Ivre d'amour

Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love is a fascinating film. Perhaps 2002's best movie - and one of the best drama/romantic-comedies to ever hit the silver screen.

PT Anderson is an absolute genius. A talented and master film-maker. Boogie Nights and Magnolia, two of Anderson's previous films, were absolutely stunning. Boogie Nights, in particular, was a complete masterpiece. And Punch-Drunk Love is no exception, another great piece of film-making by what is quickly becoming one of the world's top Directors. I can't wait for whatever he does next.

Also, it's difficult to overstate the performance of Adam Sandler. I'm confident this will go down in history as his best work. Ironically, I thought I'd never see this movie because of Sandler starring in it. (I ONLY watched it because of my respect for PT Anderson - and I still waited 3 years to see it!). I enjoy most of Sandler's non-romantic comedies, but I couldn't even imagine him in a romantic movie, I thought he would be horrible. I couldn't have been more wrong. I wasn't prepared for such a great performance, as he stole the show from the opening scene. I can't remember ever being more surprised with the lead actor in a movie. He was simply great, a truly terrific performance.

On the flip side, Emily Watson, as the caring Lena, was wonderful as well. I've got the feeling we will be seeing much more of her, as she had a breakout performance here in PDL. I thought at first that she almost looked too beautiful to put up with the antics of someone like Sandler's character (as she would be in high demand with the males), but then we see the quirky side of her as well, and it all comes together. Great touch.

I recommend this movie to anyone over the age of 25. If you're a teenager who's hoping for a few laughs from Sandler, you're going to be gravely disappointed. Buy the movie, store it in your closet, and pull it out when you reach 30 - and you'll love it! And please, don't let "romantic comedy" scare you (as it does me). I almost REFUSE to watch romantic comedies, but this one is much different. Romance and comedy surely aren't the first things that come to mind when I think of this film. It's a drama full of tension and embarrassment. It's an uplifting, yet shocking movie. To the intellectual mind, I can't recommend it enough.

Thank you for reading!...

JD

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.

Another little weird film from PTA but great one. You can get in shoes of Adam Sandler in this one and understand his anger and conufusion. I love Adam Sandler in this role because he just showed he can act in serious roles and not just dumb comedy. Sequel to Punch Drunk Love : Adam Sandler goes to anger managment and Jack Nicholson cures his agressive behaviour.

While reading some of the other comments for this film I was initially baffled. I could not understand how anyone in their right mind would dislike, much less hate a movie as simple and beautiful as this.

Then it dawned on me.

Most people don't have the equipment to emphathize with real alienation. They're too happy, they're too normal, their lives and their relationships all worked out a little too easily.

Life for Barry hasn't been like that way at all. In fact he has as much trouble comprehending how normal life works as those with normal lives comprehend how easily it is for someone else's life to suck so bad.

Barry knows he's not doing things "right". But everytime he's reached out he's been rebuked harshly. He doesn't want to leave his apartment or his place of work. He hates visiting his sisters, going "out" to eat, or meeting new people. He's collecting up millions of frequent flyer miles because it's a good deal, but doesn't really see himself ever using them. Everytime he steps a millimeter out of his usual, safe routine it ends up horribly.

But Barry's hell doesn't end there. In addition to all this, no one will ever let him FORGET about any of it. He is continually reminded of everything by his family and all his actions are continually questioned and examined by outsiders so that, in his mind and in his experience, it will add to yet another story on the heap that he will never be allowed to forget. Whenever anyone asks him a personal question, or a question about his actions, he usually responds with the safe and evasive, "I don't know." Any other answer leaves him open to likely ridicule for the rest of his life.

Barry spends most of the movie, quite understandably, in a continual state of social paralysis, suffocating to death before our eyes.

And then eventually, a break comes. Naturally he's defensive, naturally he expects things to go horribly wrong, and that he'd never be able to live it down and be forced to remember every excruciating detail on through eternity. But it doesn't ... and eventually he let's himself go. He tells the truth. He opens up. He tells about the pudding, he admits to the phone-sex line. He becomes a bit less paralyzed.

Many people complain that the movie isn't believable because no woman would ever go out with this type of guy.

Well DUH. Of course not.

But the movie isn't about painting a realistic relationship. It isn't about whether a woman would actually go for a guy like him. Her background and her motivations are irrelevent. Accurately painting a fully-fleshed out love interest would be self-defeating. The more accurately painted she was, the less likely we'd EVER believe someone could fall in love with Barry.

The girl he meets is his dream-girl. She represents the idea that even the nuttiest, most repressed, most socially inept individuals deserve a chance at happiness. OF COURSE there'd really never be a person there for Barry, but far more important is the idea that she COULD exist. That somewhere she should exist.

The movie isn't about her, it's about Barry.

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.