There Will Be Blood blew pretty much everybody away (screw you, Armond White), but it was a particular coup for longtime observers of director Paul Thomas Anderson, probably the most intriguing and frustrating young auteur in contemporary American cinema. His technical talent (particularly in encapsulating time in montage) far outstrips that of peers Sofia Coppola and the other Anderson fellow, but Blood is his only fully realized masterpiece. It's grand enough to house the director's always-straining ambition, yet fleet enough to prevent him from becoming bogged down by the same. Sadly, I can't quite say the same for the brace of '90s ensemble flicks with which he made his name.
Boogie Nights, PTA's rise-and-fall story of a self-styled family of pornographers, is also one of the shamefully few films to explicitly address the advent of videotape and home viewing. Video marks the most significant technological advancement in cinema since the rise of the talkies, and while PTA's 1997 film is necessarily a period piece, rather than a contemporary document like David Cronenberg's Videodrome, the younger director deserves kudos. Cronenberg, however, couched his film in his own personal tics (paranoia and body horror) and a twisted, subversive attack on the body politic he would only top much later with A History of Violence. By comparison, Boogie Nights is linear, devotional, and decidedly impersonal, gravely sketching out the downfall of porno theaters as an aesthetic tragedy. I'm not aiming for a moralist blow at PTA's subject matter (quite the opposite, as I'll get to in a moment), but I am criticizing his rote, overly respectful treatment of a complex era. It's a far cry, for example, from the generous back-and-forth of ideas on display in Singin' in the Rain. One reviewer, in the middle of naming There Will Be Blood the greatest movie of the '00s, referred to Nights and its follow-up Magnolia as PTA's ''rebel cries.'' For my part, I'd be hard pressed to name a film more dutiful.
Indeed, Boogie Nights is first and foremost a love letter to film itself, in style as well as in subject. Altman's '70s ensemble work is the clearest reference point, but PTA's striped and suited homage extends well beyond the decade it loves so well. There's that final cock-shot, cheekily lifted from Raging Bull's own capper. The Scorsese riffs don't end there. Obviously, such a quintessential story arc has any number of forebears, but Nights' uncanny similarities to Goodfellas can be traced scene by scene--the early beatdown by the biological parent, the late hat-in-hand return to the surrogate father. De Palma also haunts the production, from the multiple-perspective take on ''Dirk Diggler's'' first flick to the delirious coke deal, in which the characters act like they've memorized Scarface for that very moment.
This isn't to say that PTA hasn't learned well. More than any of his other films, Boogie Nights is a showcase for PTA's mastery of the discrete set piece. Music, montage, and a mobile camera weave together astonishingly virtuoso sequences, holding their own against the restaurant tour in Goodfellas or the 13-minute opening shot of Snake Eyes. The glory-days pool party, the aforementioned POV-heavy shoot, the Dirk/Rollergirl downfall montage, and, of course, the ''Sister Christian''/''Jesse's Girl'' coke deal, classics all. PTA demonstrates tremendous skill at leavening tension with humor and establishing films-within-films, and Nights is indeed a rebel cry in that it demonstrates that stylistic nostalgia and contemporary talent aren't necessarily in opposition.
Sadly, the arcs in between don't fare as well. PTA rushes things in between his self-contained symphonies, exposing a flimsy script and some glaringly underwritten characters. Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman suffer the most, though neither is as used and abused as they would be two years later in Magnolia. Moore's backstory is shoehorned in, nothing but forced, overly sentimental exposition. Hoffman is granted the first half of the film to show off his character chops as a deliciously awkward cameraman, but is unceremoniously dumped from the narrative as soon as he finally kisses Mark Wahlberg. It comes off like PTA felt vaguely that he needed one Gay Moment in a movie about porn, and was all too ready to move on afterward.
Boogie Nights, PTA's rise-and-fall story of a self-styled family of pornographers, is also one of the shamefully few films to explicitly address the advent of videotape and home viewing. Video marks the most significant technological advancement in cinema since the rise of the talkies, and while PTA's 1997 film is necessarily a period piece, rather than a contemporary document like David Cronenberg's Videodrome, the younger director deserves kudos. Cronenberg, however, couched his film in his own personal tics (paranoia and body horror) and a twisted, subversive attack on the body politic he would only top much later with A History of Violence. By comparison, Boogie Nights is linear, devotional, and decidedly impersonal, gravely sketching out the downfall of porno theaters as an aesthetic tragedy. I'm not aiming for a moralist blow at PTA's subject matter (quite the opposite, as I'll get to in a moment), but I am criticizing his rote, overly respectful treatment of a complex era. It's a far cry, for example, from the generous back-and-forth of ideas on display in Singin' in the Rain. One reviewer, in the middle of naming There Will Be Blood the greatest movie of the '00s, referred to Nights and its follow-up Magnolia as PTA's ''rebel cries.'' For my part, I'd be hard pressed to name a film more dutiful.
Indeed, Boogie Nights is first and foremost a love letter to film itself, in style as well as in subject. Altman's '70s ensemble work is the clearest reference point, but PTA's striped and suited homage extends well beyond the decade it loves so well. There's that final cock-shot, cheekily lifted from Raging Bull's own capper. The Scorsese riffs don't end there. Obviously, such a quintessential story arc has any number of forebears, but Nights' uncanny similarities to Goodfellas can be traced scene by scene--the early beatdown by the biological parent, the late hat-in-hand return to the surrogate father. De Palma also haunts the production, from the multiple-perspective take on ''Dirk Diggler's'' first flick to the delirious coke deal, in which the characters act like they've memorized Scarface for that very moment.
This isn't to say that PTA hasn't learned well. More than any of his other films, Boogie Nights is a showcase for PTA's mastery of the discrete set piece. Music, montage, and a mobile camera weave together astonishingly virtuoso sequences, holding their own against the restaurant tour in Goodfellas or the 13-minute opening shot of Snake Eyes. The glory-days pool party, the aforementioned POV-heavy shoot, the Dirk/Rollergirl downfall montage, and, of course, the ''Sister Christian''/''Jesse's Girl'' coke deal, classics all. PTA demonstrates tremendous skill at leavening tension with humor and establishing films-within-films, and Nights is indeed a rebel cry in that it demonstrates that stylistic nostalgia and contemporary talent aren't necessarily in opposition.
Sadly, the arcs in between don't fare as well. PTA rushes things in between his self-contained symphonies, exposing a flimsy script and some glaringly underwritten characters. Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman suffer the most, though neither is as used and abused as they would be two years later in Magnolia. Moore's backstory is shoehorned in, nothing but forced, overly sentimental exposition. Hoffman is granted the first half of the film to show off his character chops as a deliciously awkward cameraman, but is unceremoniously dumped from the narrative as soon as he finally kisses Mark Wahlberg. It comes off like PTA felt vaguely that he needed one Gay Moment in a movie about porn, and was all too ready to move on afterward.
Boogie Nights is fragmented and inconsistent, but I would argue that those failures result from a dominant style, rather than breaks in the same. PTA can't spin out the jazzy ebbs and flows that ought to mark a delirious period piece and a stacked ensemble flick. His visual style is too cool and exacting, his approach to narrative too rigid and methodical. In his own, less twee manner, PTA's as fussy a filmmaker as his spiritual cousin Wes. While W. Anderson stuffs his static compositions with as many dog-eared personal effects as possible, PTA is a control freak with his camera, wielding it like a ruler, staking out the sober boundaries in which the scenes will be allowed to occur. His hand is always visible, which isn't itself a problem, except that the lack of autonomy and agency granted to the characters clashes badly with the story the director's trying to tell. When Boogie Nights works, it does so in bite-size chunks that beg to be skipped to and from. When it doesn't, there's no chance of tying the scene into a compelling larger tapestry. The film just falls flat, and does so with depressing frequency, living and dying by its author's commitment to the moment at hand.
Fundamentally, Boogie Nights is square. It assumes (and adopts) our discomfort and queasy excitement with the subject at hand, but largely fails to expand beyond the most prim and nostalgic of visions. One is never allowed to forget that this movie about the '70s (good!) and the '80s (bad!) was released in 1997. It's a tidied-up retrospective rather than a panorama of life as lived. Porn itself, supposedly the film's focus, quickly becomes the drunk party guest that won't leave. PTA increasingly situates his pornographers as wannabe actors, and their industry as a failed farm league. There's nothing wrong (or inaccurate, for that matter) with having Burt Reynolds dream of elevating his work to art, or Don Cheadle protest his status at the bank. Still, I can't shake the feeling that PTA is reflecting less society's dismissal of porn and pornographers than his own desire to flatten and generalize the story. The closing "family reunion" feels decidedly unearned, less a tying up of loose ends than a tacked-on bookend. I'm not saying Boogie Nights itself ought to have been porn, but it's frustrating to watch a talented filmmaker chicken out.
Skip forward two months to Tarantino's Jackie Brown, which threads warm, funny drama into a disreputable genre (blaxploitation) without showing the seams. Or skip forward a year to The Big Lebowski, a genre-bending, insanely aestheticized tribute to L.A. that never blinks once. Set next to pastiches that boldly possessed and utterly committed, Boogie Nights feels timid, anemic, and forced.
Lebowski is a revealing reference point for Nights, and not just because the Cheadle robbery scene (the film's weakest set piece) could've been ripped from any number of Coens films. Brothers Joel and Ethan are often accused of the same cold, authorial fussiness that plagues PTA here, and not without reason. In Lebowski, however, they yield control to the distinctiveness of their own creation, letting the density of their riffs take hold. Then again, they had had six films to learn how to let go while still being wildly creative. Boogie Nights was PTA's second film. His first feature, Hard Eight, didn't give him much to go on; unlike the Coens' similarly noir-themed debut Blood Simple, PTA's first was a stylistic dead end, furthering my impression that he lacks the cerebral juggling powers of a Tarantino. Given time, and distance from the demands of star-studded ensemble pictures, PTA's execution has gradually caught up with his talent. Adam Sandler was a compelling promecium swimming around the petri dish of Punch Drunk Love, and There Will Be Blood succeeded in large part because Daniel Day-Lewis seemed to be actively raging against PTA's direction, like the God that Daniel Plainview finally admits to not believing in. Boogie Nights' best moments still sparkle, but the gaps stand out like missing teeth.
Fundamentally, Boogie Nights is square. It assumes (and adopts) our discomfort and queasy excitement with the subject at hand, but largely fails to expand beyond the most prim and nostalgic of visions. One is never allowed to forget that this movie about the '70s (good!) and the '80s (bad!) was released in 1997. It's a tidied-up retrospective rather than a panorama of life as lived. Porn itself, supposedly the film's focus, quickly becomes the drunk party guest that won't leave. PTA increasingly situates his pornographers as wannabe actors, and their industry as a failed farm league. There's nothing wrong (or inaccurate, for that matter) with having Burt Reynolds dream of elevating his work to art, or Don Cheadle protest his status at the bank. Still, I can't shake the feeling that PTA is reflecting less society's dismissal of porn and pornographers than his own desire to flatten and generalize the story. The closing "family reunion" feels decidedly unearned, less a tying up of loose ends than a tacked-on bookend. I'm not saying Boogie Nights itself ought to have been porn, but it's frustrating to watch a talented filmmaker chicken out.
Skip forward two months to Tarantino's Jackie Brown, which threads warm, funny drama into a disreputable genre (blaxploitation) without showing the seams. Or skip forward a year to The Big Lebowski, a genre-bending, insanely aestheticized tribute to L.A. that never blinks once. Set next to pastiches that boldly possessed and utterly committed, Boogie Nights feels timid, anemic, and forced.
Lebowski is a revealing reference point for Nights, and not just because the Cheadle robbery scene (the film's weakest set piece) could've been ripped from any number of Coens films. Brothers Joel and Ethan are often accused of the same cold, authorial fussiness that plagues PTA here, and not without reason. In Lebowski, however, they yield control to the distinctiveness of their own creation, letting the density of their riffs take hold. Then again, they had had six films to learn how to let go while still being wildly creative. Boogie Nights was PTA's second film. His first feature, Hard Eight, didn't give him much to go on; unlike the Coens' similarly noir-themed debut Blood Simple, PTA's first was a stylistic dead end, furthering my impression that he lacks the cerebral juggling powers of a Tarantino. Given time, and distance from the demands of star-studded ensemble pictures, PTA's execution has gradually caught up with his talent. Adam Sandler was a compelling promecium swimming around the petri dish of Punch Drunk Love, and There Will Be Blood succeeded in large part because Daniel Day-Lewis seemed to be actively raging against PTA's direction, like the God that Daniel Plainview finally admits to not believing in. Boogie Nights' best moments still sparkle, but the gaps stand out like missing teeth.
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