Movies like U-Turn, LA Confidential and most recently Boogie Nights, convey a critical "something has to be done" message about the society (read: civilization) we are living in; either life has to change the demands it puts on us, or we have to better ourselves.
Oliver Stone proposes a U-turn, a way back to forgotten religious values. His thriller U-Turn re-considers the outcome of the director's previous film Natural Born Killers, where the killing rampage was justified as a natural response to "all the sins of our times." The heroes left behind piles of corpses and sank into the wilderness to beget their children and maybe start a home business a la "simplify your life." In U-Turn, Oliver Stone opts for another ending. Outwardly, the couple of his heroes remind us of the couple from Natural Born Killers. (Sean Penn versus Woody Harrelson!) But this time the natural born killers are not getting away with their deadly deeds. Yes, during the film, he and she shot everyone who was in their way, but at the end, he and she U- turned on each other as well. In a scorching desert, a flock of birds, anticipating their terrible feast, circle over a sunken basin with our dying heroes.
Throughout the entire film a poster which states "Jesus Is the Lord" reoccurs against the background of a town’s junk and ruins. This image conveys an ambiguous idea about the Lord; how can the Lord watch this and do nothing about it? Or, on the contrary, the Lord is the only one who can save this town and its habitants (read humanity who built this failing civilization). Has Lord abandoned us, or have we abandoned him? So, according to U-turn only change of our consciousness can save us.
LA Confidential looks very radical, but in the final analyses it doesn't put on us radical demands. According to this film, only romance can escape the world of lies, betrayals and corruption. In other words, the needed turn of consciousness can be brought about via a romance. This is the strange lesson of love that totalitarian and fascist regimes evoke in people. At times of grand betrayal, life can be healed only through personal love and loyalty. In Russia the Communist ideals demanded loyalty to the revolution and submissiveness to the interests of the international class of proletarians. But instead, Russian people developed passionate loyalty towards their children and families. Strangely enough, in the long run, this "anti-social" loyalty made Russian Communism collapse. The more the Russians cared for their children, the less they cared about Communism, especially about its international version.
Boogie Nights’ comment on the need to save our civilization and perform a U-turn of our consciousness is perhaps the most significant. Seemingly Paul Thomas Anderson tells an innocent story about life in the adult-film industry. The story line follows the rise and fall of the porno stars. But the story is told in such a way that it grows into a metaphor of humanity in the garden of good and evil.
The porno stars are locked into their tiny world on the property of their director, Jack Horner (Burt Reynold) with a big and blue pool as its centerpiece. The extended porno family rockn’rolls together around this pool. All the major events seem to happen here. Swimming in this pool reminds us of secular baptism—the porno stars are baptized into the religion of loyalty to their "family" with its morality turned on it’s ear.
The loyalty goes to Father represented by their director Jack Horner who accumulates absolute power over the family members. And twisted loyalty goes to surrogate Mother (Julianne Moore’s Amber Waves) who sleeps with her "kids" and turns them into drug-addicts. Horner adopts "damaged goods" (hopeless start-ups) who dream of fame, but have no ability to make it.
Everybody knows what kind of family they are joining. And everybody hopes that they join it only, for a little while until they overcome their financial difficulties. Everybody wants out. Father does porno films but dreams about art-house movies. Mother adopts newbies into the family but dreams about getting her real son back. One by one, all the kids make an attempt to leave the porno family. But after awhile, they return being almost killed, beaten, humiliated and penniless. They come back because they cannot survive on their own.
There is one exception: Polite Little Bill (William H. Macy) finds a solution by killing his nymphomaniac wife (who sports extra-marital sex in nude and in public) and himself.
In the film, there are two more important but fake separations. Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly), the magician seems to go into business on his own, but makes it by staging porno turns. He U-turns back to his start.
And there is a lucky guy Buck Swope (Don Cheadle), who finds money to start his own sound system business. But the customers who buy from him are the same porno producers he intended to escape. Not only he, but his newly born baby also belongs to the family. In the last episode we see again that beautiful blue pool where newbies were "baptized," where polite Little Bill made his decision to end it all, where other important decisions were made. Buck's baby receives here his mark, his destiny. When Burt Reinhold's Jack Horner places his hand on the head of Buck's son in the pool, the film's metaphor really rises to the stars. I had the feeling of visiting the garden of Adam and Eve with the snake Lilit in it. Now, after "baptizing," the baby is "in," a part of the family of destruction. So are we who know very well what the rotten apple was that we bit into. And makers of Boogie Nights know it as well. The name of that Biblical apple is the dream of the 1970's to find freedom through free sex. But instead of freedom, the path of free sex guided us toward slavery.
This statement was not recognized by critics. But it may occur tomorrow when similar ideas will be expressed by other artists. It has already happened in the best films of 1998, Your Friends and Neighbors by Neil LaButa and Happiness by Todd Solondz. These films express the same disappointment in the belief that sex is a deliberating power in our search for freedom.
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