'Magnolia' Film Analysis

The bible verse Exodus 8:2 which reads “If you refuse to let them go, I will send a plague of frogs on your whole country” is alluded to multiple times in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia” and is what God is saying when telling a Pharaoh to let God’s people go so they can worship him. Frogs nevertheless, fall from the sky in the climax of Anderson’s film so what does it mean? One can argue that God is punishing the people of San Fernando Valley for not following his Word and that not everything is coincidence or chance. However, why is the one character who is shown to be religious, Jim, punished by losing his gun? Anderson makes the viewer question many things and if there is any meaning to it all or the world itself in his mosaic epic. Characters sin, confess their sins, and reflect on the past and learn whether it be by God or just life itself, that the past is not through with them.