Boogie Nights
[4K/Digital Code]
Allow me to coin a terrible phrase. Paul Thomas Anderson is a “written-in” artist for me. Anything he does, I think, is worth watching. The opposite of course, being the “written-off” artist whose work I’ll actively avoid. Like, say, Christopher Nolan. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that some people’s work I feel like I can connect with more. I just reviewed One Battle After Another and found it kind of lackluster, but still somewhat interesting. How does it compare to the beginning of PTA’s career?
I remember watching Boogie Nights over 10 years ago on my tiny iPod’s screen in the cafeteria of my old job. I liked it. I didn’t love it. I found it both overly and underly horny considering the subject. I also didn’t quite understand why people considered it a masterpiece. Maybe the bar was too high?
Now, of course, things are different. I’m looking back on it with posterity and on an upgraded 30-inch screen in my living room. I liked it a lot more than I remember.
The thing that made me understand this movie more is knowing that PTA is interested in exploring characters. He certainly does that here and the theme that Boogie Nights soaks in is having delusions of grandeur. There’s no doubt watching it that these people are delusional, self-destructive, enablers, but also sweet and relatable. They are sad, unaware, people whose only chance of happiness is being told they are great or thinking they are great. It sounds harsh, but it makes everything a lot more enjoyable when you understand what’s driving these characters. They’re all broken people and they all deserve each other. That’s the key to this movie, and honestly, the key to a happy life. Now what? Well, watch them navigate these dynamics in a truly weird line of work.
Boogie Nights is funny and hopeful in a lot of ways because the bar for these characters is so incredibly low. There are rises and falls, and some truly genuine happy moments, which come from the community they’ve built for each other. These lives have meaning when they have that safety net and friend group for support. And maybe that’s the real lesson in life: you’re never a loser if you have a community and friends who support you. It’s all there in Boogie Nights. It’s weird, and that’s probably the point.
