“Say it, Jimmy”/“Just let me go, Jim”

In Magnolia’s final 25 minutes, Anderson throws a bright light on the Gator family, and especially the fraught relationship between father and daughter. It’s bookended by Rose asking Jimmy a long-festering question and by some text on a painting in Claudia’s apartment: “but it did happen.”

The likelihood that Jimmy molested Claudia is a complication so large that such a late reveal shouldn’t work. 

But Anderson handles it cleverly in a couple of ways.

First, he makes it obvious that this issue has been hanging in the air – between Jimmy and Claudia, between Jimmy and Rose, and between Rose and Claudia – for at least a decade. The audience might not get clued in until Rose works up some courage, but things don’t need to be spoken of to be real and understood. And Claudia’s damage is consistent with childhood sexual abuse.

Second, the familial tension is underscored and illuminated through a clearly intentional storytelling choice: Anderson always presents Claudia’s sexuality/objectification in a Jimmy context, as if she and especially this facet of herself cannot escape him.

Claudia having sex segues into Jimmy’s introduction, in the form of the What Do Kids Know? opening on her television. Then Jimmy comes to her apartment the morning after, meeting her one-night stand. And immediately after Jimmy is brought home from the game show, Claudia is shown naked in the shower.

These two narrative strategies collide when Rose, at long last, asks Jimmy a question and won’t let him off easy. The confrontation is cross-cut with Claudia’s and Jim’s date, and their kiss is interrupted by a submerged truth being dragged to the surface. 

“Why doesn’t Claudia talk to you, Jimmy?” Rose says. He dissembles. She presses: “Say it, Jimmy.”

Cut to the restaurant. Claudia returns from the bathroom and kisses Jim on the cheek. “That felt good to do, to do what I wanted to do,” she says. The line resonates in retrospect, a contrast  to a history of non-consensual sex.

When Claudia alludes to her past, there’s obvious self-loathing: “I’m really nervous that you’re gonna hate me soon. You’re going to find stuff out about me, and you’re gonna hate me.” The first time through the movie, a viewer might assume she’s talking primarily about her drug use or promiscuity, but with more information we can see a victim’s self-blame.

And then Claudia asserts herself: “You wanna kiss me, Jim?” 

“Yes, I do,” he says forcefully. The cutlery clatters, and they come together. In movie time, the kiss lasts nearly a minute and 40 seconds.

When it’s over, Claudia is crying. “Now that I’ve met you, would you object to never seeing me again?” She gets up to leave, and Jim puts his hands on her, an attempt at comfort. Before storming out of the restaurant, she says: “Just let me go, Jim.” It’s possible – likely even – that she calls him “Jimmy.”

And between lips meeting and separating, Anderson cuts to Jimmy and Rose.

He says: “I think she thinks that I may have molested her. …”

Rose: “Did you ever touch her?”

Jimmy: “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’ve done.”

Rose: “Yes, you do. You do. … You deserve to die alone for what you’ve done. …”

Jimmy: “Rose, if I said that I knew, would you stay?”

Rose: “No. … You should know better.”

Claudia’s past intrudes on her present. In her head and in the filmmaking, Jimmy is violating this moment with Jim, and so is Rose – what her father did to her, and how her mother never protected her.

Rose’s presence with Jimmy is important, because Anderson is highlighting that she deserves blame, too. As with Gwenovier interviewing Frank, Rose isn’t asking earnest questions; somewhere inside is something she has long avoided: “Say it, Jimmy.” Everything about the interrogation is perfunctory, because the point is not to glean information but to give Jimmy one final chance to come clean. She knows, and has for a long time.

But Claudia is most important in this sequence. It’s her kiss, and her attempt to express some affection for Jim. Rose and Jimmy aren’t at the restaurant, but Anderson places them smack in the middle of the action. They are and will probably always be interlopers in Claudia’s efforts at intimacy.