bjones1297

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1aYv1cf2PQ Professor at Texas A&M Galveston fails entire class. Reminded me of Besser talking about his daughter's teacher.

Woman calls 911 on a group of whales. https://youtu.be/zzo9VHOXMAA

I adore this movie and think it absolutely has a place in the Canon. This is PTA's romantic comedy version of Inglorious Basterds, pitting the scrappy underdog of love against the fascist beast that is mental illness. In reality, a man with as many deeply seeded issues as Barry Egan would likely never conquer life in the way that Barry does in this film, just as in reality a group of scrawny Jewish Americans could never topple the Third Reich. However, just as Tarantino allows his Jewish protagonists to succeed in their unlikely triumph, Punch-Drunk acts as Love's cathartic revenge fantasy on Anxiety and Depression. To counter Amy's point that certain developments in the romance between Barry and Lena are unrealistic, I would say that while this may be the case on surface level. However, debating the plausibility of their relationship is counterintuitive to fully experiencing the film as I believe it was intended. Barry is a wildly dysfunctional man who has been dropped into a fairy tale romantic comedy: a world where magical harmoniums appear in a cacophony of traffic and anxiety and where two people with complex, screwed up lives can fall in love with one another with complete abandon. The logistics of whether the two are good for one another, or even if they'll ever be in the same physical location for more than a few days at a time, don't matter in the least. Barry and Lena are punch-drunk in love, so much so that they value that love over all else, no matter what logic may say is the smart thing to do. Beyond the viscerally emotional facets of the movie that make it such an enjoyable watch for me, what keeps me coming back to this film over and over again is the vast abundance of minute details that contribute so much to the various characters in the most subtle ways. One of my favorite examples of this, something that I didn't notice until my third watch, occurs on the second day of work portrayed in the film. Luis Guzman's character, Lance, after asking Barry the day before why he was wearing a suit, comes in to work also dressed in a suit. Barry never acknowledges this gesture, and Lance abandons the suit for the remainder of the film. This is such a minor, minor, detail and the film can certainly still be appreciated without noticing those little things, but it is the subtleties that PTA includes, throughout all of his work but especially in Punch-Drunk Love, that really demonstrate, for me, the vast scope of his vision and the complex understanding he has of every one of his characters. Finally, on the subject of subtlety, I love the portrayal of Barry Egan by Adam Sandler. The way in which he brings the character to life through understated, completely natural movements - side striding backwards out of a room, twitching in a rhythmic, obsessive way when he's on the phone, being extremely conscious of every movement he makes - allows the audience to recognize that Barry is not a well man without directly stating it or including an over-expository scene of Barry in counseling or taking medication. Barry's OCD, anxiety, and depression are all there, and the audience is made extremely aware of them through some excellent anxiety-inducing filmmaking, but they are not the focus of the film, love is, and in the end it is love that wins. We know that these issues we've seen in Barry throughout the film aren't gone with the story's conclusion. He will likely never escape these mental conditions which plague him, but the ending is happy because now he's not alone. He has love, and in a rom-com, which Punch-Drunk certainly is, that's all that matters. Barry has a love in his life, and it makes him stronger than anything you can imagine. That's that. Oh shit, I almost forgot. I can't talk about my love for this movie without mentioning the phone call scene between Barry and Mattress Man Dean Trumbell. It is one of the absolute funniest scenes I have ever seen and I am incapable of watching it without laughing hysterically. Now that's that.