Dir. by P. T. Anderson
Yesterday afternoon, I had the strange pleasure of watching PT Anderson’s latest film, Punch-Drunk Love. Anderson is one of only two contemporary American filmmakers who are able to genuinely surprise me each time out (the other is also named Anderson). Anderson makes Hitchcock proud in a few scenes, cranking up the dramatic tension to almost unimaginable heights. I am so impressed. Apparently a few others weren’t, though, including the six or eight people who got up and left midway through. Stuart Klawans’s review is now up at The Nation. I love these two paragraphs, which come closer, I think, to explaining the magic of the film than any other review I’ve found:
Which brings me to the shot: the climactic moment you may have seen excerpted in TV commercials or frozen in newspaper ads. As the song approaches its high point, Lena flings herself onto Barry. The two are silhouetted, in medium long-shot, against a doorway that opens onto a beach. For a second, they’re alone: two black outlines against a blue rectangle, in the middle of the CinemaScope frame. Then, from the left and right, other silhouettes begin to cross the screen, as Lena and Barry go on embracing. Barry finally knows, a little, how another person is; and now that he does, multitudes of people come rushing in — people of every description — as if Barry were being released into the world.
Or maybe the audience in the movie theater — a multitude of figures in the dark — is released into the movie. As the shot filled up, I felt as if I, too, might walk right through this movie, which had abruptly opened into gregariousness. Here was a moment of pure happiness, discovered at the violent, innocent heart of Punch-drunk Love. Whether it’s delirium or sanity I can’t say, but I’m very glad to have been included.