There is something of ‘On the Waterfront’, ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Raging Bull’ in ‘Boogie Nights’, a sprawling dissection of the pornography industry in the 1970s and 1980s. Like those films, it charts a rise, a fall and, in some respects, a tentative rise again. At its centre is Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg), later reinvented as Dirk Diggler, a young man who becomes a star in low-budget adult films largely because of a particular physical attribute. Yet, as with many of the characters in this world, he seems to be running away from something in his personal life as much as he is running towards success. The film suggests that everyone is blessed with some kind of gift, some special talent, and in Dirk’s case it happens to be an unusually marketable one.

There is an irony running throughout the film. Sex is everywhere, yet we rarely see the characters engage in genuine intimacy. Even William H. Macy’s character, forever catching his wife in compromising situations at parties, is defined more by humiliation and loneliness than by sexuality itself. In that sense, ‘Boogie Nights’ is less about sex than about belonging.

What really stands out is the way the film constructs an alternative family. Julianne Moore’s Amber Waves has lost custody of her son and gradually adopts Dirk and Rollergirl (Heather Graham) as surrogate children. Rollergirl has abandoned school and drifted into pornography, yet sees Amber as the mother figure she lacks. The relationships are unconventional, but they provide a sense of connection and emotional support that many of the characters cannot find elsewhere.

Burt Reynolds, who famously had mixed feelings about the film despite receiving some of the finest reviews of his career and an Oscar nomination, is superb as director Jack Horner. What makes the character fascinating is his sense of artistic integrity. He refuses to see himself as someone making disposable sleaze. His ambition is to make films that tell stories, even if they happen to be within the adult industry. When the arrival of videotape threatens the cinematic aspirations of the business at the end of the 1970s, he sees it almost as a betrayal of his craft. In that respect, the transition from film to video is not unlike the transition from silent cinema to sound in ‘Singin’ in the Rain’.

The soundtrack is also extraordinary. The film often feels as though it is propelled forward by an endless stream of music from the 1970s and 1980s, with each song commenting on the emotional state of the characters and the changing times around them. Paul Thomas Anderson uses music not simply as accompaniment but as a narrative device.

The opening remains one of the most striking introductions in modern American cinema. After a prolonged darkness accompanied by distant sounds, the camera suddenly glides into a nightclub beneath the neon glow of the title song. The sequence inevitably recalls the famous Copacabana tracking shot in ‘Goodfellas’, announcing a world of glamour, movement and possibility. Likewise, when we see Eddie living at home surrounded by posters of Al Pacino and Bruce Lee, there are echoes of ‘Saturday Night Fever’ and the young dreamer desperate to escape an ordinary existence.

Ultimately, ‘Boogie Nights’ is a story about the American Dream and its limitations. Dirk achieves the success he craves, only to discover how fragile and fleeting it is. By the end, he has fallen a long way from the heights of stardom and is reduced to hustling for survival. Yet there is also a degree of redemption. Like Terry Malloy in ‘On the Waterfront’ or Jake LaMotta in ‘Raging Bull’, he seems finally to be confronting himself. The film ends not with triumph but with an attempt at self-recognition. Beneath all the excess, music and spectacle lies a surprisingly poignant story about family, ambition, identity and the price of fame.