Pure Cinematic Poetry (Punch-Drunk Love (DVD))

Member Name: JonathanS

Product:	Punch-Drunk Love (DVD)
Date:	17/03/03 (53 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Everything, the look of the film, the performances, the use of music, just everything.

Disadvantages: None (unless you're expecting another run-of-the-mill romantic comedy, in which case you'll be disappointed)

With the critical successes of Boogie Nights and Magnolia, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has made quite a name for himself. I was however not entirely won over by either of those films, though they both had extremely good moments, they tended to be long, overindulgent films with too wide a scope, with many character stories going at once and no single point of focus. However this, his latest film, promised to be something different.

Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a small business owner who works in a kind of warehouse. We meet him early one morning, before anyone else has arrived, as he goes outside while drinking some coffee. He witnesses two unusual events, one of which being a strange small piano-like instrument being left by the roadside. Then a woman, Lena (Emily Watson), drives up and asks him if she can leave his car with him for the mechanics next door, as they aren't there yet. After she leaves, he impulsively rescues the instrument, a harmonium, from the road, and tries to play a few notes on it. His life has just changed.

We learn that Barry has seven sisters who fuss over him, treating him with what they would think of as affection. He is a socially awkward man who evidently has difficulty in getting a girlfriend, either despite or because of his sisters' attempts to set him up. He is also prone to outbursts of violent temper, often as a result of the treatment he gets from his sisters, though they seem oblivious to this. He has discovered a flaw in a marketing campaign that allows him to amass thousands, or even millions of airmiles at a fraction of their actual cost, though he himself has never actually flown anywhere. In search of conversation and companionship he calls a phone sex line, though he seems unsure or unaware of the sexual nature of the service he calls. The rest of the film follows Barry as he learns that Lena is actually a friend of one of his sisters who wanted to meet him after seeing a family photo, an
d as the phone sex call leads to extortion and other unpleasant consequences.

Adam Sandler has made his name as a comedian, but here shows an acting ability far beyond what has been seen in his previous films, justifying Anderson's decision to create the part specifically for him. Gone is the physical comedy and general silliness, instead he portrays Barry Egan not as some kind of freak, but an otherwise normal man, successful enough to be running his own small business but uneasy in social situations and extremely lonely. Despite his strangeness and flaws, not to mention his violent temper, he is an entirely believable character who evokes sympathy and can be identified with. As for the rest of the cast, Emily Watson fits her role perfectly, though we never get to learn that much about her character, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, a regular of Anderson's, has an entertaining cameo.

Paul Thomas Anderson's films have always had a unique and distinctive look to them, but here he seems to have taken things a stage further, creating a fusion of camera movement and sound and colours on the screen that is breathtaking to watch. This is a film about emotions, notoriously hard things to describe or potray, but here given life in a piece of cinema that I can only describe as poetic. From the perhaps over-ambitious scope of his previous films, here Anderson focuses purely on one theme, that moment of meeting someone and falling in love. This focus pays off, as he has created one of the most evocative and touching films I have seen.

Punch-Drunk Love has been classified as a romantic comedy, and it does certainly have elements of romance, and some very funny moments, but it's about as far from the world of the traditional Hollywood RomCom as it's possible to get. It is instead a touching and quirky portrait of an unhappy and lonely man, and the transformation he goes through when he falls in love. It's one of the best films I&#
39;ve seen in recent years, and I can't recommend it strongly enough.

Summary: