Punch-Drunk Love

Few films are as infectious and pleasing as Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love (2002), a pathological fairytale that possesses more genuine romance than all of those pre-scripted romantic comedies that plague the film industry. What makes this statement so perplexing is that on one level Anderson is himself parodying the conventions of the romantic fairytale, yet he also always grants his characters an integrity and vision that allows them to exist as fully-realized individuals and not disparate caricatures.

A small- business owner of a plumbing manufacturing company, Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a man whose blankness defines him as much as his pathological anger. His seven sisters continually deride him and verbally abuse him, and he only knows how to internalize that verbal aggression and mimic it physically when he cannot hold it in any longer. One of his sisters tries to set him up with her coworker Lena Leonard (Emily Watson, ever radiant), and the film chronicles their attempt to find happiness together even as complications, such as distance and mattress man/owner of a phone sex operation Dean Trumbell (Philip Seymour Hoffman), work to seperate them.

Despite a voice that can raise in intensity at the first insult, Sandler's face as an actor is preternaturally expressionless, so Anderson often has the camera trail him, allowing that lack of depth to be used sparingly. In its place, Anderson manipulates the film's lens flare, so that these filmic augmentations are personified through Barry Egan's viewpoint. When a flash of hope comes over him, so too does a blue lens flare. When anger colors his emotions, a red lens flare enters the frame. A great essay on these ideas can be found here.

Another aspect that deepens the film's fairytale-ish quality is the treatment of Lena Leonard. While Barry is mocked and verbally assaulted for his past tirades, it soon becomes apparent that Lena possesses these same internalizations, though she handles them in a more adult and less noticeable manner, which can be seen most effectively when Barry and Lena whisper their words of love to one another:

Barry: I'm lookin' at your face and I just wanna smash it. I just wanna fuckin' smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it. You're so pretty.
Lena: I want to chew your face, and I want to scoop out your eyes and I want to eat them and chew them and suck on them.
[pause]
Barry: OK. This is funny. This is nice.

These kinds of dynamics add depth and complexity to what is essentially a fairytale. Yet this reworking of pathology and battered psyches give the film an originality and cinematic harmony, so that Anderson allows his story to rise above conventional romance stories and gain a visual articulation of the themes that transpire rhetorically throughout the film. A magical experience.

Punch-Drunk Love: 9/10