The movie Philip Seymour Hoffman claimed to be “one of the best films I’ve ever seen”
In the grand scheme of things, Philip Seymour Hoffman was hardly renowned for playing characters who enjoyed lives that could be described as joyous and immensely pleasurable, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the movies that presented a veritable bounty of contentment.
Whether it was the roles he was drawn to or the parts he was offered, the Academy Award-winning star gained a reputation for embodying misfits, outsiders, and loners. He was nowhere close to being typecast, but neither was he hugely in-demand to play light-hearted and effervescent figures.
Plumbing the depths of the human condition regularly brought out the best in him, and few directors could bring out the best in Hoffman quite like Paul Thomas Anderson. Obviously, he’s renowned for being an auteur who rapidly gained legendary status for coaxing incredible work out of his cast members, but Hoffman was one of the first beneficiaries of that innate gift.
It was on full display as far back as the filmmaker’s debut feature, Hard Eight, and carried on through Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, and The Master. Operating on the same wavelength, the pair worked in perfect synergy to ensure Hoffman was always the most compelling figure in the frame whenever he appeared in one of Anderson’s movies, even if he was never the main draw.
With such an accomplished body of work, it’s hard to pinpoint which of Anderson’s films can be called the best, but there’s a strong case to be made for Magnolia nonetheless. The ambitious interweaving stories of multiple San Fernando Valley residents experiencing life from different angles while all searching for the same thing is a staggering work of cinema, stirring up every conceivable emotion over the course of its epic 188-minute running time.
Hoffman plays Phil Parma, the nurse looking after Jason Robards’ Earl Partridge. Tasked to find and reconnect with Tom Cruise’s estranged son and motivational speaker Frank TJ Mackey, who ends up caught in the middle of a familial tug-of-war when Julianne Moore’s wife Linda Partridge realises that she didn’t marry her elderly and ailing husband for his money after all.
Calling it “one of the best films I’ve ever seen,” Hoffman declared to Esquire that he “will fight to the death with anyone who says otherwise.” Even though he was in it, he’s not going to find many people willing to argue when Magnolia genuinely is one of the greatest movies to emerge from American cinema in the last quarter of a century.
Describing it as “a smorgasbord of pleasure” isn’t quite as bulletproof an assessment, however, because the film is every bit as devastating as it is engrossing. It’s a phenomenal achievement in story, structure, character, pacing, and performance, but pleasurable wasn’t the operative word when Magnolia took viewers on a rollercoaster ride through the human condition that saw them emerge on the other side, shaken to their core.
