Punch-drunk Love By Rick Curnutte Richard A. Curnutte, Jr. is the Editor of The Film Journal. He has studied English and Film at Ohio University and The Ohio State University.

Some directors have a knack for using actors. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but for whatever reason, they just get it. They can recognize the gifts of a particular actor or group of actors and know how to shape it into a definitive part of their vision for a particular narrative or even visual palette. As early as D.W. Griffith (and his wondrous pairings with Lillian Gish), directors have been utilizing the talents and personas of performers to suit their needs. Elia Kazan knew just how to exploit Marlon Brando's smoldering sexuality (A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata!, On the Waterfront). In the past three decades, Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro have forged a marvelous relationship in 8 films (though their rapport seems to have fizzled out). Directors like Robert Altman and the late John Cassavetes have a tremendous general ability to corral a large group of actors (many used repeatedly) into a seemingly singular performance, an acting conglomerate so to speak.

Paul Thomas Anderson, a rarity in contemporary American cinema, has the unique gift of being both types of director. He can put together huge casts (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) and coax a wondrous group effort out of them, while still focusing on each individual performer's talents (regulars Phillip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Luiz Guzman, Melora Walters, William H. Macy, Julianne Moore). He recognizes what about their personas (Hall's sturdy manliness, Reilly's intense vulnerability, Hoffman's chameleon-like disappearing acts) are effective and puts them to work for his ends. He admittedly encourages improvisation (like Altman and Cassavetes), but has a master's focus and precision when it comes to execution.

In his latest film, Punch-drunk Love, Anderson has trumped all of his previous efforts by delivering one of the most singularly impressive uses of an actor I can recall. I remember reading in an interview years ago (before Magnolia) that Anderson wanted to use Adam Sandler in one of his films. He saw something in him that perhaps other serious directors hadn't seen. Certainly, Sandler wouldn't be at the top of most lists of who to cast in a film so formally experimental and narratively fractured as Punch-drunk Love. Luckily, amazingly, though, Anderson hasn't tried to transform Sandler by coaxing a "serious" performance out of him. Rather, more impressively to me, he has taken Sandler's unique gifts and put the actor in the middle of the film that perhaps he's been waiting his entire professional life for.

I've never been a Sandler fan, per se, but I've found him enjoyable in a couple of his films (namely The Wedding Singer, parts of the abrasive but humorous Happy Gilmore). As an actor, he has a strangely forceful persona. He's not large physically, and he has a kind of innocent, cherubic face that would seem capable of melting your heart if he weren't always screaming or tearing things apart. He can express a certain shy vulnerability (as in The Wedding Singer) that yearns for better material. In Punch-drunk Love, Anderson and Sandler have formed one of the most original, rewarding collaborations in years.

Barry Egan (Sandler) is a shadow of a person, someone who really only exists through other people's perceptions of him (especially his sisters and their spouses). He rarely speaks and, when he does, he seems uncomfortable with the sound of his own voice, or perhaps that everything he says makes him sound like an idiot (which it sometimes does). He owns his own business, selling a seemingly endless supply of novelty items (cheapo toys, toilet plungers with unbreakable glass handles, etc.), but leaves most of the day-to-day hands-on type work to his partner, Lance (Luiz Guzman). Barry constantly appears to be afraid of the world, afraid of what might happen if he were to be noticed, then furious that he's not noticed. And he has odd little obsessions, like when he finds a loophole in a promotion that allows him to buy Healthy Choice puddings (the bar codes are on each cup!) to redeem them for frequent flyer miles, even though he has no intention of ever traveling anywhere. Amidst his typically withdrawn demeanor are sporadic, vicious outbursts of violence (like when he kicks and punches the glass windows out at his sister's house), his only method of cleansing himself of the fear and pain that he keeps bottled up.

Two things happen to Barry, and they're really the only things, plot-wise, that happen in the entire picture: he calls a phone sex line that turns out to be the guise of a group of con artists, and he meets a woman (Emily Watson) with whom he falls in love. When the former threatens the latter, Barry realizes his heroic potential (in a bravura scene where he squares off against four blonde brothers, sent to get money from him, by violent means if necessary).

Anderson has given his film the perfect title: the picture is drunk with the possibilities and dangers of love. When Barry's sister introduces Lena (Watson) to him, he recognizes her as the woman who had dropped off her car at the repair shop next to his office. He did everything he could to avoid her then, even though he couldn't get her out of his mind after. Now, when faced with her, he pushes her away again. Lena won't have it and persists until he agrees to a dinner date. Watson gives Lena (a mildly thankless role) a certain desperate aggressiveness. It turns out she dropped her car off just so she could meet Barry. He laughs when she tells him this, then appears ready to crumble when he realizes she's telling the truth. The beauty about what Anderson, Sandler and Watson have accomplished here is that this is a picture about no-frills romance. A typical romantic comedy (and I hate 90% of them) would make a point of showing that the two leads love each other in spite of their differences. Anderson doesn't stoop to that sort of reductive narrative. He never makes a point of how unlikely the romance is, because, frankly, that's the way love is. If we were all with the person who was most "right" for us, we'd all be unhappy. Anderson knows this, and so do his winning actors. Punch-Drunk Love celebrates love in all its terrifying splendor.

The film itself, thanks to Anderson's dazzling formalist approach, is a visual delight, from its widescreen framing, to its intricate sound design (one of Barry's outbursts, in a restaurant bathroom, is an explosive audio performance), to Jon Brion's strange, percussive score. Anderson's artistic fluorishes have always been splendid (the opening tracking shot in Boogie Nights, the marvelous musical segment in Magnolia), but here, he's painting on a more stylized scale, with references all across the board (from Bubsy Berkeley to Stanley Donen to Buster Keaton, among others). Anderson has always been linked thematically to Altman and Scorsese, but here he's more akin to Jacques Tati and Jonathan Demme's early comedies. Anderson throws in wonderful nuances (a fantastic musical cue from Altman's Popeye is among the best). Added to the mix are these strange little bursts of full-screen, swirling colors, which resemble those crazy rainbows you see when you shut your eyes very tightly. It all adds up to a cineaste's delight, a throbbing experience that is, all at once, arresting, incoherent and surreal, a hyper-realistic painting.

But everything is centered around the central performance by Sandler, and I think it's a doozy. Many have said it's just Sandler being Sandler, and Anderson just made it work somehow. I partly agree with that, because Anderson didn't ask Sandler to change his method of performance. However, Sandler manages to somehow transcend his own expectations anyway, delivering a forceful, breathless performance, somewhere between nobody and superhero. He nearly tiptoes through the first three quarters of the picture, with his outbursts the only respite, then comes alive brilliantly in the final twenty minutes. When his love is threatened, he becomes a kind of supergeek, focusing his anger and angst upon those who would dare infringe upon the one thing good he has. It's an amazing sequence and, in it, Sandler turns the film into something else entirely, much more than the wondrous romance it already was. Here, rather than just a joker who finds love in the most unlikely of places, Barry becomes a walking testament to the strength of what that level of devotion can accomplish. This is a delightful film to behold, one of the best pictures of the year.

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002