PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE Review

PUNCH DRUNK LOVE is a film for the love sick. People wounded by love, that need love terribly to move forward in their lives. It is a film that speaks about the hopes and the desperation that we cling to surrounding that deep down pang in our hearts yearning for someone to come into our lives, return to our lives, be there in our life to fill that emptiness and to make us want to do goofy wonderful lovely things for.

Right now, PUNCH DRUNK LOVE is that movie for me. I’m not Barry Egan, I don’t punch holes in walls, destroy bathrooms and freeze up with emotional isolation. I don’t Ang Lee out like Moriarty does from time to time, but I do understand that loneliness that makes him not like himself. I do understand why he would fly to Hawaii seemingly on a whim.

Adam Sandler’s Barry Egan is an emotionally abused being that reacts instinctually and immediately to his thoughts. He strikes out when frustrated, he’ll run across town to embrace the one he loves.

I’m a romantic. I want to love, be loved and reside in that general atmosphere of romantic harmony. Conversely when it goes bad, I wither. I cease wanting to do things, I become closed off, automatic, robotic in a lot of ways. I tend to not take care of myself, neglect the things I used to love doing because I no longer feel complete. Then strange little things fill the moments. You find something to fill those idle times.

For Barry Egan, he fills the void with things he can fix and accomplish. He repairs and plays the Harmonium. He capitalizes upon his pudding/frequent flyer program. He does neither of these things because he wants to travel or become a world class Harmonium player. He does these things because they relax him, they give him a momentary sense of accomplishment.

He buys that suit, because it symbolizes a willing desire to change the direction his life was in. He was tired of being who he was. The old saying of ‘it’s the clothes that make the man’ well… That’s what Barry was doing. Who was he before he put on that suit? I imagine he was a 100% henpecked self-pity wallowing man loathing his day to day droll life. He never shuts his sisters up, because while they may make him hate himself, they do love him. They do care about him. At least he had that.

Barry’s a quiet, deeply personal person. He doesn’t want others to know his thoughts, his business, his activities. These are his things. He’s paralyzed by the fear of what others will think of what he does. His family has raised him in such a way that they never let him forget his mistakes, his faults and his problems. He’s terrified of what they’ll think if he’s dating someone, has a friend.

Barry only begins to get to a better place when he lets go of his deceptions, his secrets and finds someone with whom he can really share. Whom he can trust. Who won’t hurt him, who’ll nurture and be there for him. He is a terrible communicator though, he isn’t used to sharing these things. He’s awkward at it, it’s hard to let down the force fields and that bubble we all have to let someone in close, but he has to because he’s suffocating. He’s dying day by day in his self-inflicted realm of isolation.

Is Barry Egan a virgin in the film? I’m not sure. He’s certainly inexperienced. He could be. He hasn’t traveled, doesn’t know much about the world. His business is about unclogging toilets, selling decorative happy plungers. Putting a happy face on a not-so-happy task we sometimes have to do. In fact, Barry’s plungers are very much like Barry himself. Barry puts up with shit constantly from his seven sisters. He is an unbreakable plunger with a pleasant cute tip. And just like with plunging sometimes it causes splashes, sometimes it takes a lot of effort, and sometimes it breaks. We see Barry break in Hawaii on the phone with his sister. He shatters.

It was his moment of liberation, the point at which he would no longer deal with shit, where he essentially is declaring that he is not a plunger, but a human being that has certain inalienable rights and deserves to be treated with a sense of common courtesy.

Adam Sandler is really quite something here. I have not been a fan of his. I enjoyed THE WEDDING SINGER, but he just hasn’t been my mask of nitrous. He always seemed to be working too hard for a laugh. Crippled by masks of voices and costumes and hairdos that I always felt were too limiting. I saw a bit of a soul in THE WEDDING SINGER, and that’s what I liked in that film.

In China, Tarantino brought up Sandler to me and before I had a chance to respond, he remembered that I’m a notorious anti-Sandler guy. At the time, I reminded Quentin that I wasn’t anti-Sandler, that I just didn’t feel he was all that funny to me. That I was very much looking forward to what he’d do with Adam in INGLORIOUS BASTARDS and whatever it was that Paul Thomas Anderson was planning to unleash with PUNCH DRUNK LOVE.

Was that just ass-kissing? No, not at all. You see, I whole-heartedly admit that while I may not like Adam Sandler movies, that if a director comes along and knows exactly how to use a performer in a new and wonderful manner… well, look what Peter Bogdanovich did with Ben Johnson or Boris Karloff. What Stanley Kramer did with Fred Astaire. What Howard Hawks did with Dean martin and Ricky Nelson. What Samuel Fuller did with Mark Hamill. What Soderbergh did with Jennifer Lopez (aka J-Lo or whatever it is this week) or Julia Roberts. What Quentin has done with Travolta, Forster or Grier. The same thing he’s doing next with Chiba and Carradine. The same thing that was done by Paul Thomas Anderson with Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Heather Graham and Tom Cruise.

What is that?

It is a master craftsman taking a look at performers with the skills that they need to perfectly realize the characters they’ve never been before. It is recognizing the inherent potential talent of a performer that has been remarkable in some other fashion, and utilizing them in a manner that they have previously not been used. The interesting thing about these unlocking moments, is that the performers are forever changed by the collaboration, because suddenly they can see what they have in themselves and having seen that, they are no longer willing to tread water in the mediocrity or the one-dimensional nature of their careers previously. Sometimes these performers can suddenly ONLY see this new dimension and don’t merely add it to the arsenal of abilities that had previously been utilizing, and that’s how you end up with a Burt Reynolds post-PTA, where he take a film like STRIPTEASE, which was a badly written similar part to what he had just done in the vastly superior BOOGIE NIGHTS…

What will become of Adam Sandler post-PTA?

I don’t know. Hopefully he’ll open up to other projects that are not necessarily comedies. Work with directors that will push him and sharpen his talents. If you notice, often times you’ll find comedians striving to become dramatic actors, and the reason for that is simple. In the age we live in today, comedy has a short term life in terms of holding mass mainstream pop-consciousness. However, dramatic acting talent can be utilized for quite some time. We know that Quentin wants to use Sandler in his “Men on a Mission” flick, what aspect of Sandler does he plan to exploit and use? Is it that dangerous rage side, the emotionally vulnerable side, the comedy side? Or is it something that we can’t see yet, because we’re not Quentin Tarantino?

I say this, because I honestly did not see the potential in Adam Sandler for this character. It wasn’t there. I think back on the hours of torment I’ve spent subjected to his inane babble and I wince and develop a nosebleed from the memories. I think about PUNCH DRUNK LOVE and I smile and I cry. It's art and poetry and beauty and love all drenched in the tears of someone that understands what it is all about.

Now, I’ve gone on and on about Adam Sandler and the Barry Egan side of this story, but there’s another side that I love equally.

Emily Watson as Lena Leonard is just bliss. We don’t learn much about her history, we don’t cuddle up in bed and hear her story. I get the idea if this film were the 4 hour Paul Thomas Anderson film that I wish it were (look, when I see a film I love this much with characters I love this much, I want it to last!) then I would bet money we would have heard more about her, but frankly, the tiny details we’re given. The glimpses of her life we’re handed, the reactions and the looks on Emily’s simply wondrous face tell us all we really need to know. I miss the extra-length not as a fault, but merely because I’m greedy. I wanted more time with these people.

When we first meet her, we’re under the illusion that she’s not an important character in Barry’s life. It’s a casual meeting right? A serendipitous encounter until the subsequent revelations reveal otherwise.

Well, watch that opening scene again. I have, I’ve already seen the film twice. Lena is nervous, every bit as nervous as Barry. She looks over her shoulder to steal a glance, to see if he was interested in her, if he was watching, noticing her. Then there’s that micro-second glance as she exits. The one Barry didn’t see, or many audience members if they blinked wrong. On first viewing, you read this as concern for her car, on second viewing, you know better.

We never see the picture she saw. It’s not like Kyle Reese’s picture of Sarah Connor. We don’t know what the look was on Barry’s face surrounded by his sisters, but because we’ve seen him with his sisters, we can imagine. What did she see? What was the attraction? Was it the “Help get me out of here” look? Did he bring out a maternal aspect to her, a need to have someone to look after? Was it just a pure physical attraction? Personally, given how she is always and instantly the more aggressive of the two. Given she’s who breaks the ice, that lays things out first, that fesses up first… well, I’d say that Lena wants Barry and wants to have someone that needs her.

We know she’s dated, that she was married. We don’t know what happened there, but we know that she has been abandoned before, that registers on her face at the door to her apartment there near the end. We can tell by her sense of urgency that she desperately wants to have someone in her life. That she’s had relationships of regrets, because she didn’t want him to leave the building without him knowing that she had just wanted to kiss him. Yeah, that’s important. That’s one of those carpe diem things, where she needed him to know that she wanted that kiss and needed that kiss. That the cheek just wasn’t enough. She wanted to be held and she wanted a full on kiss. Barry on the other hand would never be that presumptuous. He’s new to all of this, she’s giving him road directions.

Another very telling sequence for Lena was the entire Hawaii encounter. From her shriek of delight on the phone, to the unbelievably heart-filling lobby moment of her hotel where they meet in Hawaii… i.e., the poster… Well, you can tell that she’s tired of being a professional stranger. I know that feeling. I travel a lot. It is wonderful to see the world, it’s a terrible thing to see it alone. Trust me on that. It isn’t about not having someone to sleep with, to have sex with, it’s more about having someone to share the experiences and the moments with. Someone that is enjoying the same moments with you.

Seeing a beautiful sunset in Hawaii from the beach or a hotel room alone is one of the most painfully depressing things you can imagine. You recognize the beauty of the moment. The wonderful bliss of it. It is… inherently transcendentally romantic, but alone… alone it is a marker of a moment that you wish you were not alone. That there was no hand in your hand, that there was nobody to recognize with you the beauty of place and time you were. That the moment would be yours only, that you would try to explain to people back home and in conversation. Where you’d see that no matter your vocabulary or the detail in which you described it, that nobody would ever understand that moment, because nobody but you was there to experience it.

That was what Hawaii was going to be for her. It was going to be a trip where you look out the window of your hotel and you see the sun setting, you look at your empty room, you go down to the bar, have a drink by yourself, maybe talk to someone that you know will go nowhere, or worse become another meaningless memory that will be forgotten in time. But when Barry Egan shows up it means several things. It means HE NEEDS ME. It means this wouldn’t be just another trip. It means she would not be alone. That it would not just be another empty experience for work.

That next morning as she is on the phone conducting business with Barry’s sister, there’s a look on her face as she is watching Barry watching her as his sister is berating his very existence in her right ear. There’s bemusement. She is also curious about this man in her bed. She’s intrigued.

By the way, have I mentioned that I love, adore and cherish this film yet?

I do. This is everything that you don’t get in the regular romantic comedies. This is about complex emotional beings finding one another. About hearts moving at the speed of light towards one another attracted by the very fiber of their beings, that they don’t really understand. This movie is effortlessly dense in love.

This is also a movie that will become even stronger at early lonely matinee screenings and DVD viewings, because you won’t have the apes that think they’re watching HAPPY GILMORE 2, cackling at every little tragedy that happens to poor Barry. Sure there are funny moments in this film, but when I hear people laughing at the Sister scenes, I just want to cringe.

I just wonder if these are just the happy people of the world that have never been stripped down by a family member or a friend. That has never had that public humiliation, that never-ending moment of continual abject debasing by the ones you love. It is painful, hurtful and spiteful. It isn’t funny. Its tragic. That’s the most revealing scene in the entire film about why Barry is the way Barry is, and some of the people I’ve seen the film with (i.e. folks in the same theater as me) are missing it because… well, it’s Adam Sandler, of course this is supposed to be funny. Sigh.

This isn’t everyone of course. Just a few folks that came for a previous incarnation of Sandler.

Paul Thomas Anderson is frankly and clearly one of the best filmmakers working today. There’s so much densely packed into this film, yet told elegantly and lyrically that you just have to marvel at it.

The lightshow emotionally charged color shifting dividers in the film work on a subconscious emotional level. They’re carefully triggered and timed with the wonderful music to deliver tone and emotional readiness. They also seem to focus on the colors that would be incorporated into the main character’s in the next sequence. There’s the note perfect performances by the sisters, brothers, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, phone sex girls and of course the god amongst men… Luis Guzman.

Once again, just wonderful.

My only wish is that we could spend even more time with these characters, but of course… I’ve already spent 3 hours with them. I look forward to spending even more time with them soon. You should too.