Magnolia and Short Cuts

"Can't We All Just Get Along?" The much quoted and ridiculed statement Rodney King made during the LA riots of the early 90's following the trial of LA police officers that had beaten King came to mind a lot while watching Paul Anderson's Magnolia (1999) and Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993). Both were movies I've meant to see for years but kept putting off. After watching these films back-to-back, I was reminded of two other movies: Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon (1992) and recent Best Picture winner Crash (2005). Despite being made by different filmmakers at different times, each of these movies put LA under the microscope and seemed to come to the same conclusion Rodney King did: In the face of the cultural melting pot that is LA boiling over, empty sentiment is all that's left to cling to.

These four movies paint an ugly picture of life in La La land. If these four movies are to be believed as representative of the LA experience, there are certain consistencies between them that come to the foreground:

• The perspective is told from the point of view of characters who are white middle to upper middle class. Most black people depicted are feared and possibly armed except for one couple whose function in the storyline is to represent bridging the racial gap. Oddly, in most of these movies Hispanics don't exist at all (except for Crash).
• The thousands of people in LA all know each other or know someone who knows another that has a direct relationship to the first person. In other words, everyone in LA knows each other somehow
• Infidelity and Murder happen all the time and is successfully covered up often (I guess OJ kinda proved that)
• The Police force is corrupt and racist (again refer to Rodney King)
• Everyone in LA is really stressed out and/or drugged up (common knowledge)
• The only thing that can really bring people together is a disaster, usually an earthquake (though in Magnolia, the disaster was a rain of frogs! An original idea, but weird. 9/11 did prove this, as there was a great deal of goodwill among people across the country following that tragedy).

After watching these movies, it's hard to believe LA remains a popular tourist attraction. It's shown as stressful, seedy, amoral and desperate. All four movies do a great job of using huge, sprawling casts to show how the actions of one affects the other and how everyone bounces off each other in a societal microcosm resulting in the full range of human emotion. In each of the movies it first shows the miscommunication and frustration of people dealing with each other to wind up to the big finish where everyone helps each other. Forgiveness and redemption are often the universal themes of these films.

But, what does it all mean? Los Angeles is used in these movies as a magnifying glass to address larger societal issues affecting America in general. Many of these movies end with a tone of hopeful humanism, that everyone will see that we all are just human beings regardless of our faults and should be treated as such. And while that would be the answer I would wish for as well, I think it really just comes down to economics. As long as the majority of people believe they have gained or have the potential to gain as much wealth and comfort as others, they will tolerate each other. When they don't, such as in the early 90's during a recession, riots ensue. It's not a coincidence that much of the rioting in the United States ended when the economy picked up. This is the issue I felt was missing from all the movies.

When I saw the standard of living for many of these characters living in their sun splashed environment, I realized I wanted that too! So Los Angeles is representative of larger America, just not in the sentimental way filmmakers would like to think. A better ending to these movies would be: The sky rains a torrent of money and everyone is rich. Why? Because most of us desire gratuitous consumerism and not altruistic humanism. Is that bad? Probably. And I'm as guilty as anyone else. I think that's the ultimate lesson learned from these movies. Give us a burger and a big house on a hill and we'll like anybody.