Review of Punch-Drunk Love (2002) by Tristanm. — 13 Jun 2007

Everybody who hates this movie keeps complaining about how disjointed the script was, how terrible they think the dialogue was, the jarring music, how nothing makes sense, blah blah blah blah blah. How ignorant can you get? People are too afraid to step outside the box and see things from a different perspective because they are too used to being spoon-fed the same formulaic Hollywood garbage where everything has to be explained and make sense.

The reason why most of the professional critics gave the film such good reviews (and why P.T. Anderson won the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival for this movie) is because they're used to seeing a variety of movies, some which strive to be different, others that don't.

If all you allow yourself to see is the typical Hollywood film (including typical Adam Sandler comedies), then of course you're not going to recognize and appreciate the beauty of this film. Start watching movies from other countries (or more American independent cinema) and you'll quickly see that there are THOUSANDS of movies out there that don't make sense, that don't explain everything, and don't rely on dialogue.

Hollywood films rely on dialogue; you can more or less tell what's going on in the movie just by listening, without even having to see it. Punch-Drunk Love (and other examples of art cinema) are usually more concerned with the visual look than they are with dialogue or plot, since cinema is a VISUAL medium.

Look at the shots and editing in Punch-Drunk Love. If you don't remember what they looked like, then you weren't paying attention. Go back and watch the film again and note how the color and cinematography and editing are different than a typical Hollywood film.

Do you think it's easy to make a film like that, to rely on less editing like P.T. Anderson does? Anybody who has experience making movies knows that it's much harder to shoot a film using long takes and a moving camera than the safer, easier to manipulate rapid editing of a typical Hollywood film.

Watch the movie again with an open mind and think about that. And watch more non-Hollywood movies; after a while, you'll start to see why somebody might love this movie so much.