Punch-Drunk Love : Ivre d'amour

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.

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.

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.

Genre- _comedy/ romance_ I tried watching it twice earlier, but stopped at the 5 minute mark. I willed myself this time to overcome my initial inhibition and was rewarded by a stunning work by Sandler and by a truly original script by PT Anderson.

1. Amongst Sandler's most non Sandler like performances, right up there with his best non typical work such as _Uncut Gems_ & _Reign over me_.

2. Sandler is gutsy to have done this risky role, which requires him to be rage- prone, socially awkward romantic at such a youngish age, back in 2001.

3. Paul Thomas Anderson used to be a near genius, with classics such as _Magnolia, Boogie Nights, There will be Blood, Hard Eight_ etc. This early effort of his is right alongside his later gems.

Stellar in every part, i like how every review ive read of this film interprets it in a different way, in my opinion it perfectly portrays the autism experience :p