"I don't know if there is anything wrong because I don't know how other people are."
These are the words of Barry Egan (Adam Sandler), the mentally off-balance hero of Paul Thomas Anderson's new film, "Punch-Drunk Love."
Barry Egan is one of the most intriguing characters in cinema in recent memory. Tormented by his own psyche and harassed mercilessly by his seven sisters, Barry makes do owning a small business that sells novelty bathroom supplies to hotel chains and casinos.
He is also frightfully neurotic. In the opening scene Barry stays up all night devising a plan to capitalize on an airplane mileage deal offered by a food retailer, through which he will never have to pay for a flight again. The next morning, he stumbles across Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), a wide-eyed Englishwoman looking to get her car fixed at the garage next door to Barry's business.
After Lena leaves, Barry notices a "little piano" (actually a harmonium) sitting in the street. He retrieves it and brings it back to his office. Throughout the film, the instrument serves as a metaphor for peace in Barry's life, and it is when he feels particularly pressured that he takes solace in its almost magical comfort.
The film chronicles the unfolding love saga between Barry and Lena. Through a number of rather bizarre circumstances, the couple fall for each other despite their ferociously appealing oddity: Barry's bipolar outbursts and Lena's naive and inexplicable fascination with Barry.
But there is a bit of a complication -- at one of his sisters' birthday parties earlier in the film, Barry confesses to one of his brothers-in-law after a particularly violent outburst that he just wishes he had someone to talk to confidentially. That night he goes home only to stumble across a confidential phone-sex number which he proceeds to call.
It turns out that the number is actually just a woman in Utah trying to make money for her lover, Dean Trumbell (Philip Seymour Hoffman). When Barry tries to thwart them by canceling his credit card, Dean sends four blonde brothers (played by four blonde real-life brothers) to hunt Barry down and extort money from him.
In one of the final scenes of the movie, Barry's final showdown with Dean, he tells him, "I have a love in my life, and it gives me more strength than you could ever understand." The line elicited laughs from the audience. And yet Barry's words clearly state the idea that Anderson is trying to express in the film; that is, he portrays the overstated pop-culture view of love with such clarity and power that it truly renews the viewer's faith in it. Barry Egan gives us hope, for once, in the inherent power of love in the diseased world we live in.
Director of photography Robert Elswit shoots the movie beautifully. In classic Anderson form, the film features exceptionally long takes, intensely vivid colors and unique camera angles. The lighting is close to perfect, constantly creating an effect either of despair or ethereal joy. The picture is art -- at times it seems as if every still could be a great work of art in itself.
On top of that, the acting is excellent. Best of all is Watson, whose coy intrigue with a complex man nearly makes the movie on its own. Her performance both seduces viewers to fall in love with Lena and leaves them just a little unsure of her sanity.
Sandler is also quite good. After churning out meaningless sludge in his last five or six films, he returns to the form promised in "The Wedding Singer," portraying Barry's unstable psyche effortlessly and convincingly. Keeping the audience guessing, he refuses to fall into any sort of formulaic role and instead gives a refreshingly original performance.
At the same time, Sandler is also one of the movie's few weak points. As good as his performance is, he can't quite seem to shake a few of his mannerisms after nearly a decade of comedic work. In other words, while playing Barry beautifully, there is still a little bit of the Adam Sandler we know too well left in him.
In spite of this, the film is an overwhelming success. Anderson ("Magnolia," "Boogie Nights") was the co-winner of Best Director at Cannes this year for the film, and deservedly so. He directed the movie beautifully from a script he wrote himself, so everything -- the lighting, the cinematography, the acting, even the sometimes percussive and driving, sometimes melodic music of Jon Brion -- congeals into a seamless whole. And it is not just that synthesis that makes the movie so impressive; it's also the content.
"Punch-Drunk Love" manages to be a romantic comedy without the triteness we are used to. Instead, it tells a story without fear or pretentiousness about a troubled man finding his salvation in the grace of love.
