Word: stanley
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...film, he delivers a soliloquy that tragically articulates the pall hovering over all of Magnolia's characters, and as he moans his words of warning, we can sense him clutching the pieces of his broken heart. Also moving is young Blackman, who wears the forlornness of game show prodigy Stanley Spector like the best of character actors, depicting impeccably the angst of a child sequestered from the world by the curse of genius. And Walters, who has heretofore been relegated to the margins of Anderson's films, is devastating as the coked-up, brink-of-breakdown Claudia...
...utterly natural progression of its stories isn't a misstep, though. It's a masterstroke. As established by the preface, it isn't unheard of for bizarre coincidences to occur in reality; there are situations in life that feel staged, and those that don't. The exhilarated note Stanley makes to himself cuts to the point: "This is something that happens." That's true of the film, too-while measured and contrived by nature, it's not made false or invalid by the contrivance; like everything else, it happens...