Paul Thomas Anderson - Boogie Nights (1997), 7/10

It is a spectacular feat to endear an exceptionally wide audience to the career of a seventies-era porn star. Despite the eventually very adult come-down, the career we track begins with a frenetic energy reminiscent of youth itself. Wahlberg as Dirk Diggler is much less relatable than he is an optimistic, entitled fool, yet by the end of the film we feel his joy, pain, longing, and eventual terror. Within this terror rests the best the film has to offer, making the first half and its glorification of the seventies feel entirely necessary to its development, yet stylistically overextended. The feeling is captured long before the tone shifts to the much more entrancing explosiveness of the eighties, where Dirk and his comrades crash and stumble into the underbelly of "the industry" and its rejects. Within this portrayal, Alfred Molina provides the most notable performance of the film, despite his brief appearance, as the drug-crazed coke dealer who perfectly embodies the lifestyle Dirk (Eddie) never wished to fall into, but was destined to encounter from the start of his misguided career. This is perhaps only narratively equalled by Bill's murder-suicide, a perfectly placed story bridge that brings on its second act. The emotional peaks of the film are a large part of what make Paul Thomas Anderson a force to be reckoned with in cinema, despite the obvious stylistic borrowings from Scorsese, which make up the first half of the film and its fittingly masturbatory sequences.

The cinematography is quite obviously a substantial piece of what makes Boogie Nights an exceptional film and viewing experience, but it does not match the satisfactory pull of its narrative restructuring following Dirk's fall from grace. This is partly from the quite rare but unmissable breaks in immersion brought about by half-assed sex cinematography. Normally this would represent a minor flaw at best, but in a film whose subject matter is pornography, and one that takes itself quite seriously, it substantiates a lack of visual care. Still, this visual break is surrounded and contextualized by cinematic expertise at play. The allure embodied by Amber's caretaker presence for Eddie, intermingled with the physical passion that continually fueled his career, forms a perfect prelude to his angst brought about through aging, combative relationships, and the subsequent "rock bottom" moments of being beaten and victimized during his stint as a prostitute, then chased off at gunpoint by Rahad (Molina). The climax of the film is presented just at the moment of its precipice, and as Eddie returns “home," we feel a return to its original cinematic form as viewers. Just as Eddie is privileged by his anatomy, something irreproducible and impossible to lose, he is enslaved by his limitations, yet grateful for the world he exists in, particularly at its summit. We are reminded with his closing "money shot" (of sorts) that we are not sharing his triumph, but witnessing it artificially, much like his fictional audience. Just as Scotty yearns for Eddie, or perhaps his parasocial relationship with Dirk, the spectacle on the screen is out of reach for an audience and only serves to annotate the story of our own real lives.