Are You With Us?: Punch-Drunk Love
By Shalimar Sahota
January 1, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Starring – Adam Sandler (Barry Egan), Emily Watson (Lena Leonard), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Dean Trumbell), Luis Guzman (Lance), Mary Lynn Rajskub (Elizabeth Egan)
Length – 91 minutes
Cert – 15 / R
When growing up, Paul Thomas Anderson used to tell his teachers that he would win an Oscar. He has come close, nominated more for his writing than directing, but has not yet won that statue himself. Punch-Drunk Love in particular received no Academy Award nominations whatsoever. Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002, it was nominated for best film. Anderson won the award for best director.
The simply elegant poster with the lead characters in silhouette feels incredibly appropriate and yet fantastically misleading. Disguised as a romantic comedy, Punch-Drunk Love dares to be different, as a twisted romantic fairy-tale subverting the genre traits, even by having the girl asking the guy out for dinner. With dashes of the disturbing and depressing mixed with black comedy and unanswerable questions, this could have been quite the career killer move for Anderson and his star, Adam Sandler. For example, why open the film with a car crash that isn't related to anything else (or is it?). Well, why not? Must we have an answer for everything when quite possibly there isn't one? And if you're rather perturbed by that sentence then it's quite likely that this film isn't for you.
Barry Egan (Sandler) runs his own business of unusually extravagant, and sometimes unbreakable, toilet plungers. However something is not quite right about him. His sister Elizabeth (Rajskub) thinks he's "such a freak" and sometimes he has to resort to smashing something. One bizarre morning at work he witnesses a car crash, picks up a keyboard instrument (similar to an organ) left on the kerb by a cab, and meets Lena (Watson) who drops her car off so that the mechanics next door can check it, leaving Barry with the keys. Later that night he attends the birthday party of one of his seven sisters, with disastrous consequences. Back at home he calls a sex chatline, with even more disastrous consequences. Then the next day he meets Lena again.
It's left to your largely uneducated guess what Barry could be suffering from. When asked by Elizabeth's husband what might be wrong Barry responds saying that he doesn't know if there is anything wrong because he doesn't know "how other people are." So like a car crash waiting to happen, there's the constant thought at the back of your head that Barry is going to screw up his relationship with Lena somehow.
Having directed Tom Cruise to an Oscar nomination in Magnolia, there was a bit of buzz about Adam Sandler being a contender for best actor come the Oscars. He had to make do with a Golden Globe nomination. His character Barry is so obviously alone. In the opening shot he is situated in the far corner of his excuse for an office, isolated. At home it's a similar story, with a one-take shot capturing him surrounded by emptiness. Although Sandler shoehorns himself into generally comedic roles, this proved that he does have the depth to do serious, even dangerously aggressive. Since then the hidden depth has managed to come out more than once with un-Sandler like roles in Reign Over Me and more recently in Funny People.
In a strangely effortless role, Emily Watson looks immaculate with her continually mesmerising eyes (have you seen Equilibrium? Her eyes are like lasers in that film!). She is honest with Barry straight away, and explains that she wanted to meet him after having seen a photo of him. It's not clear what her motives are, or why she's even attracted to him. But then maybe it is what it is, since you can't put science on that magical spark. Whatever it is, you can't always break down why you love someone (or something). You just do. However, that is an excuse this reviewer will never get away with. A little research will also unearth the bizarre theory that Lena is an alien (Chapter 12 on the DVD is titled ‘Alien Abduction').
There's just as much symbolism as The Passion of The Christ here. For example, a slew of exit signs at Lena's apartment building imply Barry's need for escape and collecting air miles. There's also the general colour scheme; Lena is wearing red when Barry first sees her, a colour which tends to denote something good here. Also Barry is wearing the same clothes, a blue suit, in all but two scenes. A move that would be insignificant in any other film, but gains meaning here due to the frequency of how often Barry wears it and how many times he is questioned about it. His sister Elizabeth says he doesn't usually dress like that, yet we the audience have no idea what Barry usually dresses like. In a touch of barely noticeable brilliance, as if taking an indirect hint, Barry's work partner Lance (played by Luis Guzman) also comes into work the next day wearing a remarkably similar suit, yet no-one comments on it.
Jon Brion's musical score also deserves a mention for being quite a headache. As garbled, disjointed noise, it expertly puts across just how stressed out Barry is, with numerous problems on his mind. It even makes cancelling and cutting a credit card excruciatingly epic.
The film cost $25 million, $7 million of which reportedly went to Sandler (the rest was likely spent on Healthy Choice Pudding). Opening on limited release in October on just five screens, it managed a strong take of just over $367,000 (the much talked about Bowling for Columbine also opened the same weekend on eight screens and took $209,000). Slowly expanding, it eventually went wide during the first weekend of November. On over a thousand screens it ranked as high as #8 taking slightly over $4 million. It unfortunately failed to turn a profit at the box office, ending its run with $17.8 million domestic and $24.6 million worldwide.
Punch-Drunk Love is an underrated gem, essentially the bad mouthing black sheep of what you'll usually find in the romantic section, and most people won't pick it up because of that reason. It's also one of the few that I can call unpredictable, but I guess that goes without saying when watching a Paul Thomas Anderson film.