The much-noted resemblance of Anderson's camera work to Scorsese's was more pronounced in Boogie Nights' use of zooms, tracking and slow motion; here he incorporates these techniques with new ones in the development of his own style, evidencing in the choreography and composition of shots (coppers and blues highlight stunning photography by Robert Elswit) a disciplined and knowing eye. He also shows, like fellow up-and-comer David O. Russell in last year's Three Kings, a playful capacity for invention and experimentation that includes shooting a small turn-of-the-century sequence with an antique hand-cranked Pathe camera. The narrator's chronicle of "strange things told" includes this pseudo-historical footage, and it, like the '70s-colored soundtrack, serves to heighten the sense of presence and periodicity in the film and to underscore the weight the past bears on the present. The mantra that "we may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us" certainly resonates with this idea, and we hear it muttered more than once.

But attempts at concluding thematic uniformity among the various stories are confounded by Magnolia's desire to let the characters develop naturally and with the complexity of their construction. Their pursuits of love and redemption are echoed plaintively in the music of Aimee Mann, which is interwoven throughout the film and which, in one disarmingly effective scene, assumes a lead role. But the music, too, is simply a bittersweet tribute to modern and everyday insecurities; it's as if Anderson feels so intensely what it is to be alive today that he can't help but burst into song. Which is ultimately what Magnolia proves to be: a lyrical paean to the horrible-beautiful process of living. It's an epic, yes, but one of human proportions, and in this reincarnate form, specific to its time and place both materially and stylistically, it's also a truly millennial film.