Movie Review Of Punch Drunk Love Film Studies Essay

Punch-Drunk Love is a very interesting American comedy directed by Paul Thomas Anderson with Sandler as the protagonist of this film. The detailed description and depiction of the main characters and the keep-changing and aesthetic setting of the story leave me a very deep impression after watching the film. After watching this film, Punch-Drunk Love looks like a sorbet of very strange color and flavor, its sweetness shot through with startling, unexpected taste. The whole story is very humorous, but one can also feel it is always on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Just like Jon Brion’s schizoid musical scorein the film, which is liltingly romantic one moment and abrasively percussive the next, “Punch-Drunk Love” is determined to throw you off balance. Sandler’s performance keeps you guessing when, where and whether the protagonist, this self-hating, painfully self-conscious man might explode. There is danger lurking under his bland exterior, visible to everyone but Lena, who sees only… what? This is the mystery in the whole story, and the key of the problem, at the heart of the movie. You must take Lena’s love for Barry on faith, for her character is seriously underwritten. What does she see in the guy? Why would she commit herself to him, rather than have him committed? The bravura filmmaking (there’s not a dull shot in the whole movie) dazzles you from start to finish, but the movie is an emotional jigsaw puzzle that’s missing a couple of crucial pieces. Anderson has willed “Punch-Drunk Love” to be a romantic comedy; its powerful undercurrents, however, keep tugging it in other, darker directions, resulting in a movie more amazing than satisfying.

In this paper, I am going to review Punch-Drunk Love from these three perspectives by analyzing the characteristics of the protagonists and the scene of the film, aiming to find out the humor and the aesthetic value of this film. At last, since love is the theme of this movie, and the constant theme in most of the American movies, I will try to dig out the romance between Barry and Lena in this film. To some extent, we can say, there are basically three dimensions in this film, that is, humor, aesthetics, and romance. In the next part, I will analyze the three dimensions respectively in detail.

First of all, the arrangement and description of the characters in this film completely exhibit the features of a comedy. This is a new Adam Sandler on view in Punch-Drunk Love–angry, sad, and desperate. In voice and mannerisms he is the same childlike, love-starved, and sometimes even a little stupid Adam Sandler we’ve seen from a series of dim comedies he has acted, but this film, by seeing him in a new light, encourages us to look again at those films. Given a director and a screenplay that sees through the Sandler persona, that understands it as the disguise of a suffering outsider, Sandler reveals depths and tones we may have suspected but couldn’t bring into focus. However, from the perspective of the style of the film, this is a comedy, so the performance by Sandler is still very humorous. In this movie, Sandler plays Barry Egan, a fearful, volatile, socially maladroit salesman of novelty plumbing items in the west of America. (His dice-and-money toilet plunger sells big in Vegas). In this story, Barry always dressed in a formal bright blue suit and wore a tie in the working place. By contrasting with other workers who wore dirty and random clothes corresponding to their work and identity together with him, formal Barry looked very funny. So from the appearance, we can see he is very different from others and there must be some interesting stories will happen to him. And under such a strange looking, what a mental state will be there? What caused his specialty from other fellow workers? Then we get to know that this has something to do with his family circumstances. He had seven sisters, who cared much about him and inferred most of his personal and non-personal things. As a result, he was not spiritually free, for his thoughts and performance were all restrained by his sisters. Let us think about the gender and number proportion, one boy to seven girls! Barry must be very depressed in the process of growing up, and he must feel very lonely. So in this film, we can find out he got a borderline agoraphobe because of the restriction of his seven sisters. Besides the appearance, Barry also had other strange and funny behaviors. Barry lives alone in a sterile Valley apartment, and he is prone to sudden violent outbursts of rage. For instance, he broke the washing room of the restaurant when having meal with Lena and he would not admit that he did that. I believe most of the spectacles will feel amazed when seeing he did that. That is for sure he was ill, since what he did is beyond the imagination of an ordinary person. What is more ridiculous is that Barry obsessed with his scheme to acquire 1.5 million frequent-flier miles by buying a lot of Healthy Choice pudding. All the puddings made everyone surrounding him out for gold. As a result, everybody misunderstood him and laughed at him in his working place. As a matter of fact, he had never been on an airplane and of course he had no intention to travel to other places. So even if he really liked Lena, he didn’t go to Hawaii with her. The stupid and inconceivable behaviors of the character bring a lot of humor. There is also an interesting plot in this movie, which is also a sparkle in the whole story. About 15 minutes after the movie began, Barry made a phone call the sex hot line, aiming at finding a girl to talk to him and reduce the feeling of loneliness. As the price of this call, he told all his private number to the switchboard operator, including his phone number, credit card number, and his address and so on. But actually, he didn’t want to do anything with the girl. No matter how the girl Georgia seduced him with obscenity words, he reacted indifferently and even stupidly. The great contrast of performance between these two persons is quite funny and ridiculous. What’s more unbelievable is Barry was stayed on by the kidnappers hired by the sex phone. That is, until he meets his sister’s adorable friend Lena (a luminous Emily Watson), who inspires the love-struck Barry to follow her on a business trip to Honolulu. He will also make it to Utah to confront the extortionist (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who has sent four menacing Mormon brothers to threaten his life, all because, one lonely night, he called a sex-phone service and foolishly gave them his credit-card number. All in all, the character acted by Sandler seems very stupid and simple-minded and also a little goosy. All these characteristics increase the index of humor of the whole movie.

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Another eye-catching point in Punch-Drunk Love is the choice of the scenes. The wise choosing of the scene in the film can add the aesthetic value of the story and the picturesque beauty can make the audience have a better understanding and feeling of the story. Although Punch-Drunk Love is a comedy with humor at the main tone of the whole film, the scenes are also romantic and beautiful in the story. And the transform of the scene quite adapts to the plot and the characters. At the beginning, the scene is in a void and sunny outside place where Barry met his future lover Lena. The sky is very blue and open; the sunshine is very bright; the land is yellow; the car is white; Barry wearing bright blue suit and Lena in red dress met with each other and had an interesting short talk. In such a scene, no body will not imagine a romantic plot even if the hero of the story seems stupid and simple-minded and answered questions with the single sentence “I don’t know.” So this scene of contrastive bright colors indicates the future development of the characters. Also there is another clue of the story is the organ. When the protagonists met with each other, there was a organ in the middle of the street. Then Barry took it into his working place. Since then, he would play it from time to time. The coincidence is that the heroin Lena is a woman organist. The appearance of this organ added much romantic flavor to the love story between the hero and heroin. And besides the beauty of picture, there seem some musical signals as well in the story. The other eye-catching setting in this movie is the beach of Honolulu. Although Barry is very afraid of taking the airplane, he flew to Honolulu for his lover Lena. After he arrived there, he called Lena by the public telephone on the street when there was grand gala parade. Barry bared his heart to Lena and asked many private questions on when the grand parade was going on. It was very noisy and we hardly heard clearly what he said. This is where is funny. The big public parade contrast with the private love expression. I thing only Anderson can think of such a contrastive and dramatic plot and scene. Next comes the romantic beach dinner. At dusk, Barry and Lena dated at the beach and had very romantic dinner. The sun had set just now and there was still some rest light of the glorious sun. The ocean was dark blue and very quiet. The local artist played the guitar and sang a beautiful song with Hawaii flavor. The whole atmosphere is so quiet and comfortable. Our protagonists were having the same quiet date in the dark light of a small and weak table lamp. No words is needed at that moment but enjoyed the silence and the beauty of the dusk and the music. But still we know everything without words. That’s why we say the choice of the scenes in this film is a bright spot. And this is also the attractive glamour of the big screen film.

At last, I want to say something about the development romantic relationship between the hero and the heroin. I think for most of the audience, they don’t know what will be going on next from the very beginning of the film. However, this is also an important factor in the film about love, for the unexpected plot will be more impressive than those old stories. If I am a girl in this film, I would not love Barry, maybe because of all the misunderstandings. He is such a strange man: calling sex girls and arising troubles, buying lots of pudding for free airplane tickets even if he didn’t want to have a trip by plane, breaking the washing room of the restaurant without sensation, not knowing how to express love to the girl he loves, etc. yes, that is Barry. But since this is a story in the film, Lena loved him although he was such unbearable. I don’t know why and you don’t know why, but that is the fact in the film. Maybe this is so-called romance. As a feedback, Barry finally woke from his psychological problem and closed self-world and tried to express love to Lena and adapted to this objective world. That’s why he overcame the fear in his heart and went to Honolulu for Lena by airplane. I think this part may let many girls moved and touched. The ending of this film is also very touching and perfect. Barry and Lena played the organ together in his working place. The scene and the organ both echoed the beginning of their love story.

In a word, Punch-Drunk Love is comedy which is humorous, romantic and picturesque. It deserves our review and also other thoughts about humanity and love.