Love isn’t really a topic movies can deal with head on. If the characters walk around talking about how deeply they love each other and how much they yearn to be with one another, the whole thing becomes unbearably maudlin. The only way to deal with love on film in any kind of meaningful way is to either handle it very delicately, getting every single moment exactly right (e.g. Adventureland), or to talk about it without really talking about it, to make the film and everything in it a representation of the ways we feel and express love for one another. That second path is the route Anderson takes in Punch-Drunk Love. There are no big speeches where Barry (Adam Sandler) and Lena (Emily Watson) declare their feelings for one another, no musical montages of the two of them falling in love. Instead the very form and shape of the film itself is an expression of their feelings for one another. Anderson uses a series of intricate symbols, whimsical flourishes and bits of absurdist dialogue to convey the myriad facets of love. And in so doing, he taps into the deep and unpredictable wellspring of emotions that make the act of loving another human being such a worthwhile endeavor.
The symbols that Anderson employs throughout the film are many and varied. The car crash that seems to come out of nowhere at the start of the film, for instance, is a particularly loaded one. At the time of the crash, Barry is a few minutes away from meeting Lena, the woman with whom he’ll fall unexpectedly and deeply in love. Love, like that crash, is always unexpected. Like a car crash, it can’t be anticipated or predicted. And also like a crash, love can injure, maim and destroy. It’s dangerous, volatile, capricious and powerful. Lena’s entrance into Barry’s life is about to throw everything into upheaval. Nothing’s going to be the same for him again. Announcing that moment with a spectacular car wreck is Anderson’s very apt way of visually expressing the power of those emotions.
Immediately after the crash, a harmonium is deposited on the sidewalk right in front of Barry. He absconds with it to his office and, over the course of the film, fixes it up and learns to play it. It’d be going too far to draw a direct correlation between the harmonium and Barry’s heart, but there are certainly a number of parallels. It’s clear that Barry has the same amount of experience at love that he does with the harmonium, namely none. Before he can use either instrument, he must put all the pieces together and assemble them into working order. Once that’s done, he can start to play a few tentative notes. And then, slowly, he learns to play a rudimentary melody, his efforts a symbolic externalization of his effort to learn how to love and how to be in a relationship. In the film’s wonderful last scene, Barry plays the main theme from Jon Brion’s score on the harmonium, merging diegetic music (heard by the characters) with nondiegetic music (heard only by the audience) to create a harmony that symbolically represents the integration of Barry and Lena into each other’s lives.
Another symbol featured prominently in Punch-Drunk Love is the lens flare. These flares, present throughout the film, have no clearly defined meaning. Much like the purposely atonal score of the film, the lens flares are meant, initially, to draw attention to themselves before eventually becoming so integrated into the film that by the end they’ve been all but forgotten. At first both the lens flares and the atonal score are very noticeable and seem out of place in a film as polished and carefully considered as this one. They’re jarring and maybe even a little off-putting. But as the film goes on, the viewer gets used to them and, assuming said viewer is on the same wavelength as the film (and I’m sure there are any number of viewers who aren’t quite), they become an integral part of the experience of watching the film. They are the tiny little imperfect details-- much like a scar on your lover’s chin or a mole on their cheek-- that, though they seem like flaws, are the things we love the most, the things that make our object of love special. You don’t love someone in spite of their imperfections. You love them because of them. And Punch-Drunk Love captures that through the ‘imperfections’ in its score and photography.
Additionally, the lens flares are most often present in moments of heightened emotion, whether that emotion is love, anxiety or anger. In these instances, the lens flares are Anderson’s clever way of pushing the characters’ emotions out into the off screen world. The lens flares feel as if they’re coming out at the audience, almost bursting out of the frame, emphasizing the depth of the emotions the characters are feeling.
Anderson’s use of color in Punch-Drunk Love is also rich with symbolic meaning, specifically the colors blue, red and white. The color blue represents the depressing state of Barry’s life at the beginning of the film. He wears a blue suit throughout. The walls of his warehouse and his home are blue. He is, literally, blue. In contrast, the color red is used throughout the film to point Barry towards happiness and safety. When the four blond brothers are chasing him, for instance, a red neon sign in the shape of an arrow points the way to his escape. And, of course, Lena wears varying shades of red in most of her encounters with Barry. When he goes to visit her in Hawaii, the flight attendants manning the gate are dressed in red and foregrounded prominently in the frame. The color white is used in opposition to red, representing a threat to Barry’s happiness and well-being. The walls of Lena’s apartment complex, for instance, are a stark white and Barry spends a harrowing few minutes navigating through them on his way to finding Lena. And the bright white that spills in from outside the door of Barry’s warehouse is so oppressive that Barry has to shield his eyes.
There’s also a scene early in the film where Barry is wandering the supermarket looking for the cheapest item that he can purchase and then redeem for frequent flier miles. In the far distance is an unidentified woman in red. Barry says, almost to himself, ‘What am I looking for?’ and then turns towards the woman. An instant later she moves out of sight. The implication isn’t necessarily that the woman in red is Lena, but since the red dress is the only splash of red in the entire frame, it’s clear that the color red symbolically represents what Barry's looking for. And, of course, Lena shows up soon afterward wearing a red dress.
Another symbol that recurs throughout the film is that of the moving trucks. One appears just after the harmonium is deposited on the sidewalk in front of Barry (by a red taxi (!)). Another appears as Barry and Lena are leaving the restaurant. A couple more are seen in the background of other shots. These trucks are meant to suggest Barry’s unsettled nature. He’s constantly in motion, never able to fully settle into his life. He even has moving boxes stacked around his home and office. The disappearance of these moving trucks as the film progresses symbolizes that Lena has finally brought some peace into Barry's life.
The film is also full of enchanting little flourishes that turn the whole thing into an expression of the spontaneous joy of falling in love. There’s Barry’s impromptu soft shoe in the aisle of the supermarket. There’s the way he self-consciously run-walks to the airport gate to board his flight to go meet Lena in Hawaii only to have the film slide into slow motion just as he’s about to reach his destination. There’s the little spin move that Barry does as he bursts through the door on his way to kiss Lena for the first time. There’s the iris in on their clenched hands as they walk down the hall. There’s the light of the phone booth coming on at the instant Barry and Lena hear each other’s voices. And on and on. The entire film is full of them. And they give the whole thing a wonderful sense of joy and life. They make the film come alive in the same way that falling in love makes a person feel truly and fully alive.
There’s a moment towards the end of the film, when Barry and Lena are in bed together, where they talk about wanting to smash each other’s faces in and rip each other apart. On the face of it, this dialogue, spoken as if these were declarations of adoration, seems laughably absurd. But there’s real truth in what these characters are trying to get at here. Who hasn’t hugged their loved ones tighter and for longer than is comfortable? We hold on tight to the things and people we love, wanting to be a part of them, to merge together. That’s what Barry and Lena are expressing here, albeit in a pretty crude way (though, in their defense, these two people are pretty inexperienced at articulating these kinds of feelings). They want to destroy their separate selves and create a single new merged being. Such a thing is, obviously, quite impossible. But this is how they express that urge. It’s a ridiculous moment to be sure, but at the same time there’s a lot of truth in it. And it’s about as close as these two characters ever get to saying ‘I love you.’
There’s a good reason not to have them say, ‘I love you.’ It’s the same reason that you won’t hear it uttered in Adventureland or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, two films that are also very much about love. And that’s because it’s been ruined by so many other movies that so casually toss around the L word. When Matthew McConaughey has said it to Kate Hudson on four or five different occasions, the phrase loses quite a bit of its meaning. So talented writers and directors have been forced to invent new ways to convey the same sentiment without actually saying it. (Benjamin Button, for instance, substitutes ‘good night’ for ‘I love you.’)
In Punch-Drunk Love, aside from the aforementioned threats of violence, there’s also a lovely moment at the very end of the film that conveys the same feeling without using those words. As Barry plays the movie’s theme on the harmonium, Lena comes up behind him, puts her arms around him and whispers, ‘So here we go.’ To my way of thinking, that might be the greatest closing line in movies. Not only is it another way of declaring their shared love, it also redefines their relationship. Where before they had been two separate people living their separate lives, now they’re joined together and going forward as a partnership. But more than that, the line is a declaration that love is an adventure, a journey that they’re now about to embark on together. It’s emotional, confident, hopeful and optimistic. And it’s the exact right note on which to end the film. It encapsulates everything the film is about in one short, perfect sentence.
Punch-Drunk Love isn’t so much a love story as it a story that taps into all the attendant craziness that surrounds love. Love makes people do and say things that would otherwise be considered quite insane. But because they’re in love, these actions become somehow charming and life-affirming. Likewise, in this film Paul Thomas Anderson does a lot of things (the atonal score, the lens flares, the random iris in, etc.) that would seem to have no place in a professionally made film. But because they’re an expression of his love of cinema and of his characters’ love for each other, they somehow work together to form a uniquely remarkable film. Punch-Drunk Love is unlike anything else out there. It’s braver and bolder and risks much more than most other films. And because Anderson is able to bring it all off with such style and grace, Punch-Drunk Love is an astounding success. It’s a singular film unlikely to be surpassed in its depiction of the insanity of love if only because no one else is crazy enough to even try.
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