Magnolia is a musical! No one told me this. But maybe it’s for the best, so I get to be happily surprised as the music weaves its way through the film. Between Aimee Mann and Harry Nilsson (the duo of double letters excess and sublime lyric skills), the songs take center stage, at first upstaging to the point where I wish Officer Jim Kurring would inform it it’s too loud, and again later when it becomes so compelling, the characters want to add their voices in agreement. The music is integral to the point where I want to re-watch just for the song choices alone.

Magnolia is religious-ish! I didn’t know this beforehand either. The symbolic religious punctuation mark, near the end, sends me deeper into introspection (I was already pretty far gone by this point)... My own wake-up call didn’t come in the form of frog plague. Quite the opposite really. It was a rational rain of information and support from others and a letting go of fear. I’ve been going through a faith transition for a while now, rejecting outright all that is categorically false, laying aside the pieces I cannot know and sorting through the rest, to determine what I want to hold onto and what is holding me back. Religion can be both wings and weights, building blocks and blinders, faith and fear. In a strict religion, the dogma immobilized and infantilize an individual, so for me, it was time to be an adult and walk through the opposition. "Wise up." The one recognizably devout character in the movie is childlike in his faith and earnest, which leaves me wishing for an “interventionist god” to bring him some happiness. Thank you interventionist PTA, for wising up the timid Jim. The beauty of the movie's wake up call is it reflects all the things that are good and right in the world: kindness, reparation, forgiveness, compassion, ... Religion or no, this is where it's at.

Magnolia is a PTA PSA. “We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.” Frank T.J. Mackey had it dead wrong and deep down he knew it. Sprinting headlong away from the past is a sure-fire way to slam back into it. "What is it in aid of?" Healing. Courageously face it, come to terms with it, and then let it go. I don't know who Steve Maraboli is, but I agree with him here, "The past will be your teacher if you learn form it; your master if you live in it."