You've heard of pets who become so attached to their owners that when those people die, the animals do as well, seemingly from broken hearts. In silhouette you see EMTs wheeling out their similarly-sized bodies together, on twin gurneys, and after bearing the prolonged sadness of Earl's slow, suffering death from cancer, you're struck by the absurdity and perfection of the moment. Magnolia is full of accidents like this, coincidences, connections or disconnections that might best be described as aggressively bizarre. But the dead dog illustrates the film's sense of cosmic jokiness, the mismatching of emotions and effects that underlies all those tragedies and regrets that dominate most lives.
Magnolia begins with a short faux-historical newsreel recounting three bizarre deaths.
Trying to find rhythm or reason or purpose may be a very human thing to do, given the perennial search for order, meaning and even redemption in the midst of chaotic daily lives, but it appears that sometimes, shit just happens. In Magnolia, much of the shit that happens has to do with families, full of damaged, resilient, desperate and angry characters who hardly know how to speak to one another anymore. The developing relationship between Jim and Claudia may be the film's single hopeful note, even if our knowledge of their troubled backgrounds makes us more doubtful that it will eventually work out. All the while, the game show drones on, the TV hanging like a religious icon above the bar. That Frank's carefully repressed life-details are revealed during a TV interview is only one of many awful ironies in Magnolia.