Aimee Mann - Save Me (Magnolia Soundtrack)

When a song is inextricably linked to a film. An Earchive revisit.

Photo by Isi Parente on Unsplash

I’m on vacation for the next week with limited WiFi, so I thought I’d bring back one of my favorite essays from 2022. I’ve been listening to a lot of Aimee Mann lately, her 2000 album Bachelor No. 2 in particular, which never fails to wow me. After featuring her husband, Michael Penn, last week, it seemed the perfect choice.

I first fell in love with Aimee Mann’s music while watching the 1999 Paul Thomas Anderson film, Magnolia. Several of Aimee’s songs were featured on the soundtrack. The wistful, elegiac compositions were as integral to the movie’s emotional resonance as the performances, direction, and gorgeous cinematography.

I distinctly recall my body filling with adrenalized anticipation as I drove from my studio apartment in Oakland, California to the Kabuki Theater complex in San Francisco to meet my friend Liz for a screening on the film’s opening weekend.

We both loved P.T. Anderson’s previous film, Boogie Nights, and couldn’t wait to see what his latest epic exploration (3 hours and 10 minutes!) on love, loss, family, and finding true human connection would reveal. 

Although the film would receive mixed reviews, I thought it was nothing short of brilliant. But even as I left the theater buzzing with a full-bodied high, I knew its critical and public response would be wildly divergent and personal. It’s not a film that can be summed up in a pithy sentence or two. Even P.T. Anderson was unable to describe it succinctly.

It’s one of those rare, contradictory feats of cinema where a film’s bloat, excess, and messiness are integral to its ultimate storytelling power. It works precisely because life can be bloated, excessive, and messy. Life doesn’t fit comfortably into compact, ninety-minute containers and neither does Magnolia.

The film, like life, is so much more than that. It’s tender and loving and angry and bitter and selfish and sad and heartbreaking: many of the confusing, confounding. and contradictory emotions we all experience.

Magnolia works precisely because life can be bloated, excessive, and messy.

If you haven’t seen Magnolia, I will forewarn you that it is not for everyone. It can be relentlessly bleak at times. There are several scenes where the film veers away from traditional storytelling methods and becomes more experimental. And Tom Cruise co-stars as a narcissistic motivational speaker.

And, as I said before, it’s over three hours long.

Full immersion, I believe, requires a healthy amount of openness, and a willingness to leave your expectations at the door. I found the way the film juxtaposes a dozen protagonists and almost as many plot lines — many of which never connect directly, but certainly do emotionally and thematically — captivating and thrilling. I never knew what was going to happen next.

Spending time with so many disparate characters — from a tween boy wanting approval from his father, to a drug-addicted woman feeling too damaged to accept the love of an open-hearted cop, to a bitter, dying old man with only his devoted nurse left in his life — feels like watching the human condition. What ties them all together is their shared suffering and longing; despite their loneliness and inner turmoil, they’re all just searching for connection. When I left the theater that day 23 years ago, I felt like my heart had been cracked wide open. It’s so vivid to me today because moments like this don’t happen very often.

Wise Up

I don’t think I’m spoiling anything in discussing one scene in particular that occurs in the film, as it’s less connected to the plot. It’s a unique and bold montage that captures the power of music and how the right song has a way of speaking truth to the deep emotional struggles we face but cannot find words for. 

At this point in Magnolia, all the main characters are at major life crossroads, unsure of which direction to turn. As the camera rests in close-up on home health-care nurse Phil’s (Philip Seymour Hoffman) tear-stained face, we hear the plaintive piano melody that begins Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up” come in. Then the camera cuts to Claudia (Melora Walters), who, after spending half the film trying and failing to quit drugs, whispers to herself, “You’re so stupid,” then leans forward and snorts a line of coke just as Mann enters with the partial first line “It’s not...”

Just before the vocal continues, Claudia leans back against the couch, then quietly finishes the line along with Aimee: “…what you thought/when you first began it.”

With each subsequent lyric, the camera cuts to another one of the characters we’ve gotten to know throughout the film, their choked-up voices singing along with Mann’s achingly raw alto.

The song’s refrain repeats several times, coming across as a harsh wake-up call (or wise-up call perhaps) that may or not be heeded as the film continues.

It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
Till you wise up

The last line of the song — as if we weren’t already sad and bummed out enough — is sung by the cast's youngest member, the pre-teen son of William H. Macy’s emotionally absent father. “So just give up,” the boy sings along with Aimee as the song fades out and the film continues.

As a person who has struggled with depression and anxiety for a good portion of my life, the spare yet direct lyrics resonated with me deeply. They spoke to that voice inside that can, unchecked, respond to the world with closed-off, black-and-white absoluteness. The only options are binary: either “snap out of it” — ie: “wise up” — or (as the last line offers) give up. Because it’s too much to continue bearing the same inner turmoil without reprieve or having hope that things will get better.

But that’s just one interpretation. My older, somewhat wiser self now wonders if the line “so just give up” might mean something more self-compassionate: an option to stop fighting so hard. “Giving up” equating to giving oneself a break.

That’s what is so brilliant about Aimee Mann’s songwriting. She’s able to capture a feeling, an emotion, that seems so specific, so precisely what you as a listener are going through or have gone through, while keeping the lyrics general enough to be interpreted differently for every person. 

Save Me

The same can be said for “Save Me,” Mann’s Oscar-nominated song which plays at the end of Magnolia. The way Anderson incorporates this song in the final scene of the film is so evocative, so effective, and so wholly original (in both cinematic and emotional terms) that I can watch it over and over and marvel at it anew every time.

Clearly a nod to Robert Altman (Short Cuts and McCabe & Mrs. Miller are the film’s more obvious influences), the scene is a single shot slowly moving from an over-the-shoulder framing of John C. Reilly’s officer Jim to a close-up on Walters’ Claudia, who sits on her bed facing him, leaning against the wall.

As Mann’s “Save Me” begins to play, we can hear Jim reminding Claudia of all her great qualities, of all the reasons he wants to be with her. But his voice is soon pushed back in the mix, overpowered by Mann’s, as “Save Me” becomes the dominant audio force in the scene.

Again, the meaning here is up for interpretation. It could symbolize that Claudia is not really listening to him, that his words are not sinking in. Or it could mean that Claudia has already made up her mind and has decided she’s going to give this sweet dork of a man — and by extension, herself — a chance at love.

The music video for “Save Me” is another feat of brilliance by Anderson. In it, Mann appears in the background of several pivotal scenes in the film, hinting at Magnolia’s epic ambitions without giving anything away about the story. Say what you will about P.T.’s penchant for indulgence, but the man was filled with a creative spirit when making both this film and the music video.

“Save Me” like “Wise Up,” leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Aimee sings:

You look like
A perfect fit
For a girl in need
Of a tourniquet

But can you save me?
Why don't you save me?
If you could save me
From the ranks of the freaks
Who suspect
They could never love anyone

This seems pretty straightforward and directly reflects the visuals of the film, where Walters’ drug-addicted Claudia desperately wants to be “saved,” yet struggles to step out from behind the walls she has erected over her entire life. Walls that had protected her from genuine dangers and traumas but have long outserved their usefulness.

But the song also explores the whole concept of being “saved.” Whether one person can really save another. If that’s something we say we want so the work of healing doesn’t feel so daunting. I think “Save Me” is really talking about the pain of loneliness and feeling completely unworthy of love. Of wanting to escape the harsh inner voices and self-judgments that every decision and every interaction with other human beings can arouse.

Again, what’s so effective about this song other than its gorgeous, timeless arrangement (by producer Jon Brion) and Aimee’s entrancing, straight-to-the-heart voice is its simplicity. It cuts deep and opens wide. It can summon feelings both immediate and nostalgic.

Sometimes when I hear “Save Me” it evokes sadness, other times hope. The song is chameleonic, able to morph into the inner workings of every listener.

The best songs do that. They accompany you wherever you go. They are the perfect best friend, always there to listen, to give a hug, to offer a shoulder, and to provide the right advice at just the right moment.

• Are there songs that you can turn to in moments of crisis or celebration? That can speak to the unspeakable and bring comfort to overwhelming emotions?

• What songs do that for you? Or maybe it’s an artist or band that can do that and it almost doesn’t matter which song it is.

• Thank you to all the new subscribers and readers — I love getting feedback, so I invite you to send me an email with any feedback or suggestions.

You rock -

Steve