Jonathan V. Last, online editor
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FOR SOME DEPRESSING NEWS on the continuing struggle between art and commerce, consider this: Paul Thomas Anderson's first three movies made--in their combined total box office gross--less than "Tomb Raider" made in its first 60 hours of release.
These movies of Anderson's, mind you, were not small art-house fare: They featured actors such as Tom Cruise, Mark Wahlberg, Gwyneth Paltrow, Thomas Jane, Julianne Moore, Heather Graham, Samuel L. Jackson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Philip Baker Hall. They had mid-sized budgets and two of them had meaningful promotional backing from their studio. Yet, for some reason, moviegoers rejected them.
Which is a shame, because Anderson's first three movies, "Hard Eight" (1996), "Boogie Nights" (1997), and "Magnolia" (1999), are all gems. And it is clear that Anderson, who writes and directs his movies, is the great filmmaker of his generation. So one of the impressive things about Anderson's latest effort, "Punch-Drunk Love," is that, despite all of the rejection, he's still in love with moviemaking.
"Punch-Drunk Love" is a romantic comedy of sorts. Adam Sandler plays Barry Egan, a nervous, gun-shy, but altogether pleasant small business owner. Barry has seven sisters who have bossed, insulted, and dominated him since childhood, rendering him incapable of saying "no" to anyone and incredibly skittish around women. Then Barry meets one of his sisters' friends, Lena (Emily Watson). Through a series of events involving phone sex, pudding, Hawaii, and a harmonium, they fall in love.
Like all of Anderson's movies, "Punch-Drunk Love" is full of great stuff. Anderson continues to coax
astounding performances out of unlikely actors (Heather Graham, Burt Reynolds, and Mark Wahlberg gave startlingly serious, nuanced performances in "Boogie Nights," to the complete surprise of everyone, and whatever you think of Gwyneth Paltrow, she has never been as good as she was in "Hard Eight"). Here the surprise is Adam Sandler, who is deft and accessible, but never shticky.
Again, Anderson's use of music is striking. The soundtrack to "Boogie Nights" used pop hits from the '70s and '80s to ground the movie and help the film's temporal flow. "Magnolia" took Aimee Mann's sharply-written work and used her voice as the movie's Greek chorus. In the beginning of "Punch-Drunk Love," Barry is followed by a jolting, nervous soundtrack made up only of percussion. As he comes into his own, a colorful, layered, spontaneous melody gradually emerges.
And like Anderson's other movies, "Punch-Drunk Love" has the feeling of impending darkness throughout: Barry is stalked and mugged; he and Lena are involved in a violent car crash; and he has a scrotum-tightening encounter with a menacing thug. Yet at each moment, just as you fear that Anderson is about to visit tragedy upon his players, he pulls back. The clouds recede and the sun pokes through. And it isn't until the end that you realize Anderson isn't using "True Romance" or "Bonnie and Clyde" as his template: He's actually making a screwball comedy.
"Punch-Drunk Love" isn't an epic masterpiece, like "Boogie Nights," or a risky, solemn meditation, like "Magnolia" (which is, I've argued, the most deeply religious movie made by Hollywood in recent memory). Instead, like "Hard Eight," it's a scary-looking movie with sweetness at its core.
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