Cinemyths

相较于PTA后来的作品， 《不羁夜》最出色的并不是有关空间技法的展示，而是对各项艺术手段在特定语境下的同质性的捕捉。导演似乎只是在描述一类统一，关于人物的不谋而合，从中共同垮掉在霓虹与风月。甚至没有一个细节的入口可以延展到行业的解构，或是角色天赋的自反。镜头里永远是不羁夜下的狂欢亦或起舞，这或许是最好的追忆方法，引导出特定时代里安逸的永恒。

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With the benefit of hindsight, as we compare Boogie Nights to PTA’s later works regarding their respective singularity, the camera’s traveling within space for this one is less mesmerizing than its photographic extraction of a coherent expression from a wide range of art-related media when they converge under a given circumstance. 

In this respect, PTA apparently concerns zeitgeist union as the sine qua non of retrieving a period’s essence. In Boogie Nights, there are characters unconsciously sharing the same belief, and there were days and nights evanescent from their remembrance. The flow of mass spirits is indifferent to its backline, and there was unwitting diffusion too desultory to generate any reflection. A political analysis would fail if one seeks to deconstruct the provided society through the film’s trivial depiction, much like a character study that aims to trace identity and talents. Instead, the visual intelligence has been gradually spoiled by the film’s “meretricious” merrymaking, which PTA uses to conduct the sumptuous recollection of his lost age. The textual aspiration may appear tendentious and frivolous in a certain sense; paradoxically, yet not without reason, it substantially preserves the filmmaker’s nostalgic sensibility by committing to the time’s perennial engagements rather than emphasizing its shifts.

—— 2021.10.31