Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights”—a movie that I thought was near-perfect when it came out, in 1997, and which I still think is near-perfect now that I am twice the age I was then—tells the story of the sweet, slightly dim, extremely well-endowed Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) as he rises and then, gradually, falls, in the San Fernando Valley porn industry of the late seventies and early eighties. I’ve watched “Boogie Nights” several times in the past two decades, but there is one particular scene, late in the movie, that I’ve returned to, as a stand-alone, again and again. (It is available on YouTube in two consecutive parts.) At this point in the plot, we are well into the eighties, and the party has been over for a while. Dirk and his sidekick, Reed (the flawlessly doofy John C. Reilly), low on both coke and funds, have arrived, with a loser-ish hustler named Todd, at the palatial valley residence of Rahad, a dealer to whom they are planning to sell half a kilo of baking soda, claiming that it’s cocaine. Rahad, wearing only bikini briefs, a gold chain, and a flapping satin robe, greets the trio affably, singing along to Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” and Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl.” But the scene thrums with menace, the Top Forty mood disrupted by Rahad taking hits on a freebase pipe and playing Russian roulette with a loaded handgun, and by the loud firecrackers that one of his hangers-on sets off erratically.

Every detail in the scene—which crescendos to a bloody end, and a narrow escape for Dirk—is spot-on: the ugly, expensive gilt sculptures dotting the room; Rahad’s braggy asides (“Ricky Springfield! He’s a buddy of mine!”); and Dirk’s and Reed’s pronounced flinches as the firecrackers go off, so resonant that I’ve often caught myself flinching along. The heart of the scene, though, comes about midway through, when, as “Jessie’s Girl” moves from its second verse to the chorus, the camera lingers on Dirk’s face for nearly forty seconds. During this audaciously long shot, his gaze is seemingly vacant, and his expression shifts from a slight smile to a barely perceptible frown. We can only guess at what he is thinking; film, after all, is not the medium for interiority. But part of the magic of Anderson’s movie is that its brutality is never presented without sympathy’s balm. Every time I watch Dirk’s face, I feel my eyeballs relaxing into pleasurable stasis, my gaze observing his, and I believe, for a moment, that I understand him completely.