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"Punch-Drunk Love" is one of my favorite films. It may not be "one of the greatest films of all time." It will not be highly regarded in film history. The movie is not an epic breakthrough, but an offbeat, darkly funny love story on a modest scale. Yet the film deeply affects me, and it is one of the few films that I can watch over and over again and still feel the visceral emotional reaction that I felt upon the first viewing. I plan on watching "Punch-Drunk Love" many more times after this Film Underground screening. Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson made this unique version of the romantic comedy after his operatic melodrama "Magnolia." While the latter is a three-hour epic following an ensemble of characters, "Punch-Drunk" is a tightly focused character study clocking in at a lean hour and a half. Barry Egan is that character - a lonely, fragile, painfully awkward man with a rage perpetually on slow simmer beneath the surface of his psyche. He is played by Adam Sandler in an absolutely wonderful performance - soft-spoken, pathetic at times, always trying to retain the dignity that seems to be constantly stripped away from him. Pay attention to his gestures in the film - this man's body talks. In Roger Ebert's review of "Punch-Drunk," Ebert notes how Anderson uses and plays with Sandler's established onscreen persona. Ebert sees Barry Egan in "Punch-Drunk" as the logical extension of the rage-filled, albeit more self-assured, Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. It's interesting that Sandler made "Anger Management" just a year later, which also chronicles the effects of repressed anger on a man's relationships. (Did I just say that "Anger Management" "chronicled" something? I think I need a thesaurus.) In "Punch-Drunk," Barry Egan owns a plunger supply business in Los Angeles, and seems to be deeply wounded by the treatment of his seven domineering sisters -- he seems to be constantly embarrassed by them. The sisters definitely aren't monsters, but have certainly worn away his self-confidence over the years by tiny increments. Just listen to the berating he receives when he self-consciously uses the word "chat" in a conversation with a sister (it's harsh enough that I cannot repeat it here).
Throughout the film, Barry has violent reactions to the way people treat him. He doesn't actually hit anyone, but his tantrums result in considerable property damage. His problem, though I'm no psychiatrist, seems to be that his anger is repressed and becomes excessive and misdirected. He does not verbally address problems head-on, but lets them build until they finally boil over and he punches a hole in the wall.
As his only recourse for human contact and understanding, Barry calls a phone sex line and gives them more personal information than he probably should. The next morning they call and begin to blackmail him, threatening exposure and violence if he cancels his credit card and refuses them money. They are lead by an extra-sleazy and loathsome mattress salesman, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. The exposure he threatens would be worse than death or violence for Barry - the embarrassment would destroy him. At one point, his sister Elizabeth wants to set Barry up with one of her co-workers at a family party. This co-worker is an English woman named Lena, who is inexplicably interested in Barry. Emily Watson plays Lena and she's absolutely lovely in the role, exuding an angelic warmth and innocence that is essential for her character. In her very first scene she's actually surrounded by a halo of brilliant sunlight. She asks him out on a date, and for Barry, her presence in his life is nothing short of miraculous. The phone sex blackmailers not only threaten his relationship with his sisters but also his burgeoning relationship with Lena, which seems to be his one chance at happiness.
The movie is structured around extended, skillfully-crafted sequences of mounting tension, in which the blackmailers and his sisters, Elizabeth in particular, stretch Barry's patience to the absolute breaking point. There's a moment when Barry finds out Elizabeth told Lena something he does not want her to know, and the look he gives Lena is one of Sandler's best moments in the film - it encompasses suppressed rage, resignation, and acute embarrassment all in a shy stare and an awkward smile. The power of these sequences is magnified by composer Jon Brion's insistent, dissonant score. As Barry's desperation mounts, the film builds towards the moments we've been waiting for, where he meets all abuse and harassment with the reactions he should have been expressing all along. The pay-offs are among the most satisfying in any film I have ever seen. The stretch of dialogue in the film's climactic scene is extraordinary - concise, restrained genius on P. T. Anderson's part.
The film is also unabashedly romantic. A sweeping romantic theme is noticeably featured in the score, and bookends the moments when Barry and Lena earnestly bear their hearts to one another. I love to see that sort of unbridled sentiment in movies - free of sarcasm or facetiousness - as characters tell each other exactly what they want and what they need. But that doesn't mean the romance is hokey. Consider one scene in which the sweet nothings two people should be whispering to each other are replaced by certain descriptions more at home in a graphically detailed crime novel. The romance progresses logically as well. As I've said in another article, too many romantic comedies insert an artificial problem between the romantic leads in order to wrap up Act Two and set-up the problem to be resolved in Act Three. This usually means the writers have run out of ideas. Not so in "Punch-Drunk Love" - Lena especially is a startlingly consistent character.
Along with "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Garden State," "Punch-Drunk Love" is one of the three thematically similar films that deeply resonated with me in high school. In these films, an exceedingly lonely man is miraculously saved from a doomed, passionless existence by a sort of dream-woman who grants him absolution through her love and acceptance. No need to give you a summary of my love-life at the time. But is it really wise to place the key to one's happiness in the power of another person? Does that mean you're "weak"? What happens if the relationship ends? Should that type of responsibility really be thrust upon a significant other? My answer is that it doesn't matter if things go awry, if the relationship ends. In all those movies I mentioned, finding and experiencing love enables the characters to grow and mature. Through loving and being loved, through that acute awareness of feeling, I believe one can break down personal barriers, can heal one's self, can become a better person. This, I think, is the theme of "Punch-Drunk Love." As one may see from the film, there seems to be someone out there for everyone. And I see nothing wrong with living for the promise, the memory, or the continuing experience of love. Join us for a free screening of "Punch-Drunk Love" on Thursday, April 10th, at 7:00 pm in the MUB Theatre I. Also, be sure to catch P. T. Anderson's subsequent feature, "There Will Be Blood," when MUSO brings it to the MUB later this semester.
Be Well, FU
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