Boogie Nights

I caught this on tv last night (how is that possible? lots of beeps and black boxes), and it holds up surprisingly well. Out of all the movies I loved in high school, this is probably the one I wanted to see again the least. It felt exhausted the last time I saw it, with nothing more to give.

But the film gains some odd poignancy if you take it as a love letter to the cinema of the 1970s, and as regret for the forgotten promise that the movies seemed to hold for many back then. The film itself even hints at this when two characters discuss their love for the new Star Wars films. Those films, along with perhaps Jaws, are often accused of ending the period of creative freedom that the 70s represented. When you examine the conflict of the characters in Boogie Nights, a desire to make real art vs. the demands of the pornography business, it's hard not to see a reflection of what many may feel in Hollywood today. When the curtain falls on 1979 and the movie takes a dark turn in the 1980s, one feels that perhaps this fall from grace represents the end of the last best chance the movies had.