Paul Thomas Anderson's Film Magnolia: Reduction And Realignment

22 Pages 5492 Words

sting and is made to look like a loving, happily married for forty years father. Jimmy Gator is the host of Earl Partridge’s “What Do Kids Know?” Despite being one of America's most wholesome TV icons, the truth of Jimmy's life would obliterate his image. Jimmy Gator is a man whose electronic façade is being quickly erased. Jimmy has ridiculed people and trampled on people all his life, but he has the public persona of being a kind and amiable father figure, full of good television cheer.
The first scene that both Claudia and her father are seen together is a scene in which Claudia hasn’t seen or talked to her father because of her past with him. He shows up at her door early in the morning trying to make himself feel better by wanting to sit down and talk to her. Her “friend” answers the door in his underwear, where Jimmy Gator is knowingly judging his daughter with out saying anything. He enters her bedroom where she is sleeping asking if the man is her boyfriend. She wakes up to see his face yelling at him saying, “you think I’m a hoar?” She sits up; the drape behind her on the window falls, letting the sun shine on her father’s face. She thinks he does not deserve to be in her house. The camera cuts back and forth between her and her father conversing. She yells at him, while he is standing in front of her bed telling her he is dying of cancer. Claudia yells even louder for him to get the hell out of her house. She forces him out, yelling, throwing pillows and then screaming some more as he is leaving; the screen is dark and not focused and she is seen crying and the camera cuts into the next scene. This scene with Claudia and her father suggests the past and how her life is influenced by her father and what he did to her. Jimmy Gator is seen losing control and where reduction is starting to take place for him.
The first scene where Claudia and Jim Kurring meet is a very interesting scene to watch....