Magnolia: Mis-en-Scene in Full Bloom

When a movie is thought of as superficial by the general public, it usually isn’t because of its content. Ever since the art of cinema was conceived, filmmakers with good intentions have created stories that sound great on paper, but end up failing miserably onscreen. What these unfortunate souls will hopefully come to realize is that audiences usually connect with films not necessarily because they heard a great story, but because they had a great experience. The power of a given film is not judged purely on the basis of its content, but on the skillful techniques the filmmaker uses in which to present the content. This is where mis-en-scene becomes an invaluable resource for filmmakers to use to convey crucial story elements visually without succumbing to a lot of preachy dialogue. One man who uses mis-en-scene to its maximum effect is Paul Thomas Anderson, who wrote and directed 1999’s ensemble drama Magnolia, a film that thrives splendidly on visual storytelling.

Any scene in Magnolia can be successfully dissected to demonstrate its complex technical strategy and symbolic visuals, yet there is one early scene that proves to be a perfect example of cinematic subtext. Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall) enters the apartment of his daughter Claudia (Melora Walters). He finds her asleep in her bedroom, and stands at the edge of her bed. Claudia wakes up in alarm, and demands to know what her father is doing in her house. Jimmy attempts to tell her that he just wants to straighten things out between the two of them, and even truthfully confesses to her that he’s dying of cancer. Claudia only becomes more and more insistent for Jimmy to leave, and she screams and hits him with her bed sheets until he finally exits the room. On paper, this sounds like a sadistic scene where a sick old man is pushed away by his angry, monstrous daughter. Onscreen, it is a brilliant example of mis-en-scene being used as catalyst to express the internal conflicts of the characters that will only be revealed later in the film.

When characters have pivotal encounters such as this one, the setting must be a fitting location for the action to occur. Claudia’s bedroom is small and cramped, the perfect setting for an explosion of intimate rage to occur. All the audience is permitted to see of the room is the bed itself, and a nearby window that’s barely covered by a ragged curtain. The bare walls and pale bed sheet force the audience to focus intently on the action between the characters. Jimmy enters the room through a doorway placed opposite of the bed, so when he enters the room he naturally stands at the foot of the bed, thus leading Claudia to be startled. What the audience doesn’t yet know about the characters is that when Claudia was a child, Jimmy had molested her--a fact that brings the scene into a whole new light. This makes the scene’s location of a bedroom all the more prophetic, in that it evokes the past sexual perversity Jimmy may have inflicted on his daughter, perhaps in her childhood bedroom. Yet this event, revealed later through carefully scripted dialogue, is foreshadowed through other elements of mis-en-scene.

Although Magnolia is a fictional film, it takes place in a real location (the San Fernando Valley), and doesn’t contain many flights of fancy (until its final climactic passage). Hence, the costumes and makeup are deceptively natural, and don’t seem to contain much meaning at first glance. Jimmy has slickly combed hair that helps to illustrate his celebrity status as a long-time game show host. He wears a respectable sweater vest with a white shirt collar sticking out of the top. His most striking article of clothing is a gray overcoat that swoops about the frame like a malevolent cape, therefore hinting at the past sins he attempts to cover up. Jimmy’s look contrasts greatly with that of Claudia’s, whose messy blonde hair and long-sleeved pajamas assist in illustrating her status as a lonely coke-addict. Her raw, ashen face leads the audience to focus on her defiant eyes that never waver from their focus on the enemy in front of them. Jimmy’s face looks quite pale in comparison, as if he might blend into the walls. Although his features are more polished and clean, his wrinkled, aged face emphasizes the subtle look of guilt and sorrow in his eyes. Although both characters look like normal people, the costumes and makeup further establish them as three-dimensional characters with complex personalities.

One of the most slyly effective aspects of the scene is the lighting, which visually articulates the scene’s subtext. At first the scene has a muted lighting tone, as Jimmy observes Claudia asleep in her bed. The morning sunlight from the window is covered by a curtain until Claudia awakes, and accidentally knocks the curtain onto the floor. This immediately focuses all of the light on Jimmy, who’s suddenly illuminated as if a spotlight is shining down on him. All of Claudia’s, and the audience’s, attention is directed to Jimmy who pathetically mocks being clueless as to why his daughter is ranting (“I’m not gonna call you a slut or something”), thus adding to the theatrical nature of the sun’s spotlight effect. Claudia is meanwhile huddled in the shadows, with the sun occasionally falling on half of her face, giving her a tragic, film noir-style look. While Jimmy is showcased as the object of perverse attention, it is Claudia who is photographed as the sympathetic character, wallowing in the shadows of her pain. The sunlight stays focused on Jimmy even as he leaves, when Claudia jumps out of bed, and stands nearly in shadow surrounded by the light. In the end, the lighting poetically visualizes Claudia’s piercing view of her father, that moves directly though his superficiality, and into the blinding light of his unforgivable flaws.

One of Anderson’s strengths as a director is eliciting career-best performances from his actors, and the riveting character portrayals by Hall and Walters in this scene are no exception. Yet the mis-en-scene doesn’t come from the performances themselves, but from the figure expression and movement that naturally comes from them. Blinking away sleep, Claudia is vulnerable to her father’s presence, and her face becomes increasingly tense and angry as her consciousness sets in. Jimmy talks softly and matter-of-factly while having an expression of calm discontent on his face. Every scream from his daughter makes his face look more alarmed with confusion, as if he has no idea what she could possibly be upset about. He even holds out his hand in fatherly protest of her shrieking so she knows he isn’t joking about his illness. Claudia remains nothing more than a jittery time bomb of anger that explodes with the striking of her father with her bed sheets, being the only weapon readily available. Her shrill screams and violent demeanor sharply contrast with Jimmy’s slow wavering from side-to-side and almost serene emotional detachment. While Claudia’s movements are sharp and quick in defiance, Jimmy movements are delicate, somber, and reek of denial.

While time plays important roles in many of Magnolia’s sequences, this particular scene basically takes place in filmic real time. There’s nothing very flashy or artful about how long this scene’s events unfold, although they seem to unfold longer than they actually do. The scene is barely a minute long, and yet it is agonizing to watch because Anderson doesn’t censor a single scream or awkward pause. He captures the depth of the pain and anguish in long, wrenching takes so that when Jimmy finally leaves, the audience breathes a sigh of relief right along with Claudia.

It is in the humble opinion of this writer that the single most important mis-en-scene element in this entire scene is the use of space. Nearly all of the scene’s subtext depends on the way the characters are positioned in the frame. When Jimmy enters through the doorway from off screen right, his enormous overcoat makes him look like a lumbering, faceless giant as he stands at the foot of the bed. Claudia is meanwhile pinned against her wall on the far left, and nearly seems to be sinking into the depths of her bed sheets. Visually, Jimmy is the dominant force throughout the entire scene, while Claudia is shoved in a corner and forced to look up at him. The physical distance between the two characters is exaggerated in order to accentuate their emotional distance, and Claudia has only her bed sheets to defend herself from Jimmy’s approach. When the sunlight hits Jimmy, he staggers and squints, but is framed from a low angle, enabling him to still tower above Claudia. After she has been reduced to screeching hysterics, Jimmy turns to leave, and his coat momentarily shrouds the screen in complete darkness, thus making him all the more formidable of a figure. The darkness is broken only by Claudia’s throwing of the bed sheets. She is now being filmed from a low angle, yet is still looking up at the fearsome figure finally leaving her midst. The genius in Anderson’s use of space is how he visually makes Jimmy the dominant figure and Claudia the victim, even though it is Claudia who throws out Jimmy at the end of the scene. Thus, the internal conflict is conveyed not through trite dialogue or narration, but through the subtle visual mastery of mis-en-scene.

Now, imagine how this scene would have played if it simply had relied on dialogue as opposed to visual techniques. It would have consisted of Jimmy attempting to reconcile with his daughter, and Claudia screaming about being molested by her father. All of the underlying plot detail would’ve been thrown out in the open without a hint of subtlety or realism. Then it would have been nothing more than an average daytime soap opera. Instead, director Paul Thomas Anderson respects the audience’s intelligence by telling his story through visual imagery that provokes, captivates, and exhilarates even the most casual of viewers. That is the difference between films that simply tell great stories, and films that give audiences great experiences.