Drugs ‘N’ Disco … And Pronography And Innocence In Exhuberant ‘Boogie Nights’
From the insistent disco beat of its opening sequence to its dare-you-to-look, let-it-all-hang-out closing shot, “Boogie Nights” doesn’t just wink and invite you into its ‘70s world of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll - it grabs you by the wide lapels and hauls you over the threshold.
You might find the journey distasteful, but once you enter, turning back would be a big mistake. So be aware that “Boogie Nights” takes place in the world of adult filmmaking, and that it pushes its R rating as far as it can.
But the movie isn’t about adult filmmaking so much as it is about the hedonism of the late ‘70s and pre-AIDS ‘80s, and it isn’t so much about that as it is about the hedonists - who, it contends, were actually pretty nice people. If you didn’t know what they were up to, you might want ‘em for neighbors.
In a fall movie landscape that has been littered with dysfunctional families and incest, it’s perversely appropriate that sex brings together some of the warmest people we’ve encountered. Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) certainly feels more accepted in this world than he does with his harridan mother (the versatile Joanna Gleason, in too small a role) and wimpy father (Lawrence Hudd), who silently endures her harangues.
In a histrionic scene that’s one of the movie’s few false notes, Eddie splits from Mom after she accuses him of being good for nothing. He knows that he’s good for one thing, and that that’s all you need to be a success. And the thing he’s good at happens to be sex.
Eddie has already caught the eye of Jack Horner, a porn-movie director with a paternal streak. You’d think playing Horner would encourage Burt Reynolds’ hammy tendencies, but either he or director Paul Thomas Anderson keeps them in check, and his straight-faced take provides the movie with a solid anchor. It also makes the character funnier; this is a sex-movie director who wants to make “art,” and Reynolds’ deadpan description of good production values gives the movie one of its biggest laughs.
Horner sort of adopts Eddie, who changes his name to the improbable moniker Dirk Diggler and becomes part of Horner’s “family.” They include Julianne Moore as a sweet-natured mother figure (although your mother was probably never like this), John C. Reilly as big-brother type Reed Rothchild, and Heather Graham as the little sister-ish Rollergirl, whose skates never, never leave her feet. Yeah, these people have sex with one another on film and do a phenomenal amount of drugs, but despite their sordid lives, they actually seem healthier than people in the outside world.
Along the way are assorted hangers-on, most impressively William H. Macy as a befuddled assistant director and the terrific Don Cheadle as Buck Swope, a porn star who wears cowboy chic six years too late for “Midnight Cowboy” and four years too early for “Urban Cowboy.” But then, he doesn’t want to be a star; what he really wants to do is … sell stereo equipment.
Eddie/Dirk’s rise-and-fall story is really nothing new, but Wahlberg’s performance redefines him as an actor. It’s so full of energy, so constantly moving, so confident and brash, yet so in touch with Eddie’s essential goodness that “former rapper” becomes irrelevant before his name.
And seldom has anyone immersed us so completely in a world as Anderson, whose vibrant camera work, wall-to-wall soundtrack and ribald humor bring to mind Martin Scorsese’s 1973 breakthrough, “Mean Streets.”
Anderson seems to be reminding other directors how to make a movie: He doesn’t let his vocabulary of long tracking shots and dizzying camera movements beat the story into submission, like Oliver Stone does with “U-Turn”; they all fit the movie and keep it as jangled and nervy as one of its coke-fueled characters. He doesn’t just use his grab bag of disco hits and early-‘80s trash rock as a shortcut for placing us in the period; every song provides commentary, not in a music-video fashion, but in a way that gives each scene its own mini-soundtrack.
Some people will accuse the movie of glamorizing pornography. But it doesn’t glamorize it so much as humanize it, and as we follow these characters over a six-year span of bleary-eyed parties, surreal awards shows and behind-basement-doors filming, we find that it can be just as degrading as its foes contend it is.
But we also find that, for these people, real life can be even more degrading. And the movie’s final words, a lie Dirk keeps telling himself even though he no longer believes it, will echo in your head for days.
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: “Boogie Nights” Location: Spokane Valley cinemas Credits: Directed Paul Thomas Anderson; starring Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle Running time: 2:24 Rating: R