A speciously tangible veracity and contradictory recitation, positioned with a quirky cadre of animal magnetism, subtly and antagonism, Punch-Drunk Love is Paul Thomas Anderson’s love letter tribute to the no-brow foolhardiness of Adam Sandler in one of the most unusual juxtapositions in years. Sandler, whose past movies often teem of bottom-barrel brainlessness (though they don’t entirely lack charm), achieves the phenomenal in what is, perhaps only but let’s not hope so, his most understated and daring romantic role yet. Continuing to build his career with masterpiece after masterpiece, from the subtly moving Hard Eight to the thundering Boogie Nights to the operatic Magnolia and now veering into reinvention with Punch-Drunk Love, Anderson’s wealth of imagination and prose seems a bottomless pool. A magnum opus omnibus dripping with rainbow textures and moods, Anderson once again fuels his fiery oeuvre with this phantasmagorical assimilation of passiveness fused with its antonym.
Seething and pulsating with luminous overtones of intense animalistic elements layered in the soundtrack (heavenly performed by Jon Brion) and in Anderson’s writing/directing prowess, it rarely misses the tone of precision. Much like his past films this centers on the soul of a tortured underdog as he endures transformation, but unlike those characters (as well as unlike the process Sandler’s experiencing here) the conversion is inspired by little to no redemption. Rather, a matured Anderson indulges in metamorphosis, the stream of consciousness, and a labyrinth of complexities slowly but ardently surfacing. The film’s protagonist is an impeccable exemplification of the cinematic character-development theorem “psychology manifested as behavior” delectably emphasized in both his eruptions of latent aggression and submission to the traumatic domination of sibling cruelty. In essence, the film dictates a serious and potentially pretentious alteration with an offbeat lunacy.
A pitch-perfect construction of Kubrickian lighting, sweeping track shots, foreboding and attractive architecture construes the psychology from the character’s interior to the film’s exterior with the probing similes of the barren section of an office/warehouse and its underlying sense of social detachment from worldly contact. Much of the prime locale, as it is a business located in Los Angeles, deviates from preconceived notions similarly to the likely nature of the protagonist, which in reality is a sharp and direct turn from expected conformity. The simple fact that no real customers or pedestrians are visibly wandering the streets or seen entering the businesses underlines the notion of being socially and psychologically despondent.
Barry Egan (an inscrutable Sandler), who has countenanced his seven sisters’ brutality nearly his entire life save once when he acted on aggression and threw a hammer through a window (though he’s gibed for even doing that still), is a long-suffering, successful small-business man with a specialization in bathroom products. After a startling opening scene, in which a van flips over and delivers a prophetic harmonium to the street later recovered by our hero, the tortured life of Barry unfolds. Relentlessly labeled as “gay boy” by his sisters, who all call his work asking the same questions regarding his attendance to a party; Barry finds himself falling in love with his sister’s friend, Lena Leonard (Emily Watson). He also stumbles upon a profitable scheme of racking up millions of frequent flyer miles with a Healthy Choice sweepstakes contest that he takes advantage of by buying thousands of pudding cups (which is inspired by a real story), with the hopes of flying to Hawaii and rendezvousing with Lena.
The blurring of images assumes a substantial presence to symbolize both Barry’s descent into hell and his deliverance into the divine, i.e. as Barry calls a sex hotline for some simple human contact it leads to a nightmarish tango with blond scumbags from Utah (headed by Philip Seymour Hoffman.) And the slow-mo, out-of-focus scene of Barry boarding the Hawaiian plane for his secret tryst with Lena suggests allegorical divinity in lieu of Magnolia’s literal rain of frogs, rather than simply being style of gratuitous technique. Fundamentally, Punch-Drunk Love conjures up the ethereal and amalgamates it with eccentric happenstance; strumming to the melody of a romance and a dark comedy it also has tendencies to be psychologically revealing, and marvelously intricate at that. Though Sandler’s often accused of always playing a cruel monster in goofball’s clothing it aids his performance here, detailing a character capable of strength but hiding under a sheepish guise.
The preeminence of Punch-Drunk Love lies in its startling ability to present dramatic change in a most unusual but consistently memorable mode: the blue suit, the harmonium, the girl all fuel the character’s hunger for the strength of change. Anderson presents his parable with a simple but enthralling exhibit of lurid shade and invention, with rainbow-ish, surreal art work interludes evoking curiosity and promoting creativity. Deliciously original and audacious without much of the bawdiness of both past Sandler and Anderson, this remarkable tale raises the bar for the auteur’s future work as well as the thesp’s, though I scarcely feel Sandler’s pulling a Jim Carrey just yet. Let’s hope, for everyone’s sake, that this isn’t the only year we can say “Adam Sandler deserves an Oscar nomination.”