Doug’s Cinematic Firsties is a recurring series wherein Douglas Laman (A.K.A. NerdInTheBasement) will review a well-known classic motion picture that he’s never seen before.

There is no attempt to ease the viewer into the world of Magnolia, the film is just off to the races once the first frame comes up on-screen. Before you know it, the audience is tossed around multiple different storylines happening in close proximity to one another with a similar bleak yet darkly humorous tone permeating the majority of the individual subplots. As the camera frantically moves around from one person to the next, it may seem like this will be too much too fast for a viewer to process but in actuality, it’s all too easy to adjust oneself to the unique atmosphere of Magnolia and the similarly idiosyncratic way it tells it’s myriad of stories that all transpire over the course of a single day.

The closest we have to a main character here is police officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly), an optimistic Christian enforcer of the law who keeps a peppy demeanor despite all the cruelty he experiences on a daily basis at his job. His path manages to cross with some of the other characters Magnolia focuses on, namely tortured drug addict Claudia Gator (Melora Walters), with whom Kurring strikes up a blossoming romance. Entirely separated from Kurring are legendary game show host Jimmy Gator (Phillip Baker Hall), a public speaker offering sex advice for men named Frank Mackey (Tom Cruise) and Linda Partridge (Julianne Moore), who struck up a romance with the elderly Earl Partridge (Jason Robards) solely for his money and now is struck with immense guilt now that Patridge is on his deathbed.

I haven’t even gotten into explaining the storylines detailing characters played by the likes of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and William H. Macy, but I’ll restrain from doing so just to keep this review from feeling like simply a retelling of the events of Magnolia. Yes, there’s a lot in the way of storytelling to unpack from Magnolia but once you adjust to the unique rhythm of the production, it’s relatively easy to keep track of all the hullabaloo Paul Thomas Anderson’s screenplay is depicting, especially since some fascinating connections, both big and small, between the individual plotlines do emerge as the movie goes on its way, though it’s worth mentioning that the various stories do play well on their own merits.

Interestingly, when looking at Magnolia in the context of its directors larger filmography, Magnolia seems to bear the most resemblance to Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2014 feature Inherent Vice in that both are about the past and the present colliding and examining how such a collision affects people through a larger ensemble cast and recurring stylized touches. Magnolia certainly feels like a companion piece of sorts to that more recent entry in PTA’s filmmaking career, though notable differences exist in how the two projects broach this topic. Whereas Inherent Vice was wistful about certain aspects of the past, Magnolia finds nothing but darkness in the past, darkness that has seeped over into the present.

Linda’s actions she committed to Earl, Donnie Smith’s (William H. Macy) long-ago game show win, the tortured relationship Frank Mackey had with his father, all these elements and more from years past reverberate in how these characters act in the present. What at first seems like a collection of sporadically amusing short vignettes turn out to be a referendum on how the past can haunt us even when it’s long gone (“We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us”). While writing this, it dawns me on that one pivotal reason why Kurring may be the perfect choice to be the audience point-of-view character for this movie is that he’s the only one who has a healthy relationship with his past as he doesn’t let events like his wife leaving him distract him from looking into the future.

Andrson’s writing does an incredible job of probing all sorts of contemplations on how influential the past can be while his ability to get great performances out an ensemble cast that was on full display in Boogie Nights is also alive and well here. John C. Reilly is an absolutely perfect match for the character of John Kurry, I can’t really think of another modern actor who could play this kind of realistically endearing character so well. Julianne Moore has a habit of doing some overly hammy line deliveries in her regretful role, but for the most part she fares fine while fellow PTA regular Phillip Seymour Hoffman is terrific as a helpful medical worker. Tom Cruise also deserves some mentions for turning in his best work as an actor in a role that uses his confident persona for darker purposes for his characters big public speaking sequences before allowing Cruise to also excel in selling a big dramatic sequence that redefined what I thought Cruise was capable of as an actor. Tom Cruise is able to deliver such strong work by doing two traits that may as well be a microcosm of Magnolia as whole; he goes for heavily unorthodox elements that are built upon a heavy dose of thoughtfulness.