switch from Marie to Isa as Marie falls into a foolish and ultimately destructive love affair with an upper-middle class pub owner, Chriss (Gregorie Colin). As this switch of allegiance happened both times I saw the film in the theatre, I have to believe that it is intentional. This is the beauty of Zonca's filmmaking -- he led me into Isa's emotions. My emotional switch toward Isa, whom I considered irresponsible at the beginning of the film, is connected to Isa's emotions for Marie in the film. By great craft, Zonca had me feeling emotions akin to those of his characters.

At first I was in conflict with the end of the film, as I have a problem with movies that portray women as nothing more than victims of men and lost love. I am disturbed when a film celebrates a broken woman who just can't live without her man. But viewing the film again, I believe The Dreamlife of Angels is not about a woman's destruction. Marie is a very angry person, akin to Robert De Niro's Jonny Boy in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets. Marie's friendship with Isa is a way for her to temper her tendencies. Yet, as if she is an alcoholic who has fallen off the wagon, Marie pursues Chriss. Marie can stop herself, but she chooses not too. If you only watch the last third of the movie, one could say that Marie loses herself for Chriss -- yet taken as a whole, Marie is really let down by the fact she cannot let go of her violent emotions. Isa tries to save Marie through their friendship and by presenting a life full of others and love, but Marie is myopic in both love and world view. Marie jumps to escape, rightly or wrongly.

John Sayles is the greatest filmmaker working today who delivers films about people and how they live amongst one another in their communities. In all of his films, Sayles has the keen ability to capture ideas and voices and present them in film as both a running commentary on human beings and as a compelling story. Taken individually, Sayles's films are not all great works. Many are just good movies. A few are very good movies. I would say his City Of Hope is a great movie. But taken as a whole, Sayles' work is more consistently stellar than that of most other filmmakers.

Limbo

I would rank Limbo as one of Sayles' better movies, and also as one of the better films of 1999. Limbo begins as a story about the new, slightly uneasy relationship between Joe Gastineau (David Strathairn) and Donna De Angelo (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). Joe is a former commercial fisherman who stopped fishing 15 years prior due to a tragic accident. Now Joe is a handyman/jack of all trades who works around town, but finds his main employment working for two women who have come to Alaska to open a small resort. Donna's teenage daughter, Noelle (Vanessa Martinez), also works for the couple. She also has a crush on Joe. When the daughter discovers that her mother, who has a long track record of men behind her, is involved with Joe, it is yet another bone of contention between the two women. Surrounding this love affair between Joe and Donna and the uneasy relationship between Noelle and her mother, is, as in all Sayles films, a healthy set of supporting stories that color in the backdrop of the locale and community. For Sayles, there is no film that is "just" a story. Sayles is always commenting in his films. The first half of Limbo is a commentary on the commercialization of Alaska -- "the last frontier in the world," to paraphrase one of the film's characters. For Sayles, the loss of a true sense of history and genuine community to this commercialization is regrettable.

The second half of Limbo is about risk. As Sayles states in his commentary on the recently released DVD, he puts the characters in a situation that puts them at risk physically and mentally, but he is also asking the viewer to take a risk. One either accepts the end of Limbo or rejects it, for the ending is by design a direct question to the audience.

Paul Thomas Anderson shares with John Sayles a brilliant feel for dialogue and situation-setting. Both have created films that deal effectively with large casts and multiple storylines, though they differ in style. Sayles has a looser, more gentle and wide style. Anderson will throw a body at the camera if the situation presents itself. Anderson's style is similar to Martin Scorsese's. Both Anderson and Scorsese love the camera and what the camera can see that the eye can't: The quick push-in onto a face. The three minute tracking shot through a maze-like set. The locked-off wide shot of passengers in a car as the car flips over and the force moves everything in the frame in a violent swirl. This is not to say that Anderson's style is better than Sayles', but one could make the argument that he uses the camera in a more cinematic way.

Magnolia, Anderson's new movie, tops Sayles' Limbo in both its scope and in what it asks the audience to take from the movie. Magnolia, Limbo and The Dreamlife of Angels all leave questions in the viewer at their close, but Magnolia is so brilliantly designed that it seems like those questions are a boon. Each question leads to a new question, pulling you back into the film hours after you leave the theatre. Magnolia, like Limbo, asks the audience to accept an action at the end of the movie that defies expectations. And Magnolia, unlike Limbo, asks viewers to stay in their seats to see the results of this action upon the characters.

Magnolia begins with what can best be called an essay on chance and coincidence. Three stories, taking place from 1911 to the late 1980s, illustrate three different ways that people's lives can intersect in ways that logic could not have predicted. It is Anderson's view that these intersections, as well as the connections and links that form the basis of the main story, are not just a matter of dumb luck. Anderson presents chance as not being just a matter of chance. In the world of Magnolia -- and perhaps, Anderson believes, the world outside the theatre -- there is an order to everything; we just don't recognize it. Chance and coincidence, though seemingly random in nature, might very well have an order behind them.

This prologue also begins to introduce Magnolia's other themes: the unintentional damage that parents can inflict on their children (or, perhaps, as the film suggests later, it is intentional) and the amazement one feels with regret. The three shorts also provide a connection to the past, and it is the act of coming to terms with their own past that drives many of Magnolia's main characters. Finally, the prologue provides a contrast to the main story. The three shorts are united by the maliciousness of chance. The acts of chance that occur in the main story all point toward an eventual joy.

Magnolia

Anderson brings the film into the present with what is unmistakably 1990s film technique. The large cast is introduced in quick sketches of camera movement and sharp edits. Earl Partridge's (Jason Robards) cancer is presented as a high school biology movie. Linda Partridge (Julianne Moore), Earl's much younger wife, is a whirlwind of brilliant brown designer clothes and a Mercedes speeding out of the driveway, while Earl's nurse, Phil Parma (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), walks into the house and is right away at work looking after his charge. Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise) will make his first appearance as a television commercial hawking seduction techniques. Stanley Spector (Jeremy Blackman) rips through "What Do Kids Know" host Jimmy Gator's (Phillip Baker Hall) questions on a second television. Cut to Jimmy screwing an intern in his office, then to his estranged daughter, Claudia Wilson Gator (Melora Walters), snorting a line of coke and fucking a guy she picked up in a bar, who might very well have attended a Frank T.J. Mackey seminar himself. "Quiz Kid" Donnie Smith pulls into a 7/11 parking lot and continues right through the front window. And then there is Officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly), dressing for a day of work as a member of the LAPD. Cut to the first title card: "Partially Cloudy".

In about 4 minutes, Anderson presents the basics of each character. He will spend the rest of the movie's 180 minutes adding layers to the characters, introducing little grace notes and color. This colorization, coupled with the goodwill that Anderson bestows upon his characters, is one of the things that makes this movie so wonderful. Anderson presents these people in a quick blast, but then takes the time to bring you in. Together with the characters, you will go through tumult and regret. And at the end you will feel a great hope.

In the liner notes to the soundtrack, Anderson states that Claudia is the one character that links all of the other characters in some way. Claudia is the center of the briar batch of stories that make up the movie. In addition to Claudia, a second character links the characters and stories together. Responding to a noise disturbance call that turns into a murder investigation, Kurring will have the first interaction with Dixon (Emmanuel Johnson), who might very well be the prophet he proclaims himself to be. Dixon is surely more than a 10 year old boy. When Dixon meets Kurring again later in the film, Dixon will be the element of chance that changes Kurring's life -- and the element of chance and change for other characters, as well. Dixon is also more than likely connected to the "event" that connects the characters later in the film.

Kurring responds to a second noise complaint that day and meets Claudia, who in the middle of an all-day cocaine binge after an earlier argument her father, is blasting her stereo and television at full volume. Kurring, taken in by Claudia, does his best to start a conversation. He does so well that they agree to a dinner date later that evening.

Across town, Linda Partridge is on a mad dash between doctors, psychiatrists and lawyers, trying to find some sort of comfort for Earl's pain -- and her own. Linda married Earl for his money, but now that he is dying, she has discovered that she really is in love with him. Earl might very well love Linda, but he also still loves his first wife. "The biggest regret of my life is that I let my love go," Earl tells Phil. Earl means not only his first wife's love, but also that of his son, Frank T.J. Mackey. Phil Parma will spend the course of the movie trying to bring father and son together one last time before the father dies.

At the same time, Jimmy Gator is hosting what could very well be his last episode of the "What Do Kids Know" game show. Jimmy has cancer -- like his producer, Earl -- and does not have long to live. Stanley is the current champ on "What Do Kids Know," but he would rather have his father mean it when he tells his son he loves him. In a bar, "Quiz Kid" Donny Smith, former champion of "What Do Kids Know" and lightning strike victim, delivers a brilliant address on the love he has in his heart.

These stories will converge in direct and subtle ways near the end of the film. Each character will find some form of love, either in the arms of one another or within themselves. Each character will find some form of hope. I can think of no better ending than the one Anderson gives -- the smiling face of Claudia.

Anderson has written a great film. With a brilliant cast and set of collaborators -- most notably cinematographer Robert Elswit, production designers William Arnold and Mark Bridges and song writer Aimee Mann -- Anderson has made a wonderfully detailed and beautiful film.

Reviewed by Jason Broccardo