Julianne Moore wears an Oris Classic Rectangular

Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia runs three hours and contains enough grief, coincidence, and biblical weather to fill six ordinary films. Julianne Moore plays Linda Partridge, the young trophy wife of a dying television mogul (Jason Robards), who is consumed by guilt over having married him for his money and is now desperate to change his will so she inherits nothing. Moore's performance is one sustained scream of self-loathing — the pharmacy scene alone would be a career highlight for most actors.

The Oris Classic Rectangular on Moore's wrist is a quiet, almost invisible watch in a performance that is anything but quiet. Oris produced rectangular watches in various iterations throughout the twentieth century, and the Classic Rectangular is a small, elegant piece with a tonneau-shaped case that sits close to the wrist. On Linda Partridge, it reads as the kind of watch she might have owned before the marriage — modest, tasteful, and paid for by her own work. Everything else in her life now belongs to her husband's money, and the watch might be the last object on her body that doesn't make her feel like a fraud.