Punch-Drunk Love

I caught this at the New York film festival and my expectations were about as low as they could be. I was never a huge Adam Sandler fan, and I hadn't ever taken a liking to PT Anderson's other films. I thought that Magnolia was pretty flimsy writing-wise, and I also thought that it got way too much undue attention when it came out.

I couldn't believe how great Punch Drunk Love was. It seems to be the polar opposite of Magnolia. Where Magnolia was sprawling, messy and often generic, Punch Drunk Love is short, tight and completely fresh. It reminded me of Fargo, in a way. It centers on a very small cadre of characters, it's incredibly focused, and it creates its own world for those characters to live and move around in.

It's been mentioned here before, but the art direction is stunning. I haven't seen such memorable visuals since The Royal Tenenbaums. In a grocery store scene, the items are stacked vertically by color (echoing the color bars that appear periodically between scenes), making the scene appear otherworldly. Other sets are bare of color or distinction. Sandler's love interest in the film (played by Emily Watson) lives in a maze of white corridors. Somehow, every "place" in the film has its own character and association. Even the characters become associated with particular colors.

The movie ends up being genuinely romantic while deviating completely from the very stale paradigm for romantic comedies of the last decade: Watson's character pursues Barry Egan; their inability to hit it off from the start is more character-driven and psychological than situational. Through the use of bizarre props and surreal scenes, the anxiety and frustration of Barry Egan becomes totally absorbing and affecting.

This is a wonderfully directed film. There isn't an extraneous moment. The visual style and pacing are particularly great. There's an interesting subtext in the film about communication - enormous background noise while characters are on the phone, Barry Egan's sisters' voices create this wall of noise (all voices making fun of him), telephones figure predominantly, the opening scene is completely bereft of background noise or music. There are a lot of interesting things to consider when it comes to the theme of communication and how sound is handled in the film.

That said, I'm already cringing at how most people are going to react to this. The Adam Sandler fans might find it too weird. People who liked PT Anderson's other movies might find it too pretensious. I was thrilled to have my low expectations completely overturned. This movie is great.

I was never a big Adam Sandler fan, nor did I enjoy director Paul Thomas Anderson's prior hit "Magnolia" as much as critics raved. So I popped this movie in expecting no more than something to kill 90 mins or so.

I was blown away from the opening scene:

Picture a guy (Sandler) in a comically blue suit sitting in a creepy concrete room politely arguing on the phone about an airline promotion. The camera slowly surveys the absurdity and desolation of this man's seemingly pointless little life. Then things suddenly, violently and mysteriously take a turn. I knew from the first 5 minutes that this would be an exceptional film.

What follows is something like "Peewee's Big Adventure" all grown up and directed by someone like Godard. And you gotta love that stupid blue suit which he never changes.

With vast, absurd sets & bizarre deadpan humor reminiscent of the classic "Joe vs the Volcano" and vivid, oddball characters like in "Amelie", and with slow, voyeuristic camera work like in the Swedish "Songs from the 2nd Floor", this film achieves the perfect recipe for surreal comedy. You never know what to expect, and your bizarre expectations are never disappointed. I would compare this to other excellent offbeat films like Miranda July's "The Future", Emir Kusturica's "Arizona Dream" (an early Johnny Depp classic), anything directed by Jim Jarmusch ("Night on Earth", "Ghost Dog", "Coffee & Cigarettes") and particularly, my favourite quirky romcom of all time, Vincent Gallo's "Buffalo 66".

As with all the picks I just mentioned, "Punch Drunk Love" is a dreamlike story (not 'dreamy' but 'dreamLIKE') where events and images may seem random, but in the end it all comes together with a powerful & very satisfying message. The whole time, the film never loses its comedic edge, and although there aren't any big gags or witty punchlines, the strangeness of situations & characters had me laughing out loud in almost every scene.

If you like unusual comedies, if you have an eye for art & an ear for poetry (not to mention the perfect musical score--pay close attention to the effect it has), don't hesitate to watch this movie. It made a Sandler as well as Anderson fan out of me.

One of my old English teachers once asked us about a book, "Did you all like the book? I'm not asking whether you enjoyed it; I don't care. I want to know if you liked it." She was making an important distinction.

I remembered that as I watched Punch-Drunk Love. It's very unusual. The film is set in L.A., but you don't see much scenery indicating that. You see unpleasant things. Adam Sandler's office is long and empty: just seeing him sitting at his desk assaults you with a feeling of loneliness (not because of any sappy music--but because of the set and the camera work). He walks out into a never-ending warehouse; it feels empty, brutal. He exits the warehouse and you see another unending sight: the row of garage-like doors of all the other warehouses. It feels like it lasts forever, this row of doors, and when Adam gets to the end of it, he looks out onto a long, straight, industrial, empty street. It looks HORRIBLE, but why? Nothing is happening on the street, there are no gruesome sights, no particular signs of squalor or anything, and yet you feel repulsed, hopeless, alone. Then, out of the distance, a car whizzes by, nothing unusual, but it feels abrasive. With no relation at all to the plot, just as it appears, this car hits something and explodes, its remains slide off into the distance and you see nothing more of it. It's trivial. But you feel like the movie is being hostile toward YOU, the viewer.

Yes, that's the best way I can put it: you feel like the movie is being hostile toward YOU. A few minutes later, a truck flies by, again very abrasively, and drops a harmonium in front of Adam Sandler. There is no rhyme or reason to this, it just happens, and it's all very unpleasant.

About a third of the way through the video, my phone rang. I told my friend what I was watching, and she asked how it was. I told her, "I can't decide. I'm not sure I like it." I kept watching. At the end, I understood. What I had meant to tell my friend was that I wasn't enjoying it. And I wasn't meant to.

The film starts out with a very bad point in Adam Sandler's life. He is neurotic, you want to kill his sisters even though they're not malicious per se, he is lonely, his life is unpleasant. This movie is trying to do more than TELL you it's unpleasant, and even more than SHOW you it's unpleasant: the movie is trying to get inside you and make you FEEL it. You seriously feel the abrasiveness of every image, every sound, every character; you feel accosted by it. When there's silence, it's brutal silence. When there are sounds, they're brutal sounds. Images and movements are abrasive. Until Adam's life begins to flourish: then you get pretty sounds, pretty colors--as the viewer, you're let off the hook, too.

So when it was over, I was in amazement. How many movies succeed at this, at taking you WITH them to the discomfort the character is living? The cinematography, the sound work, the script--none of it is any accident. When his life isn't going well, you FEEL it. Did I like the movie? Very much. And if you appreciate a very unusual take on an old topic, you will too.

One of the reasons I would recommend 'Punch-Drunk Love' is Adam Sandler. For the first time he is the best thing in a movie and I must admit he does a tremendous job with his character, named Barry Egan. He has the same aggressive outbursts he has in his comedies but here they fit his character and the story. He seems like a pretty normal guy although you see something in his face, something ready to come out, and when it comes you can almost understand it.

The story is a love story, in a way. The love interest is Lena (Emily Watson). They are both different and therefore there is a chance it could work. Another part of the story involves a sex line that Barry called. They have his credit card number and everything and force him from time to time to donate money. How this story goes from there is not for me to reveal but it gives us some very unexpected moments.

That is one of the other good things in this movie. Most of the time you don't know and can't even guess what will happen next. It is another reason to see this movie, although I do think it has some boring moments as well. The story develops slow and that makes it a movie not all people will like. If you like Adam Sandler-movies like 'Mr. Deeds' or 'Big Daddy' I think you should skip 'Punch-Drunk Love'. If you like other movies from director Paul Thomas Anderson I am not sure. I liked 'Boogie Nights' and 'Magnolia' a lot better, but you might want to give it a chance.

This is a great movie (my opinion) and here's why...it shows two characters falling in love and acting stupid. They don't have all the right things to say to each other; they get scared; they walk away and wish they had said something, anything other than what they did/didn't say; they get embarrassed, they giggle and snort...and the list goes on.

If you don't like this movie, it's OK. I think this is the kind of movie that is sorta just sitting there, waiting for the "right" people to see it and nod their heads and smile and say, yes, this is how it is. It's quiet and doesn't scream for people to pay attention to it; it's just there. It doesn't make any promises and it doesn't need to.

The storyline may veer from "real" life, but these two characters pretty much get it--what people do when they are very much "in love" with someone.