We're introduced to them in a dizzying series of vignettes and montage whose pace and volume is reminiscent of the cocaine-induced camera highs in Anderson's porn opus Boogie Nights. It's easy enough to catalogue the characters, both because of their connections to each other and because they seem mostly like modern stereotypes--appropriate, since many of them are involved, in some way, with television. There's the dying and regretful media mogul (Jason Robards), his gold-digging but guilt-ridden wife (Julianne Moore), his devoted and compassionate caretaker (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the sickly and proud game show host (Philip Baker Hall), his angry and cocaine-addicted daughter (Melora Walters), the suspiciously confident seduction guru (Tom Cruise), the lovelorn and by-the-book police officer (John C. Reilly), the celebrated but pressured boy genius (Jeremy Blackman), and the despondent and pathetic ex-boy genius (William H. Macy).

I list them all, not only to pay respect to the uniform excellence of the cast, but also to provide what are essentially the storylines of the film, since almost every scene unfolds as an extrapolation of character. Whereas previously, in Boogie Nights and the carefully-studied noir Hard Eight, Anderson relied upon plot twists and unforeseen complications to examine an unfamiliar socio-moral universe, Magnolia's characters are not gamblers or pornographers; they live in _our_ universe and don't require the same roughing up to be understood. It's obvious from the start that all of these individuals are in pain, and that in order to heal, they need either to forgive or to be forgiven, to love or to be loved. Having built ample and complex backstory for them, Anderson sets his characters in place and then allows them to free-fall, introducing no new crises or red herrings, setting up almost nothing for later payoff. The film's only real plot points come, subversively, in the form of occasional weather reports-and they, too, are fascinating.

It's a feat that the writer-director is so utterly successful in conceiving this anti-filmic structure; one of the first rules of screenwriting, mainstream or otherwise, is to surprise the audience by constantly introducing obstacles that prevent a character from achieving his goal. Anderson defies expectation specifically by refusing to produce such hurdles. While he has the opportunity to create critical wins or losses in each story, he refuses to make plot take over and refreshingly redirects these moments, remaining faithful to character and allowing conflicted desire to obstruct itself. The mosaic storytelling of the film, handled with exquisite skill by editor Dylan Tichenor, is well formatted for this type of examination because in the absence of event, it keeps our interest suspended by cutting between storylines.

And yet the crosscutting is not a device or a crutch; Magnolia is, in fact, Anderson's most ambitious and assured film to date because he operates without imposing the distance of Hard Eight's hidden motivations or Boogie Nights' campy ludicrousness. There is neither disdain nor caricature in the way he nakedly reveals each character's fear, sentimentality, and clumsy attempts at revelation and renewal.

The success of this attempt at full exposure is due in great part to the performances-this is perhaps the most precisely acted ensemble piece ever filmed. Robards, who has mastered the part of the stubborn old grump, is truly great here, shading Earl Partridge with the lowing regret and pained self-knowledge of a man acutely aware that his end is nearing. Two-thirds through the 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, who can't stand to be loved because she thinks so lowly of herself. That's not all, though; the magnificent Hall is also in top form, as is Hoffman. And Reilly. And Cruise. And so on, all the way down the line of supporting roles.

But all this convincing work is cast into the air at the climax, which finally delivers on the earlier promise of incredibility. That the unlikelihood of the film's one giant event operates in tension with the 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.

Magnolia's faithfulness to the surreal irregularity and aimlessness of life is what distinguishes it from its nearest relative, Robert Altman's Short Cuts. Where that film found black social satire in forcing its inhabitants' to collide in a series of chance events, Magnolia opts for an intimate and studied portrait of each of its nine focal characters by allowing their suffering to be its own dramatic vehicle. Nonetheless, Anderson is a cinephile, and he is indebted here, as in all of his work, to other distinctive and established filmmakers, Altman especially. This film bears some obvious resemblance to Short Cuts not only in its Californian locale (Magnolia Boulevard is the main drag in the San Fernando Valley, where the film is set), but also in its spliced narrative and its use of overlapping dialogues, songs, and score. The director even subtly acknowledges the stylistic influence by casting classic Altman regulars Michael Murphy and Henry Gibson in small roles.