Paul Thomas Anderson’s drama about the pornography business is funny, generous and worth the long evening. The rise-and-fall story grows familiar, but the performances and the care taken over crowded scenes keep it absorbing.
Paul Thomas Anderson takes the rise and fall of a performer in the pornography business and gives it the attention usually reserved for more respectable careers. Boogie Nights is funny, expansive and compassionate enough to justify most of its 156 minutes, with an ensemble we would happily spend an evening watching. Anderson is interested in people who want their work to count, even when their claims for it invite a smile. His weakness is a familiar rise-and-fall structure, which eventually makes the film easier to anticipate than its early freedom suggests.
We were delighted by the opening long take, because it introduces a crowd without making anyone seem like an item on a cast list. Cinematographer Robert Elswit keeps the movement readable, letting us discover people within the shot instead of waiting for separate introductions. The widescreen framing gives the ensemble room to exist together, so our attention can move between faces. It is showy work, certainly, but the showing off helps us understand who belongs in this company.
Mark Wahlberg’s Eddie Adams, who becomes Dirk Diggler, is an appealing centre because his openness makes the ambition seem touchingly uncomplicated. Burt Reynolds, as filmmaker Jack Horner, brings a different seriousness: he wants narrative tension to matter in a business with a rather specific audience requirement. Reynolds allows the idea to be funny without treating the man as a fool, and that distinction matters whenever Anderson approaches a joke at someone’s expense. Julianne Moore’s Amber Waves gives the ensemble emotional weight without making her performance feel like a request for sympathy.
Bob Ziembicki’s production design and Mark Bridges’s costumes give the 1970s setting enough character that the period never has to carry the entertainment by itself. The rooms and clothes help distinguish people within the crowd; they are useful to the drama as well as pleasurable to look at. Michael Penn’s music supports the movement between comedy and discomfort, though it registers less strongly than Elswit’s images. Across these departments, the pleasure is in the care taken over a workplace that another film might present only as a joke.
Dylan Tichenor’s editing keeps the company legible over a long running time, and the early sections have an inviting ease about moving between people. John C. Reilly’s Reed Rothchild and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Scotty J. help make the supporting cast feel worth following beyond Eddie’s immediate concerns. Yet the accumulation of subplots becomes a problem: some feel like another opportunity for a good actor rather than another necessary part of the story. We would lose a little of that company to give the central drama more urgency.
The comparison with Goodfellas is fair, particularly in the restless camera and the broad course from excitement towards trouble. Anderson’s affection for the people gives this film enough of its own character, although it does not erase the familiarity of that progression. Once the story starts to follow its expected course, the length becomes more noticeable. The performances keep individual scenes alive even when the larger story offers fewer surprises.
The film’s generosity makes the familiar cautionary tale worth sitting through: even the foolish aspirations are allowed some dignity. That is especially valuable in a story about work so easily reduced to smirking or moral instruction. Anderson lets us laugh without requiring us to feel superior to everyone on screen. Give it an uninterrupted evening, with a little patience for the subplots.
