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Boogie
Nights
****
Cinema
Releases - January 16, 1998
Rated on a 4-star
scale; USA; Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Mark Wahlberg,
Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Heather Graham, Don Cheadle,
Luis Guzman, Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ricky Jay, William
H. Macy, Nina Hartley, Robert Ridgely.
Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights" is like
a version of "GoodFellas" where everybody can trust each other. Scorsese's
1990 masterpiece was about the Mafia's good times going sour because of greed
and drugs, and this movie seems greatly influenced by its emotions and style.
One major difference is that "GoodFellas" centered around people who grew
up in their own little world and failed to understand the real one. "Boogie
Nights" is about real people who created their own little
world.
The community under focus is that of the porno
movie industry. The film opens in 1977, introducing us to Jack Horner (Burt
Reynolds),an affable, welcoming man, who knows when to smile and party, and
when to be professional. Jack recruits a bus-boy named Eddie Adams (Mark
Wahlberg) to his acting team, partly because he likes the look of the
guy and his innocently sexy demeanour, but mainly due to a rumour that the
kid has a 13-inch cock. After talking with Eddie, Jack likes him even more
and invites him to his gorgeous house, where sex on the couch with the beautiful
Rollergirl (Heather Graham) replaces a welcome mat and everyone wears happy
expressions. This is another interesting difference between the characters
of gangster movies and the characters of "Boogie Nights" -- people are smiled
at not because they are amusing, but because they are liked. We live in cynical
times, and so it takes some getting used to before we realise that every
gesture in "Boogie Nights" is to be taken at face value.
Eddie soon gets introduced around and accepted
as a part of the team. By the end of his first party he pleases Jack by renaming
himself "Dirk Diggler", and quickly gets used to playing the role of highly
competent celluloid stud. The sexual start to his relationship with Jack's
shared girlfriend Amber (Julianne Moore) starts here, and they get so carried
away during their first sex scene that it becomes personal. Dirk forgets
that he has to cum onscreen, ejaculates inside Amber, then just shrugs and
quite (amazingly) sincerely offers "If you need a close-up, I can do it
again?"
The film has many great lines, and as many wonderful
characters. Little Bill (William H. Macy), the assistant director, has a
wife who cheats on him in public and thinks he doesn't mind, which leads
to one of the most shattering scenes in the picture; The Colonel (Robert
Ridgely), Jack's financier, has a great head for business but seems curiously
oblivious to the common sense logic that would prevent you from giving a
teenage girl cocaine; Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly), a goofy, boyish actor,
immediately relates with Dirk, and becomes his best friend; Buck Swope (Don
Cheadle), another actor, keeps getting screwed over, inspiring our great
concern; and "Scotty J", a disposable crew member and party regular, gets
unhealthily obsessed with the idea that "everything Dirk is
cool".
This bunch, most loveable, some very dodgy, but
all interesting, are played utterly convincingly, creating a realistic
environment into which we are submerged. The tastes of the cocktails, the
heat of the sun, the sound of the music, the tones of the relationships and
the feeling of being are all captured perfectly with great production design,
an evocative soundtrack and furious steadicam shots which remain natural
and never become awkward or annoying.
The porn films that Jack and his actors labour
on lovingly are of course just silly skin flicks with a home-movie look and
lines delivered with deadly dreariness -- but we get to understand what an
idea of quality is in the seedy business, and actual critical analysis of
the material is irrelevant: it is not the drama of the films we are supporting,
but the characters' sweet efforts to create drama. There are a couple of
Burt Reynolds's lines which resemble Johnny Depp's in "Ed Wood", the story
of the sincerely passionate but hopelessly untalented B-movie director, and
that's quite appropriate.
The first half of "Boogie Nights" paints a rich
paradise, with everyone making out great. Then, in a device of obvious but
effective symbolism, comes New Year's Day 1980, when Jack learns that videotape
is set to take over his beloved filmmaking business, murder disrupts
one of his parties, and Dirk starts getting affected by drug paranoia. Our
friends' interior designs get dated, and they get mixed up in money problems,
law problems, dangerous criminal deals and drugs. And, yes, they end up having
to go with the times and make their pictures on that nasty, tacky videotape
format. There is a scene late in the picture where Jack walks through a warehouse
full of stock, contemplating his produce, with the weak walk of a man whose
soul has been shamed -- he's making as much money as he ever did, but the
gleam has gone from his eye. At one point somebody shouts "Your films suck
now!", and he responds with a savage attack -- not because he's offended,
or even disagrees, but because he is tired of cruel reality.
The film is ruthlessly edited, in the sense that
the good times seem to be over just as they've begun, and the heavy, hellish
bad times feel interminable. The majority of this film is torture, but it
demands repeated viewing -- filmmaking that immerses us so completely has
got to be admired. Anderson's aesthetics reveal worthy influences, most obviously
from modern classics like "GoodFellas", "Casino", "Pulp Fiction" and "La
Haine", but his film's emotional strength comes from being able to communicate
the fulfilment of desire and the onset of nightmare. "Boogie Nights" is,
essentially, two extreme collections of feeling, realised
brilliantly.
The casting is impeccable, especially that of
Burt Reynolds. He's the perfect symbol for the role, having been a god
in the 70s and a joke in the 80s, but he doesn't rely on that. Speaking softly,
he turns Jack into an individual, rather than simply playing off the power
of his image or creating a caricature.
The more I think about this film the more I love
it, and the further I watched it the more I expected to wake up, disappointedly
realising it was a dream. When I was told by a friend from North Carolina
that it was possibly the best film of its type since "GoodFellas", I thought
he must have been exaggerating, but now I don't think he was. "Boogie Nights"
is any-Academy-Award material -- not just because all Oscars are 13 inches
long, but because it is perfect on every level.
COPYRIGHT© 1998 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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