Punch-Drunk Love
Roll With The Punches
There may be some people who, after seeing Punch-Drunk Love, don’t quite get the title. I am not one of them.
Thursday evening, a day in the life. Lobby of the Raleigh-Durham Airport. That’s me, with the big green bag, headed towards the deserted Delta counter. I drop the bag by the kiosk, put in my SkyMiles card, and the computer tells me that I am not, after all, booked on the 9:20 to Atlanta. I check with the people at the counter; they ask me to check my itinerary. I pull a sheet of paper out of the bag, explain to them that I do, indeed, have a ticket for this flight. Which I do. Dated yesterday. I explain that the travel agent put the wrong day on the ticket, they charge me a hundred bucks anyway. I get my boarding pass. I head up the escalator to security, empty out my pockets, and realize that I don’t have my keys. A second later, I realize that I don’t have my keys because I left them in the rental car. A second later, I realize — just in time — that the secure area of an airport is not a good place to start screaming.
“Punch-drunk” is a term used in the title to describe Adam Sandler’s character specifically, and to describe a general state of mind resulting from an overload of stress. There are actually a few punches thrown in Punch-Drunk Love, but there are not nearly enough to cause a traumatic brain injury or post-concussion syndrome or whatever it is medically that would cause one to act in an uncoordinated and unpredictable manner. Instead, the term is meant metaphorically. Sandler has not taken any literal punches, but has experienced so many stressful and damaging psychological blows that the cumulative wear and tear is affecting not his brain but his soul. He has been so knocked around by life, so stressed and angry and lonely that it is causing him to act odd, and disoriented, and violent at times. His voice is a little bit slurred, he runs awkwardly at times, he dances a soft-shoe in the aisle of grocery stores for no apparent reason, he mixes up his words without realizing it. He has no capacity for small talk, no interest in the society of others, and pairs very expensive, carefully knotted ties with a godawful blue suit that he wears in practically every scene of the movie.
And I know exactly how he feels, and probably you do, too, at least a little bit.
A key scene that explains all of this comes early. Sandler’s character, Barry Egan, is at work in a seedy warehouse in the San Fernando Valley, where he owns his own business selling novelty toilet plungers. He is meeting with two important customers, trying to sell them on the merits of his products, but he can drum up no enthusiasm for them. Barry is constantly interrupted, though, by telephone calls from his sisters — he has seven — insisting that he attend a party, demanding that he show up. Their voices are threatening but tired, indicating that they have done exactly this sort of thing before, again and again. This is the first direct indignity that we see Sandler undergo; it will not be the last.
Things do get worse from there, obviously; the question is whether they will get better, whether Barry will be able to counter his punch-drunk nature through the magic of romantic love. Punch-Drunk Love sets up Emily Watson as the love interest, and if she is a little, well, subdued around Sandler, well, who wouldn’t be? Watson is not punch-drunk herself, but she is odd enough and wickedly effective in her role that she is the perfect foil for Barry’s raging manias.
Punch-Drunk Love is ostensibly a romantic comedy, but it has far fewer laughs than your standard Sandler fare. In his two best movies, The Waterboy and Little Nicky, a lot of the humor comes through exaggeration of both the plight of his characters and their abilities. Both Bobby Bouchet and Nicky the demon are outcasts thrust into human society, accepted only because of their freakish powers. What is scary, and brilliant, about Punch-Drunk Love is that Barry’s plight is not exaggerated, is not outside the mainstream of human experience. He is recognizably and completely human. The comedy here is a very human, and very painful. We have sympathy for other Sandler characters because they are so little like us, but nothing but empathy for Barry Egan. His pain is our pain, his frustrations are our frustrations, and we laugh because it hurts less that way. It is a different performance for Sandler, and a welcome one.
That Punch-Drunk Love ultimately doesn’t work very well is not Sandler’s fault. His character and his characterization is by far the best thing about the movie. The problem here is not really with genius director Paul Thomas Anderson; his signature touches are all over the movie, and most of them work. The problem is that the movie is essentially too short; it has the feel of being trimmed significantly. Anderson veterans Luis Guzman and Philip Seymour Hoffman are essentially wasted here, especially Hoffman, who is magnetic in his brief time on the screen. There isn’t really a payoff to a lot of the subplots, either; an unforgivable sin when the subplots are so creative and convoluted.
Punch-Drunk Love is a noble effort, brilliant at times, enlivened by Sandler and his compelling, creepy performance. If it is not perfect, it is possibly because life itself is imperfect. Life can throw you some punches that you’re not expecting, and can rattle you badly if it catches you off-guard. It can sneak up on you and ambush you anywhere, in an airport terminal or a crowded street in Hawaii or in a hospital emergency room. Life is so strange and so unpredictable and so brutal at times that it’s a wonder that we’re not all walking around punch-drunk, all the time. That we are not, that we are able to roll with the punches life deals out, is ultimately a testament to the power of love to redeem and to heal. It is that power that Punch-Drunk Love celebrates and honors.