#I might have to investigate further. PTA's Guide to Jewish Holidays???

[philhoffman]

This week's Monday Philm is Magnolia (1999), dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, which has been on my mind for a while. I haven't watched it in over a year but small things keep reminding me of it—songs, actors I see in other projects, lines and ideas.

It turned out to be a perfect film for Yom Kippur, too. YK is the holiest day of the year and it's all about teshuvah—repentance and atonement, reflecting on the year and seeking forgiveness. That matches up well with the themes in Magnolia: "We might be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us." Every character is so lonely, everyone has done wrong or been wronged or both, everyone is dealing with the past that ties them together and won't let them go.

We fast for 25 hours to reach a higher level of spirituality—to put aside human needs like food and sex, to be more like angels—which reminds me of what PSH said about his angelic nurse: "[Phil Parma] probably has problems, but Phil’s not gonna be worrying about his skeleton in his closet because he’s got someone dying in front of him… He might’ve gotten in a fight with some girl a week ago, he said the wrong thing, it bothers him, but the next day he’s showing up at work at Earl Partridge’s house… It’s very selfless. He’s really putting himself aside for other people and therefore pretty much enriching himself."

Magnolia always makes me emotional, apparently even more so when I'm tired and hungry and otherwise afflicted. Burst into tears when Linda comes home and yells at Phil Parma for being on the phone, not because she hits him or because it's so intense or because they're both crying—but because the scene is filmed entirely over his shoulder and I was sad we couldn't see his face. PTA put so much of Phil Hoffman into Phil Parma, it's even easier to miss him when you watch it. I just wanted to see more of his sad, beautiful face.