In Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film Punch-drunk
Love, the freshest most audacious comedy of the year, Adam Sandler plays Barry Egan,
manager of a small business that sells toilet plungers to hotels.
Barry seems to have the emotional maturity of a child.
He’s straitjacketed by repressed anger, insecurity, and unfathomable loneliness.
Growing up with seven loudmouthed, inattentive, controlling sisters drove Barry’s
spirit into a dark corner, and he has never dared step back out into reality. He’s
all elbows, shifty feet, and nervous glances.
And then there’s that unforgettable blue suit that he
wears as if he’s anticipating some special event that never seems to arrive. The suit
might be a symbol, but then it might be just a funny costume. That’s just the kind of
thing Anderson loves as a storyteller. He fills his stories with specific, memorable,
seemingly random details that eventually develop deep metaphoric power, whether he
intended them to or not. In Magnolia, there were images of angel wings and then
there were the frogs. Here, we have a blue suit, a “little piano”, toilet
plungers, and a whole lot of chocolate pudding.
You’ve probably heard about the pudding. Anderson got his
idea for Punch-drunk Love from a Time magazine article about David Phillips.
Phillips, a civil engineer at the University of California, discovered a loophole in a
promotional campaign for Healthy Choice food products, realizing that by spending $3000
dollars on pudding, he could amass a lifetime supply of frequent flyer miles through
American Airlines. It’s the kind of unbelievable-but-true story Anderson insisted
upon telling us all through Magnolia. Truth, he continually reminds us, is even
stranger than fiction.
So… Barry’s a guy in a blue suit, selling toilet
plungers, collecting pudding. To say the same thing in a different way: Barry’s
a sad lonely guy who desperately wants to succeed and be respected, but he’s stuck
dealing in crap, dreaming of flying away to another place, another life.
One night Barry’s loneliness is so consuming that he
calls a phone sex line, not for arousal but for conversation. It is one of the saddest
moments I’ve experienced in a theatre in recent years, this desperate last-ditch
effort to make a connection with somebody.
To make matters worse, Barry will soon find that he is the
victim of a humiliating crime. Before he knows it, a violent and stupid man (Phillip
Seymour Hoffman) is sending four boneheaded brothers to beat the cash out of him. Trapped
between his sisters who won’t listen to him and four strange brothers who want to
kill him, Barry toes the edge of psychopathic violence or complete collapse.
Did I mention this is a romantic comedy? It is.
Fortunately for Barry, a strange, shifty, inquisitive woman
named Lena (Emily Watson) has her eyes on him. When Barry realizes this, while standing in
the chaos of his workplace, he reacts in spectacular bewilderment and terror. But
there’s unexpected chemistry at work. Lena’s insistence upon getting to know
Barry leads him to what may be his last attempt at trusting another human being. We know
if this doesn’t work out, Barry may explode and implode at the same time.
Barry is a very angry man. Like his closest big screen
relative, Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle, Barry is going to blow eventually. We
can already see the first blasts of the coming apocalypse. When he blows, will he take
himself down as well as the poor sap who will receive his wrath? Or will love be there to
catch him, to calm him, to help him control that anger?
I don’t want to spoil any secrets, but I am impressed
with how intelligently Anderson guides us through the possible paths of anger, suggesting
its productive release into art, love, and peacemaking.
This film will be remembered for many things. But above all it
will be remembered for the way Anderson guides goofball Adam Sandler into giving an
award-worthy, surprisingly complex performance. Sandler does what he has done so well
since his early SNL days—slapstick, nervous jitters, shyness, and explosions
of somewhat comical rage. But because Anderson has written him a fully-developed
character, these quirks become bittersweet signs of deep need, a broken heart, and a
monster inside that is coming out of hibernation.
Only a marvelous character—played by an extraordinary
actress—could convincingly transform Barry’s character. For this moviegoer,
Emily Watson is the most fascinating, watchable, and vivid actress working today. Watson
brings the character of Lena Leonard into these chaotic, noisy scenes, and somehow her
quiet inquisitiveness dominates the screen. You can feel her drawing Sandler out from
their earliest exchanges.
There will undoubtedly be complaints that Lena is not
developed as a character. It is true that we don’t have her personal history, and
we’re not really sure why she’s drawn to Barry. But somehow, Watson and Anderson
give her enough detail to make her back-story unnecessary. She says so much with her
gorgeously detailed face that we don’t need a biography for Lena. We know she is
quiet, lonely, a survivor of damaging relationships, and full of grace and love. Perhaps
she senses something in Barry, something suggested by her own swaying between shyness and
impulse. We can sense the intuitive connections between them.
I love a good romance. But big screen courtships are rarely
well-written, and chemistry is rare. Only a few such couples stand out in my memory as
convincing and exciting. The romance of Barry Egan and Lena Leonard reminds me, above all,
of the half-mad romance of Perry (Robin Williams) and Lydia (Amanda Plummer) in The
Fisher King. The man is lonely, broken, and more than a little crazy. No one listens
to him. And he hides his true feelings away from the world, for fear of what will happen
if he begins to speak the truth. The woman is God’s grace, a quiet angel, quirky and
strange in her own way, but intelligent and brave enough to risk unlocking another
person’s heart. Even though they’re oddballs compared to the honey-tongued
lovers of Shakespeare in Love, I was far more convinced by this courtship, and far
more anxious to see them ride off into the sunset together.
Despite the zany details of this strange plot, the crucial
issue of the story is, of course, love. But not ooey-gooey love of Meg Ryan comedies.
It’s a love of listening to each other. A love that allows a person to admit to their
crimes and their faults, and still find grace and acceptance. It is the kind of love that
inspires religious allegory. We want to repent of our sins, and still be embraced. We want
to be given a second chance.
Similarly inspired choices make up the rest of the cast. Most
of them are not even professional actors. Barry’s sisters are played by a group of
sisters and cousins who know the rhythms of kitchen conversation. They talk over each
other and say things to Barry they would never say to an outsider. These scenes feel more
like reality TV than a Hollywood movie. A few minutes in their presence, and you begin to
understand why Barry is willing to use his credit card just to have somebody listen to
him.
As the arrogant
villain who pushes Barry to the edge, Phillip Seymour Hoffman continues his unbroken
streak of brilliant supporting performances. One of his outbursts will undoubtedly be the
most oft-quoted bit of dialogue from the film, when it inevitably becomes a cult classic.
Luis Guzman, playing Barry’s coworker, is the only other
recognizable face. And he’s been cast particularly for that face… the one that
looks on in incomprehension at the storm that is Barry Egan. Guzman is becoming a
reassuring presence, through this and similar roles in The Count of Monte Cristo and
especially the underrated Soderbergh film The Limey.
While the San Fernando Valley, Anderson’s favorite
setting, is not exactly a rainbow of colorful backdrops, he cleverly transforms the film
into a kaleidoscope, from the ominous shadows of early morning when traffic is just a line
of coal-red lights, to the magical twilight of dusk when the lights come on again.
Production designer William Arnold (L.A. Confidential) makes this a familiar and
believable world, yet he sneaks in elements that, when the light is right, come alive like
something out of a fairy tale. (A few scenes set in Hawaii add some festivity to the
proceedings as well.) A phone booth's warm golden glow seems to echo a burst of joy in
Barry's heart. Elsewhere, his office gives a chill like the inside of a meat locker. And
costume designer Mark Bridges accents these sets with colorful designs, making
Sandler’s blue suit an essential part of his character, with a hint of Jerry Lewis.
He wisely avoids exaggeration with Ms. Watson’s wardrobe, giving her a quiet
elegance.
These unique locations are shot entirely in Panavision by
cinematographer Robert Elswit, and powerfully so. Punch-drunk combines wide, spare
Kubrick-esque shots of Barry’s office with close-up handheld-video footage in the
more intimate spaces of Barry’s apartment and Lena’s hotel room. These choices
give good attention to the world that has made Barry, and then take us into his psyche. We
feel the world as he feels it, with pressure coming in from all sides. Even in the most
surreal of sequences, we can relate to Sandler’s confusion, anxiety, and frustration.
The soundtrack by Jon Brion is one of the film’s
masterstrokes. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It is a force, a character
unto itself. At times, layered rhythms scratch and buzz on the edges of things, like a
cloud of pesky mosquitoes. At times, the music helps create such a tangible sense of
Barry’s tension that it is almost unbearable. At other times, faint optimistic
strains suddenly swell, elevated by the dissonance and sonic dismemberment from which they
emerge, like all of Barry’s hopes breaking through. Most composers would jump the
gun, bringing in the music early and often to tell us how to feel. Brion holds back and
lets the music act as the celebration after the moment.
Songs aren’t as prominent as they were in Magnolia,
but they’re important all the same. Shelly Duvall’s performance of “He
Needs Me”, from the Popeye soundtrack, supplies a clever connection between
Barry’s punchy temper and the salty sailor who fights to defend his lady love’s
honor.
Somehow, many romance-film clichés take place. There's the
first kiss, then the girl's disappearance, the desperate search, the fight to defend her
honor, the misunderstanding, the kiss-and-make-up. It is a credit to Anderson’s
genius that they catch us by surprise and are absolutely convincing.
Barry’s relationship with Lena gives us a clear metaphor
of the contemporary problem with anger and the need to dissolve that rage through the
power of compassionate and forgiving love. Like Fight Club, it's an important film
about the age of "road rage". Life is not delivering the happiness that
television insists is rightly ours. We are a disappointment to our families and friends,
our teachers and churches. We are disappointments to ourselves. But God's love, usually
symbolized by the character of a good woman in romance stories, conquers all, forgiving,
enduring, restoring. If there’s hope for Barry Egan, there’s hope for us.
And that, ultimately, is why this outrageous fantasy packs
such a punch. As we watch Barry taking strides to assert himself and to gain self-control,
we see that such things are possible, and in our heart of hearts, we know it to be true.
Punch-drunk Love reminds me of why I go to movies in
the first place. To be challenged, surprised, transported, inspired, and exhilarated. Jeffrey's Rating: A
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